This work examines the contact of four large cultural groups--Indians, Dutch,
Swedes, and English--during the first century of colonization in the middle
Atlantic region, the most ethnically diverse area of colonial North America.
It explores the meaning of that contact in terms of cultural change, with
a particular emphasis on religion. Three case studies narrate
the broad interaction between two culture groups--Indians and Dutch, Swedes
and Dutch, English and Dutch--and assess the consequences of mingling, a
process that included acculturation without a fundamental loss of
cultural identity. Insights from ethnohistory, anthropology, and historical
geography inform the analysis and are used to separate intercultural activity
into phases and zones, within which different levels and types of change
are identified and measured.
Cultural mingling in New Netherland progressed with the Dutch at the center of activity and the other three groups toward the periphery. Indian and Dutch mingling proceeded through three phases: sporadic contact and cultural discovery; early colonization and sustained mingling; and intense interdependence, competition, and violence. By 1664 change was more profound for the Indians than for the Dutch. Interaction with Swedes occurred in two phases, before and after the capture of New Sweden by the Dutch in 1655. In the first period, Swedish officials protected their linguistic and religious heritage. After the conquest, the Dutch tolerated Swedish Lutheranism while oppressing Lutherans in New Netherland proper. Swedes challenged the logic of Reformed orthodoxy upon which the Dutch colony was founded. As New Englanders migrated into New Netherland after 1640, the Dutch were again forced to weigh religious orthodoxy against the apparent necessity of increased population and economic prosperity. Gradually, the Dutch conceded to English colonists more and more deviation from orthodoxy.
This comparative examination of the Dutch experience challenges the notion that New Netherland's ethnic diversity produced a tolerant spirit that progressed under the English into the prototype of modern American ethnoreligious pluralism. Dutch toleration was limited and begrudgingly granted, a triumph of necessity over principle. The English would continue to wrestle with the challenges of ethnoreligious diversity and the Americanization of all groups in the middle colonies.