New Netherland and the Dutch Origins of American Religious Liberty

4. Non-Christians

chapter 4 NON-CHRISTIANS The merchants of the Portuguese Nation residing in this City respectfully remonstrate to your Honors that it has come to their knowledge that your Honors raise obstacles to the giving of permission or passports to the Portuguese Jews to travel and to go to reside in New Netherland, which if persisted in will result to the great disadvantage of the Jewish nation. It also can be of no advantage to the general Company but rather damaging. The conjuncture of the Dutch nation, Dutch tolerance, the Dutch Reformed Church, the Dutch state, and the Dutch colonies emerging onto the historical stage virtually simultaneously created such a powerful impression that people ever since have had difficulty separating them out, particularly the connection between Dutch enterprises and tolerance. The Dutch built colonies and communities in situations of unprecedented religious and ethnic diversity from Asia to the Americas. Dutch tolerance, originally developed for a world full of non-Reformed Christians, proved remarkably adept at fitting itself to the new realities of a world full of non-Christians. In neither case did it actively promote religious pluralism. Rather, it was designed as a structure for Dutch Reformed Protestants to coexist with those who were not (yet) of their faith. Exactly what that meant varied from time to time and place to place. Beginning with the acceptance of the Jewish community in Amsterdam, Dutch tolerance recognized limits to the expansion of the Reformed faith. Across the Dutch world, initially fluid boundary lines between Christians and non-Christians gradually became set as local political struggles clarified what was and was not possible within each Non-Christians 109 particular iteration of Dutch tolerance. New Netherland was just one variant of this transglobal process.1 Pluralism was an inextricable part of the Dutch reality, but few desired it. Generally interpreted as the coexistence, sometimes covert other times overt, of more than one faith, exactly how and why pluralism happens varied significantly across the Dutch world. From the moment they began setting up posts and colonies overseas, the Dutch found themselves living alongside Buddhists, Muslims, Hindus, and indigenous faiths of various sorts from the Americas to Africa and Asia. At the same time, Jews began to live openly as such in Amsterdam, Brazil, New Amsterdam, Curaçao, and later Suriname . However, it was never Dutch policy deliberately to encourage the flourishing of religious diversity throughout their empire. For example, although the year the Jews were granted permission to reside in New Amsterdam, 1655, was the year that the Lutherans on the South River received the toleration of their church, it was also the year the Lutherans on the North River finally heard the discouraging word about the failure of their petitioning campaign. The basic principle of liberty of conscience provided space for those of different faiths, both Christians and non-Christians, to exist within the Dutch world, but exactly how depended very much on the specifics of the time, place, and parties involved. From the earliest days of the Reformation, the Dutch simultaneously expected and combated religious diversity. Confronted by ethnic and religious pluralism at home and abroad, the Dutch did what they could to reduce and restrain it. Though there were always men like Plancius who dreamed of spreading the faith far and wide, it should not be surprising that the Dutch Reformed religion never became the majority faith in the colonies. They made no special plans or proposals for dealing with the plethora of non-Christian faiths they came to govern. Instead, they simply extended the practices of Dutch tolerance in Europe to non-Christians overseas. While this did not compel Javanese, Chinese, Africans or Native Americans to convert, it did allow Calvinist expansionists to extend their reach farther than they had any demographic right to do. Given that initially there were no Protestants anywhere in what became the Dutch colonies , the degree to which they were able to spread their faith overseas is impressive.2 The challenge of dealing with non-Christians first came to Amsterdam, where a Jewish community began to emerge around 1600. Though by the 110 Chapter 4 1640s the resulting tolerance was dramatic—a public synagogue—the legal underpinnings were often quite slim, more an absence of legislation than a formal endorsement. Jews had not existed in Amsterdam before they started arriving around 1590. They came initially as ostensibly Catholic ‘‘Portuguese.’’ After they...