In 1903, The Ladies’ Home Journal, a magazine familiar to Americans across the nation, made a declaration that recapitulated over forty years of historical revision. The editor of the Journal, Edward Bok, professed with triumphant conviction that Holland was the true mother country of the United States^[1].

This proclamation did not seem so peculiar to readers in the late nineteenth century. The era had seen a sweeping revolution in thought that reshaped the interpretation of America’s social, ethnic and cultural origins. A series of significant developments, such as mounting immigration rates and the Centennial Celebration of the United States in 1876^[2], compelled Americans to systematically redefine their own history^[3]. Perceiving the ethnic diversity of these newcomers as a threat, worried authors responded by searching for a common, unifying, and, above all, American identity.  Inspired by colonial theme of the recent centennial, writers of the period readily engaged with the Dutch, New York City’s earliest settlers. Like Bok, many of these scholars ultimately came to the conclusion that America’s genuine forefathers were Dutch, rather than English.  Reacting to the purported ethnic challenge of immigration, some Americans endorsed the primacy of Dutch influence in order to preserve what they saw as the cultural integrity of the nation.^[4] Others sincerely believed that the Dutch had been dealt an unfair blow, and that the English claim to a so-called “‘historical monopoly’”^[5] over the early days of United States ran contrary to reality. The ascent of Holland to national prominence grew out of this era of anxiety and recollection, offsetting the supposed consequences of diversity by reassuring Americans of their inherently noble, Dutch past. This zealous desire to cast the Netherlands as the fount of the American ideals and values came to be known as “Holland Mania”.^[6] 

In 1909, a mere six years after Bok’s declaration, both residents and tourists joyfully poured into the streets of New York City in order to commemorate the achievements of two intrepid men. In this atmosphere of urban modernization and industrialization, the Hudson-Fulton Celebration drew city-goers back to the past, recalling in them the legacy of New York’s cultural and global significance.^[7] How ironic that such a retrospective celebration would occur in the midst of this transformative era of history, when the questions of America’s true character were relegated to hurried speculation and the frenetic research of revisionists with a Dutch agenda.^[8] Still, it is much more likely that such a historic and public event pointed to something quite different than mere coincidence. It is impossible to understand Hudson-Fulton and the implications of Holland Mania as two separate outgrowths of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. To arrive at a true appreciation of the Celebration is to confront the era of historical reinterpretation and cultural readjustment that surrounded its festivities.

The Hudson-Fulton Celebration developed in an era of cultural transition. Though undoubtedly rooted in ethnic insecurity and historical nostalgia, America’s curious adoption of Holland as her national mother has its earliest beginnings in the latent resentment of Great Britain.  Ever since the United States had severed ties with its colonial adversary, the fledgling but liberated country had strived to find an identity “distinctive from, and yet equal to British culture”.^[9] This concern blossomed into a fascination with architecture, music and art that attempted to deprive America of her overtly British connection, substituting as many motifs and architectural surrogates as possible in the hopes of burying the reality of her history.^[10] In their stubborn search for uniqueness, Americans found resonance with a tiny nation perched on the edge of Northern Europe.  The state of Holland, with its republican government, amiable disposition and history of financial support, seemed to be the most plausible source of American culture^[11]. For Americans at the turn of the century, the Dutch appeared to be precursors, archetypes whose emulation offered the tantalizing promise of success.  The readily made comparison provided optimism for a country devastated by the effects of the Civil War, eager to enter into the twentieth century with renewed confidence. The parallels between the two democracies “seemed to foretell a dazzling future for the United States”who dreamed, like Holland had in theseventeenth century, of soaring toward economic prosperity. In this dramatic climate the obsession with Holland and the preoccupation with her possible influences on American culture and nationhood were born.

What followed this overt comparison was the deliberate disposal of conventional understandings of American history. Edward Bok’s delighted publication in the 1903 issue of The Ladies’ Home Journal was not the result of a single individual’s conjecture.  In fact, his argument followed several decades of revisionist scholarship. In the late nineteenth century, historians like Bok had scrambled to find “evidences of Dutch heritage among the founding fathers and mothers of the United States” in order to provide a basis upon which to construct a sound “argument for the country’s essential Dutchness”^[13].  Scholars maintained that America’s national heroes were not only aware of their Dutch heritage, but had also applied the fundamentals of Holland’s progressive society in the formation of their own. Bok’s contention that America’s forebears had borrowed principles such as “free public education, freedom of religious choice, freedom of the press, and the secret ballot”^[14] from the Dutch found more than a sympathetic reception. The simple presence of these institutions in the American political and social system seemed to confirm his allegations.  

Earlier historians had been just as amenable to this revision of America’s origins as The Ladies’ Home Journal’s controversial editor. Throughout the late nineteenth century, they had made convincing arguments about the similarity of Holland’s quarrel with Spain and America’s war with England^[15], Dutch prefigurations of American institutions^[16], the democratic character of Holland and the Founding Fathers’ high regard for the Dutch Republic^[17].  Astonishingly, women, who were often excluded from the world of writing, still managed to make a lasting contribution to this drastic reinterpretation of history. Some had been able to preserve their family heirlooms, while others chronicled oral traditions gleaned from their exclusive Dutch upbringing and heritage^[18]. Their efforts and attention to posterity did not go unnoticed, demonstrating that even the domestic sphere of society was capable of reinforcing the intense desire to venerate Holland.  Suddenly it seemed as though there was nothing truly American about America.

Such philosophical deliberation of history soon crept into the more mainstream quarters of American culture. The historians’ insinuation of the America-Dutch parallel, no longer confined to the discourse of intellectuals, slipped into the general consciousness and invaded almost every aspect of daily life^[19]. All facets of society in the era of the Hudson-Fulton Celebration, from home decoration to political oration, were subject to the reinvigorated power of Dutch influence. Public interest in the bygone and romanticized Hollanders of historical lore skyrocketed.  Families paid exorbitant genealogical fees in order to investigate their possible Dutch origins^[20].  Men and women frequented lectures concerning Dutch lifestyle^[21], decorated their homes with Dutch trinkets and furniture^[22] and attended costume parties and dinners with hackneyed Dutch themes^[23]. Needless to say, fashion was affected; “boudoir caps,” or bits of lace made to resemble the traditional garb of Dutch women, appeared in shops and on heads across the nation^[24]. Copies of Washington Irving’s The Legend of Sleepy Hallow and Rip Van Winkle became instant bestsellers all over again^[25], and more contemporary literature began to overemphasize “Old Dutch New York roots”^[26], blending regional history with fictional embellishment. 

Holland Mania also ushered in an age characterized by a great “colonial revival”, or the resurgent interest in colonial Dutch architecture.  From about 1880 to 1920, churches, houses and urban buildings constructed in the Flemish style were considered the paragons of elegance and charm.^[27] Windmills, wholly impractical structures, rapidly regained popularity and began to appear around the periphery of cities, recalling a “picturesque ideal most often associated with Holland”.^[28] The commercial arena was likewise affected. Companies attempted to capitalize on the new appeal of Dutch language, changing the names of their merchandise in accordance with Germanic orthography in order to attract more customers.^[29] Consumers cannot help but remember the famous example of a painting manufacturer’s use of an eye-catching, Dutch mascot for its product. The creation of Dutch Boy Paint arose from the realization that Americans associated painting almost entirely with the Netherlands.^[30] The stereotypical image of a young Hollander with blonde hair and cap has come to epitomize American commercial strategy at its best and at its worst. The sale of postcards, sewing machines, cleansers, cigars relied upon similar representations of the Dutch, contributing to the general exploitation of ethnicity that shaped the fictitious myth of Holland.^[31] The ubiquitous use of Dutch imagery, along with architecture’s ability to conjure images of port cities and Flemish countryside, “compounded the effects of Holland Mania”^[32] and heightened the force of its impact in New York and across the nation.

Dutch art also became increasingly attractive to American sensibilities, and later played an important role in the Hudson-Fulton Celebration.  After the Civil War had finally ended, wealthy Americans began to travel to the Netherlands “with increasing frequency and became familiar with the historic, cultural, and fine-arts traditions of their ancestral homelands”^[33].  These sentimental vacationers may have left home with the intention of confirming genealogical suspicions, but they departed from Dutch shores with a lasting impression of their native soil’s artistic mastery.^[34] Their annual excursions continued well into the twentieth century, and it was not long until these affluent Americans began to carry stories, knickknacks and various artworks back to the United States. Well-chronicled purchases reveal that collectors who traveled to Europe not only enthusiastically searched for certain pieces, but also displayed an instinctive appreciation for the totality of Dutch Art.^[35] Europeans came to fear customers like the opulent John Pierpont Morgan, deploring the loss of seminal works of art to America’s “voracious appetite for Dutch masters”.^[36]

Back in New York, Dutch art was all the rage, much like anything else that had its origins in Holland. With socialites and art collectors populating their homes with newly acquired masterpieces, it was inevitable that their magnificent purchaseswould play a role in the Hudson-Fulton Celebration, Manhattan’s most lavish and well-advertised public commemoration. Its organizers were not foolish men, nor did the preparation of festivities operate in a cultural vacuum. It is clear that the Celebration’s directors were prepared to take full advantage of both America’s most recent fascination and the discerning artistic taste of New York’s social elite. In fact, seven years before the celebration was to take place, talks of assembling a remarkable collection of Dutch Masters had already been initiated.^[37] The seriousness of the event’s intention to sponsor this exhibition was made manifest in the commissioners’ establishment of the appropriately entitled Committee on Art Exhibits.^[38] Certainly such an extraordinary sight would help arouse both civic virtue and pride by harnessing the power of the preexisting phenomenon of Holland Mania.^[39]

About one hundred and fifty works of art were brought together at the Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art at the commencement of the Hudson-Fulton Celebration.^[40]  Commentators and observers responded with shock and amazement over “the very remarkable exhibition of Dutch art which has been gathered... [It] is a somewhat astonishing revelation of America’s recently acquired wealth of masterpieces”.^[41] The collection of featured pieces, donated by individuals like J.P. Morgan and H.C. Frick, were acclaimed as an unprecedented compilation of artistic composition.^[42] From Rembrandt to Hals, Vermeer to De Hooch, almost every Master was equally represented at this sumptuous gala, transplanted from their homes in the private residences of Dutch collectors to the metropolis that their sons helped establish.^[43] The praise and publicity that the event attracted reemphasized both the breadth of America’s fascination with the Dutch and the tremendous significance of the Hudson-Fulton Celebration in New York City.

Encompassing an era of colonial allure and revisionist history, Holland Mania stemmed from the insecurities of a nation beleaguered by immigration and apprehensive about its cultural identity. The impulse to admire Holland was the result of these contingencies, as well as technological advances in photography, architecture and mass marketing.^[44] By clinging to this idea of Dutch influence, Americans were able to quell their fears by relating their aspirations with the historical success of another well-established nation.  The consequence was nothing less than the alteration of every facet of American life, from fashion to literature, art, business, travel and architecture. In some ways the Hudson-Fulton Celebration of 1909 embodied this overriding fixation with the Dutch. After all, Henry Hudson’s voyage had been shrewdly financed by Holland in the hopes of commercial success, and had literally initiated the story of New York.^[45] Fulton had brought the world together with his study of steam navigation, ensuring that the mere expanse of sea would never again stand in the way of the global community.^[46]The ingenuity of these notable figures, coupled with the nineteenth century’s association of the Dutch with the ideals of liberty and equality, allowed New York to feel a singular sense of pride and accomplishment. 

The obsession with the Dutch and the history of New York may have provided the context for the Hudson-Fulton Celebration, but to pinpoint Holland Mania at one moment and in one place would overlook the far-reaching quality of its impression upon American culture. At the time that the City gathered together to celebrate its heroes, it appeared as though the Dutch, and, by extension, New York, had bequeathed the entirety of civilization to the world.  Interestingly enough, some New Yorkers would have their citizens believe just that.

Endnotes