A Dutch Crossing: Migration between the Netherlands, Africa, and the Americas, 1600-1800

Victor Enthoven

This paper presents an overview of two hundred years of demographic consequences of Dutch presence in the Western Hemisphere. The first section deals with the European Atlantic diaspora via the Netherlands. In more detail it addresses the German migration to North America and the Jewish Diaspora to Suriname and the Antilles. In the second part, the focus will be on Dutch Atlantic slave trade and slavery in the Dutch settlements: topics already thoroughly researched by others. I will, however, explain in more detail how free and enslaved Africans also visited the Dutch Republic. In the third and last section, an overview is presented of the mingling between the Europeans, the African Americans, and the indigenous people in Dutch settlements in New Netherland (North America), New Holland (Brazil), Guiana, the Antilles, and West Africa. I will specially focus on the ethnicity of the Dutch colonial military forces.

[WP# 04CR003]