The Dutch Diaspora The Netherlands and Its Settlements in Africa, Asia, and the Americas

The Dutch Diaspora is a comprehensive and personal study of the Netherlands and its former colonial empire. The Netherlands is considered one of the most successful societies in the world, and at one point was the globe's largest empire-stretching from Japan to the United States. The author, Howard J. Wiarda, having grown up in western Michigan, is himself of Dutch descent, and he combines thorough scholarship with firsthand experience of travels to the Netherlands and its far-flung former colonies. The study analyzes how colonies reacted to the institutional and ideological beliefs implanted by the Dutch settlers, and how those colonies evolved in terms of cultural, religious, and political beliefs. For example, the Dutch in the seventeenth century brought Calvinism to South Africa and entrepreneurialism to New Amsterdam and Curacao, and in the nineteenth century supported slave plantation systems in Indonesia and Suriname, but free societies in the American Midwest. As time passed the evolution of the colonies was telling: While Calvinism declined in the Netherlands it remained vibrant and progressive in the Midwest. In many ways, the former colonies adapted to modernization better than the mother country. The Dutch Diaspora is an insightful and accessible study of colonialism useful to upper-level undergraduates and all students and researchers of Dutch history. Book jacket.