Category Dutch History
Lecture at the Pelgrimvaderskerk (Pilgrim Father’s Church) Dec 9, 2025
On December 9th, I’ll be speaking (in Dutch) about slavery in New York at the Pelgrimvaderskerk (Pilgrim Father’s Church) in Rotterdam/ Delfshaven, the Netherlands. This is the church where the Pilgrims last held service before leaving the Netherlands and voyaging to what became Massachusetts.
Book Presentation: Netherlands-America Foundation (April 25, 2025)
For details and to reserve a seat: https://thenaf.org/event/naf-washington-dc-michael-douma-presents-the-slow-death-of-slavery-in-dutch-new-york/
New York slavery in De Groene Amsterdammer
My research on Dutch slavery in New York was recently referenced multiple times in an article in the popular Dutch magazine De Groene Amsterdammer. The writer, Leendert Van der Valk, has done a tremendous job of bringing early Dutch colonial American history to the modern Dutch public. More than just relating the stories of other […]
Review of Philip Dröge, De Tawl: Hoe de Nederlandse taal (bijna) Amerika veroverde, Spectrum, Amsterdam, 2023.
Over at Low-countries.com, I published a review of a new book about the Dutch language in America. The English version is already up here: https://www.the-low-countries.com/article/colonial-echoes-when-americans-spoke-dutch and a Dutch version of this review will appear soon in De Lage Landen magazine.
Tracking the 66 Fulbrighters who Studied History in the Netherlands
The Fulbright program preserves a list of all previous recipients of its grant, and this data is searchable on its website here. So, I selected for all Americans who received Fulbright grants to study history in the Netherlands during their doctoral program of study. I did not include persons whose grants were awarded specifically for […]
No, there is no “s” at the end of “New Netherland”
by Michael J. Douma Like many nineteenth-century New Yorkers of Dutch-descent, the historical scholar John Romeyn Brodhead was bothered by the poor treatment the Dutch had received in the written histories of colonial America. In these histories, there was one “vulgar error” in particular that drew his ire. This was, he said, the “absurd use […]
Michael J Douma 