"THE DUTCH IN AMERICA ACROSS THE CENTURIES: CONNECTIONS AND COMPARISONS"
The Dutch presence in North America—from the voyage of Henry Hudson to the recent migrations of dairy farmers—stretches across four centuries. The Dutch-American experience includes the quest for gold, the crisis of slavery, diplomacy with Native Americans, and survival during the new American Republic. Two major scholarly traditions—one focusing on New Netherland and the other on 19th- and 20th-century immigration, settlement, and culture in the Midwest and beyond—have studied the Dutch experience with limited contact. “The Dutch in America Across the Centuries: Connections and Comparisons,” jointly sponsored by the New Netherland Institute (NNI) and the Association for the Advancement of Dutch-American Studies (AADAS), was among the first conferences to bring together these two major scholarly traditions.
SESSION 1: FRONTIERS
Henk Aay, Van Raalte Institute, Hope College: “Migration of Dutch Americans from the New Netherland Settlement Region as Measured by the Spread of RCA Congregations, 1664–1850”
Erin Bonuso Kramer, University of Wisconsin- Madison: “Prisoners and Profiteers: The Economics of Imperial Loyalty on the Albany Frontier, 1664–1748”
Iris Plessius, Radboud University: “Imposed Consensus: An Examination of the Relations between Dutch Settlers and Native Americans in North America between 1674 and 1783”
Pieter Hovens, National Museum of World Cultures, Leiden, Netherlands: “In Search of Gold, From New Netherland to the Far West: Dutchmen, Indians, and the Quest for El Dorado”
Jan J. Boersema and Henk Aay, VU University Amsterdam and Van Raalte Institute, Hope College: “From Wilderness to Cultivated Landscapes; 19th- Century Dutch Immigrants and the Natural World”
Peter D. Van Cleave, Arizona State University : “Saving New Netherland in the Early American Republic: The Importance of Francis Adrian van der Kemp’s Attempt to Translate the Records of New Netherland”
Babs Boter, VU University Amsterdam: “The Bond of Both Worlds: Travel Writers Bridging North America and Holland”
Cornelia Kennedy, Van Raalte Institute, Hope College: “Of Men and Words: An Early Holland Debating Society”
Bill Kennedy, Van Raalte Institute, Hope College: “The Reformed Protestant Dutch Church and the Slavery Crisis of 1855”
Michael J. Douma, James Madison University: “A Dutch Confederate: Defending Slavery in a Transnational Context”
Robert P. Swierenga, Van Raalte Institute, Hope College: “Helping Hands: Old Dutch Rescue Young Dutch”
George Harinck, VU University Amsterdam: “The Americanization of Geerhardus Vos: Singularities and Similarities”
Leon van den Broeke, VU University Amsterdam: “Flexibility or Fixed Idea? Reformed Church Polity in New Netherland and Dutch-American Midwest”
Andrew T. Stahlhut, Lehigh University: “Albany’s Commissioners for Indian Affairs in Colonial New York: The Dutch Shaping of Indian Diplomacy in the Larger British Empire, 1691–1755”
Hans Krabbendam, Roosevelt Study Center: “How Transnationalist were the Dutch in America?”
