History - Emigration bursts

Here we discuss the most important Dutch Emigration bursts to America:

From 1492 to 1800

Columbus arrived at the Bahamas, the first colonial emigrants come from Spain in 1600, (until Mexico) and France, (until Canada).

In the seventeenth century, emigrants arrived from the British islands and 'German Europe'.

Many Dutch people left the Republic influenced by trading companies such as the United East Indian Company (V.O.C.), established in 1602, and the West Indian Company (W.I.C.), established in 1621.

Dutch colonies were founded in the Antilles, Brazil, Guyana, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, the United States, Southeast Asia and South Africa. Flemings and Walloons came from what was once called Southern Netherlands and is now Belgium, they left their country in the last decade of the sixteenth and early seventeenth century because of the worsened economic conditions and later because of religious conflicts (c.35,000 persons).

From 1776 to 1800

After the American Revolution, 60% of the population of the 13 American Colonies are from the 'British Islands', 20% came from Germany and the Netherlands and another 20% came from Africa.

From 1800 to 1846

Actual emigration from Holland only became significant in the nineteenth century. Many Dutch people left for the 'New World', the United States, while a small number of them traveled to Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

Early in the 1800s, Europe experiences the beginning of the 'Industrial Revolution'. This leads to the massive migration from rural areas to industrial cities. Death rates declined, population exploded and poverty increased dramatically. The Dutch people left when industrialization began in northern Europe.

Besides that, after the final defeat of Napoleon at Waterloo, The Netherlands became a kingdom under the House of Orange. But not until 1848 did the monarchy became a constitutional one and the country a parliamentary democracy in the modern sense of those words.

The first king was William I, who was an authoritarian. It was under his rule that a movement started in the Dutch Reformed Church which lead to the last mass emigration from Holland to the United States.

The separatists movement organized a form of Calvinistic worship along strictly dogmatic lines. The Dutch Constitution recognized freedom of religion for the existing churches, but King William refused that privilege to a newly formed congregation. Religious meetings of the separatists were suppressed and some leaders imprisoned. Naturally such oppression gave further impetus to the movement.

From 1846 to 1900

Reverend van Raalte The first real emigration bursts came in the 1840's and 1850's, when poor harvests forced people to leave Great Britain and Northern Europe.

Besides of that, the first group of Dutch separatists left The Netherlands in 1846 under leadership of reverend 'van Raalte'. Their destination was Wisconsin but because of the bad weather conditions it was unpossible to cross Lake Michigan.

Van Raalte decided to settle down at the area of Black Lake, Michigan.
These Dutch emigrants were pioneers, they had to build log cabins and make the land ready to live on. When the first log cabins were build, women and children were sent for.

From a beginning marked by hardship the town of 'Holland' emerged.
Holland is surrounded by towns and villages, some bearing the names of Dutch provinces: Zeeland, Friesland, Groningen, all of which were started by later arrivals who joined Van Raalte.
You can read al about the influence of the Dutch colonies nowadays at the Holland/Michigan homepage: Holland Area Convention & Visitors Bureau

The second group of Dutch separatists were led to America by reverend Hendrik P. Scholte. Scholte's group was better of economically than the men who came with Van Raalte, and the woods of Michigan had little appeal for them since they could afford to buy farmland. Van Raalte's hope that the two colonies would be united was therefore not fulfilled.

Scholte's men started out under less primitive conditions. The chooses site was Marion County, Iowa. Scholte laid out his new city in the summer of 1847, naming it Pella for the town to which the disciples of Jesus fled after the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans.

A few yeas later Pella found itself in the path of the California gold rush. Business was very good and with the opening of the railroad, Pella became a trading center of the region. In turn it has sent a wave of second generation Dutch emigrants to the North, to Orange City and Sioux County, and today it is a prosperous community.

By 1860 half of the then thirty thousand Netherlands-born residents of the United States were living in Michigan, Iowa or in Wisconsin where Dutch Catholic emigrants had settled in the fifties. At its peak the US received 20 million European emigrants between the 1880 and 1920 censuses!