"A STRONG BARBARIC ACCENT": AMERICA'S DUTCH-SPEAKING BLACK COMMUNITY FROM SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY NEW NETHERLAND TO NINETEENTH-CENTURY NEW YORK AND NEW JERSEY

2015 ◽  
Vol 90 (2) ◽  
pp. 131-153 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Dewulf
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
New York ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
New Jersey ◽  
Black Community ◽  
New Netherland

scholarly journals Jesus and the Bulldozer: Religion, Suburbanization, and Urban Renewal in a New Jersey Camp Meeting Community

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-47
Author(s):  
Samuel Avery-Quinn
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
New York ◽  
New Jersey ◽  
Urban Renewal ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Suburban Communities ◽  
Camp Meeting ◽  
History Of ◽  
Gloucester County ◽  
Black Towns

The history of suburbanization in New Jersey is a well-established topic in the scholarly literature. Since the middle decades of the nineteenth century, the state’s northeastern and southwestern areas have become dense with suburban communities tied, culturally and economically, to New York City or Philadelphia. By the early twentieth century, these areas were a mix of middle-class white enclaves, Black towns, immigrant and working-class communities, agricultural hamlets, and industrial suburbs. However, in the late nineteenth century, some suburbs emerged as religious retreats. This article explores how suburbanization and, by the 1960s, urban renewal, transformed the Gloucester County borough of Pitman’s landscape. Founded in 1871 as a Methodist camp meeting resort, the history of Pitman demonstrates ways that religion complemented suburbanization, and suburbanization, amid religious decline and secularization, reshaped the religious landscape of one South Jersey community.

Iberian linguistic elements among the black population in New Netherland (1614–1664)

2019 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-82
Author(s):  
Jeroen Dewulf
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Black Community ◽  
Language Use ◽  
Population Group ◽  
Black Population ◽  
New Netherland ◽  
Historical Sources ◽  
Slave Population ◽  
Dutch Brazil

Abstract Since the slave population in New Netherland (1614–1664) was small compared to that of other Dutch Atlantic colonies such as Curaçao, Dutch Brazil, and Suriname, it has traditionally received little attention by scholars, including creolists. It is, therefore, not well known that traces of Iberian languages can be found among the black population of seventeenth-century Manhattan. While the paucity of sources does not allow us to make any decisive claims with regard to the importance of Spanish and Portuguese for the colony’s black community, this article attempts to reconstruct the language use of this population group on the basis of an analysis of historical sources from New Netherland in a broader Atlantic context.

Constructing Identity in Seneca Village

2019 ◽  
pp. 157-180
Author(s):  
Diana Dizerega Wall ◽  
Nan A. Rothschild ◽  
Meredith B. Linn
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
New York ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Material Culture ◽  
Black Community ◽  
York City ◽  
Historical Documents ◽  
Central Park ◽  
The City

This chapter explores the issue of identity in Seneca Village, a nineteenth-century, middle-class, black community located in what is now Central Park in New York City. The city evicted the residents in 1857, and until recently this important village was forgotten. Using information from historical documents and material culture (including landscaping and both the form and decoration of dishes) excavated from the site in 2011, this study examines the intersection of class, race, and nationality. The evidence suggests that the identity of at least one family there was made of many strands: they may have identified themselves as members of the black middle class, as Americans, as African Americans, and perhaps even as Africans, depending on the situation and the audience. Skillful use of these strands may have been one way in which this and other village families attempted to ameliorate oppression and to make a place for themselves.

The Pinkster King and the King of Kongo

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeroen Dewulf
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
African American ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
New Jersey ◽  
Central Africa ◽  
Mutual Aid ◽  
New Amsterdam ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Interpretation ◽  
European Standards

This book presents the history of the nation’s forgotten Dutch slave community and free Dutch-speaking African-Americans from seventeenth-century New Amsterdam to nineteenth-century New York and New Jersey. It also develops a provocative new interpretation of one of America’s most intriguing black folkloric traditions, Pinkster. Dewulf rejects the traditional interpretation of this celebration of a “slave king” as a form of carnival. Instead, he shows that it is a ritual rooted in mutual aid and slave brotherhood traditions. By placing Pinkster in an Atlantic context, Dewulf identifies striking parallels to royal election rituals in slave communities elsewhere in the Americas, which he relates to the ancient Kingdom of Kongo and the historical impact of Portuguese culture in West-Central Africa. Whereas the importance of African-American fraternities providing mutual aid has long been acknowledged for the post-slavery era, Dewulf’s focus on the social capital of slaves traces concern for mutual aid back to seventeenth-century Manhattan. He suggests a stronger impact of Manhattan’s first slave community on the development of African-American identity in New York and New Jersey than has hitherto been assumed. While the earliest historians working on slave culture in a North American context were mainly interested in an assumed process of assimilation according to European standards, later generations pointed out the need to look for indigenous African continuities. The findings of this book suggest the necessity to complement the latter with an increased focus on the contact Africans had with European?primarily Portuguese?culture before they were shipped as slaves to the Americas.

Dutch Contributions to Religious Toleration

2010 ◽  
Vol 79 (3) ◽  
pp. 585-613 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeremy Dupertuis Bangs
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Religious Freedom ◽  
Religious Pluralism ◽  
Basic Assumption ◽  
Director General ◽  
Religious Toleration ◽  
New Netherland ◽  
New Amsterdam ◽  
History Of

Historians have neglected a seventeenth-century hero whose actions and words laid the groundwork for America's democratic diversity and religious toleration—at least that is the theme of a best-selling history of the Dutch colony of New Netherland, the predecessor of New York. This courageous but forgotten lawyer, Adriaen van der Donck, went out from Holland in 1641 as a young man to serve as “schout” (chief judicial officer, both sheriff and prosecutor) of Rensselaerwyck, then moved to New Amsterdam where he eventually became the spokesman of colonists irked by the arbitrary highhandedness of the Director General, Petrus Stuyvesant. Van der Donck is now proclaimed to have ensured that Dutch religious toleration became the basic assumption and pattern that evolved into modern American religious pluralism. The great popularity of this recent revelation ensures that thousands of people, from general readers to professional historians whose specialty lies elsewhere, now believe that religious toleration in America originated in New Amsterdam/ New York, where Dutch customs of toleration contrasted with the theocratic tendencies of English colonies. Is this claim true? In my opinion—no. Should historians pay attention to journalistic jingoism? Perhaps—because unexamined assumptions affect topics treated more seriously. What, then, can be said about the fabled Dutch tradition of toleration and its contribution to the discussion of religious freedom in America in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries?

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