Search results
Sort results
Select author
Refine search results
Select genre
Select tag
Bound, Freed, and Burdened: Mayken van Angola’s Journey to Liberation in Early Dutch America
16 December 2024
On 28 December 1662, Mayken van Angola, alongside Susanna and Lucretia, boldly petitioned for freedom in New Amsterdam. Their request was granted—but with a condition: they must clean Director-General Petrus Stuyvesant’s house weekly. Mayken’s story, rooted in the realities of enslavement and
How the First Dutch New Yorkers Interpreted the U.S. Constitution
9 August 2024
In 1788, as New York fiercely debated the ratification of the United States Constitution, a Dutch Reformed minister quietly translated the founding document into Dutch. Despite its historical significance, this first Dutch translation remained virtually unknown for over two centuries, until historia
From First Salute to Future400: Commemorating Four Centuries of Dutch-American Friendship
12 June 2024
The founding of New York is often celebrated, but establishing the exact founding date and the part the Dutch played in its history is more complicated than it seems. Historian Jaap Jacobs delves into the city's past and wonders how New York's Dutch history and Dutch-American friendship should be co
Rotterdam’s River Taxis Create Waves
5 February 2024
Looking for an original transport possibility to discover Rotterdam? Take a water taxi. You can see them everywhere in the city: those black-and-yellow coloured speed boats, which navigate on the River Maas.
Sojourner Truth: How the Enslaved Woman of a Dutch-New York Family Became an Icon of America’s Black Liberation Movement
27 November 2023
On 31 March 1817, the New York legislature decided that enslavement within its borders had to come to an end. Final emancipation would occur on 4 July 1827. Coincidentally, the date of choice was almost exactly two centuries after the Dutch West India Company’s yacht Bruynvisch arrived at Manhatta
How Peter Stuyvesant Became an Anachronistic Symbol of Dutch-American Friendship
15 November 2023
The bonds that connect the American and Dutch peoples have been commemorated in various ways and at various levels. Dutch-American Friendship Day is a well-established annual event at the governmental level. In New York City, the historical memory of Petrus Stuyvesant has recently become controversi
West India House: The Amsterdam Building Where New York Was Founded
10 March 2023
Everyone knows the Dutch "bought" Manhattan from a local Native American tribe for a few lengths of cloth and a fistful of beads. The bargain struck by Peter Minuit, an employee of the Dutch West India Company, was perhaps the smartest real estate deal in history.
Cultural Attaché Joost Taverne in New York: ‘The U.S. Is a Very Interesting Country in the Field of Art and Culture’
27 June 2019
The Cultural Attaché is a series of interviews by DutchCulture, the Dutch network and knowledge organisation for international cultural cooperation, with cultural attachés of the Netherlands. How do these attachés help Dutch art and culture? What were their expectations when they were posted abro
The Dutch Origin of the Pinkster Festival in America
14 May 2019
Every year, on the seventh Sunday after Easter, Christians celebrate Pinksteren (Pentecost). However, Pinkster is an African American holiday in the Northeastern United States. During the 17th and 18th centuries, enslaved and free African Americans transformed Pinkster from a Dutch religious observa
