Faith and Family: Dutch Immigration and Settlement in the United States, 1820–1920 (review)

Faith and Family: Dutch Immigration and Settlement in the United States, 1820-1920. By Robert P. Swierenga. [Ellis Island Series.] (New York: Holmes & Meier Publishers, Inc. 2000. Pp. xxi, 362. $45.00.)

Faith and Family is Swierenga's most comprehensive work on Dutch immigration and settlement in the United States in the nineteenth and early twentieth century. As the title suggests, religion and family values and their impacts on the immigrant experience, behavior, and the residential community are the recurring themes. Migration traditions through church and family contribute to the development of transplanted communities which, as Swierenga sees it, dot the American landscape in both urban and rural areas. Mobility, both in a geographic and economic sense, is directed and takes place through these community networks, and the church is the pivotal institution in the process. Many of the materials and case studies covered have been published elsewhere, but Swierenga has done a superb job at synthesizing and integrating the various themes in four parts in the book. Part I: "Immigration Patterns" (in four chapters) includes a review of conditions in the Old Country that contributed to emigration and a discussion and analysis of different immigration streams to the United States. Part II: "Religion" (in four chapters) addresses the question of the relationship between religion and immigration behavior, including Jewish immigration and religious life. In Part III: "Work and Politics" (in two chapters), migration and occupational change and voting behavior is covered. Part IV: "Statistics and Sources" (in two chapters) discusses international immigration statistics and other source materials. At the end we find a detailed bibliographic essay, including a section on Catholic records. The writing style is clear and direct, and source referencing and indexing is superb.

Swierenga's own immigrant and religious roots lay in the Midwestern Secessionist Christian Reformed tradition, which is evident from the choice of themes and locales. Most of the examples and case studies presented (Chicago's Westside, Holland and Grand Rapids, Michigan, and Pella, Iowa), derive from places and events he is most familiar with. Thus we learn less about the more mainstream Protestant Dutch Reformed settlers and their immigrant experience and behavior than about the particular events surrounding their more orthodox brethren. Also, we learn less about the Dutch Catholic immigration. Dutch Catholic immigrants formed 18 percent of the Dutch immigration from 1830 to 1880 compared to 20 percent Seceder Christian Reformed and almost 60 percent Dutch Reformed. And although Swierenga points out the difference in experience and behavior and makes the reader aware of the fact that Dutch Catholic immigrants were more likely to find their destination in urban centers rather than on the frontier, he does not pursue their course to answer the questions of why that is or what implications that has. In other words, a distinct unevenness in coverage is evident, which derives from Swierenga's interest in understanding cultural persistence and ethnic identity rather than Americanization and assimilation.

Both in Catholic immigration and Dutch immigration studies there remain significant questions to be answered. Nonetheless, Swierenga's contribution to Dutch immigration history is significant, and Faith and Family deserves a place alongside Jacob van Hinte and Henry Lucas' seminal works on Dutch immigration to the United States. Swierenga's life work, which includes detailed computer compilations of manuscript U.S. census records of immigrant heads of households, official Dutch emigration records, and entries in the U.S. ship passenger lists, offers a substantial basis for undertaking a comprehensive comparative analysis of the immigration experience of all Dutch immigrant groups. Along with the extensive bibliographic and archival data sources listed in the book and available elsewhere, students in Dutch immigration research are well served by Swierenga's book.

Yda Schreuder
University of Delaware

...