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A Call for Dutch Emigration

Beginning in the mid-1800s, over half-a-million Netherlanders immigrated to North America. Their reasons were many: religious freedom, economic well-being, land ownership, to escape a rigid class structure that thwarted upward mobility, to escape famine and for the education of their children.

Emigration, Why We Encourage Migration to North America and Not Java, a pamphlet written by Anthony Brummelkamp and Albertus C. Van Raalte in 1846, outlined multiple reasons to emigrate and was a powerful influence in the decision of many to leave. Arguably, this pamphlet could be considered the final impetus for Dutch migration to North America.

Brummelkamp and Van Raalte’s pamphlet is here, in both Dutch and, for the first time, in English, also annotated, to provide a deeper understanding of the origins of Dutch American culture.