New book on Four Centuries of Dutch-American relations

Authors such as Russell Shorto, Annejet van der Zijl, Bas Blokker, Mineke Bosch, and Jaap Jacobs shed light on both the success stories and the darker sides of these relations in the book ‘A Firm Peace and Sincere Friendship? Four Centuries Dutch-American Stories’.

On Tuesday, April 1st, the festive book launch of this publication took place at the Old or Pilgrim Fathers' Church in Delfshaven, Rotterdam. In 1620, the Pilgrim Fathers departed from this quay for the ‘promised land’ on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. At this historic location, Carola Schouten, Mayor of Rotterdam, and Marcus Micheli, Chargé d’Affaires ad interim at the U.S. Embassy in The Hague, received the first (Dutch and English) copies of the book.

For four centuries, people from the Netherlands have gone to America by boat or plane, to explore the country, to trade, to colonize, to settle, to do business, to find a new future or simply to visit the country as a tourist. And for four centuries, Americans, of diverse backgrounds, of, amongst others, native, African or European descent, have come to the Netherlands. This book tells the stories of people who crossed the ocean and shaped the relationship between the Netherlands and (what are now) the United States of America.

The publication is the result of a collaboration between the International Heritage Cooperation program of the National Archives of the Netherlands, historian Jaap Jacobs, and several guest authors. What initially started in 2022 as an English-language blog series with stories about four centuries of shared history between the Netherlands and the United States, has now been published in both Dutch and English by Walburg Pers/Amsterdam University Press.