New Netherland and the Dutch Origins of American Religious Liberty

8. Borders

chapter 8 BORDERS He [the Jesuit Simon Le Moyne] has several times accompanied the Indians out of their own country, and visited Fort Orange. At length he came here to the Manhattans, doubtless at the invitation of Papists living here, especially for the sake of the French privateers, who are Papists, and have arrived here with a good prize. The greatest challenge to the Calvinist hegemony in New Netherland came not from the Lutherans or Mennonites within the colony, nor from the directors in Amsterdam. Rather, it crossed the borders. Like much of the Dutch world, New Netherland was surrounded by neighbors of different religions. Jesuits entered from the north, via New France, and helped sustain the faith of the handful of Catholics in the colony. Quakers crossed in from the east, from Rhode Island, and made many converts among the English on Long Island. On the southwestern border, there had been the Swedish Lutheran colony of New Sweden and there still was the Catholic English colony of Maryland. Of course the harbor of New Amsterdam was open to ships from across the Atlantic world. This included ships that brought zealous Quaker missionaries, as well as French Catholic privateers. At the same time, borders offered the possibility of expelling religious dissidents from the colony, as had happened to the Lutheran minister Gutwasser , the Baptist Wickenden, and the first Quaker missionaries. The porous borders of the Dutch world ensured that Dutch religion did not develop in isolation. The story of religious diversity in New Netherland cannot be told without reference to its colonial neighbors. As most places in the Dutch world were fairly close to an international border, borders arguably played a much more influential role for the Dutch 212 Chapter 8 than, say, the French, Spanish, or English. Until 1674, this was especially so because the frontiers of the entire Dutch world were extremely unstable: what was Dutch and where kept changing. Even in America, the borders of Dutch territory were in dispute. The southern frontier of New Netherland was challenged by New Sweden and then Maryland. The eastern frontier was contested by Connecticut and New Haven. New Netherland originally had encompassed the coast up to Narragansett Bay, but the intrusion of hundreds of English colonists made that untenable. Stuyvesant’s government negotiated the Hartford Treaty with Connecticut in 1650 to create a clear eastern boundary between New Netherland and the English colonies. Though not recognized in Europe, the border proved fairly stable locally. After the English conquest it became, with small changes, the border between New York and Connecticut and, on Long Island, between today’s Nassau and Suffolk counties. The political and military uncertainty of what was and was not within the Dutch world meant that individuals were constantly moving in and out of those borders whether they willed it or not. Conquest brought various peoples into the Dutch world: Catholics in Europe and Brazil; Muslims, Buddhists, and Hindus in Asia. The result was a politically and culturally important phenomenon: individuals—often, but not always, men—who served as religious agents of other faiths and crossed into Dutch territory from neighboring foreign lands in order to proselytize or maintain the faith of non-Reformed peoples who had fallen under Dutch rule. In this way, priests, missionaries, and others who were not permitted by Dutch laws to live in Dutch territory or assemble a congregation, could prevent their coreligionists from completely dissolving into the public church by making forays to preach to, pray with, teach, and perform religious services for people, like Roman Catholics, who otherwise were denied those aspects of worship by the public church. They too formed a part of Dutch tolerance. Borders were not just shifting lines or a frontier between Dutch and non-Dutch territory. There were various enclaves and exclaves, especially in Europe. Batavia, capital of the Dutch Asian empire, could be considered an enclave, surrounded by a sometimes hostile sultanate and linked by sea with other Dutch enclaves, the trading posts and islands scattered from Japan to Persia. Within the Dutch Republic, enclaves existed along the eastern and southern frontiers, small fiefdoms or portions of other territories that had never been acquired by the Hapsburgs and thus were not taken over by the Dutch rebels even when they controlled the land all about them. Borders 213 Ravenstein, where Lutherans could get their Bible printed, was one of the most important...