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Publication Date: May 28th, 2025
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Most Americans know the Dutch only through the phrase “going Dutch”— everyone pays their own way. But that modest rule reflects something deeper: Dutch civilization, at its height, ran on fairness, independence, and the radical idea that commerce and tolerance could reinforce one another.
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In the 1600s, Dutch trading posts like New Amsterdam (New York), Cape Town, Batavia (Jakarta), Sydney, and Amsterdam became some of the richest and most diverse cities on Earth. Diversity (pluralism) wasn’t a burden. It was a business model.
Russell Shorto’s The Island at the Center of the World reminds us that New York was not born of Puritan zeal but Dutch pragmatism. The Dutch granted religious minorities freedom to worship, gave women property rights, and built decentralized institutions open to change.
Their legal culture emphasized individual agency over group identity—rare in a Europe still ruled by hierarchy and inherited status. What mattered was whether someone could trade, own, and contribute.
That wealth also fueled one of history’s great cultural flowerings. Dutch painting celebrated light, labor, and land. Hudson later birthed the Hudson River School, echoing those themes. Even Hudson’s grid layout, unusually rational for a small town, reflects Dutch civic design: orderly, compact, efficient.
But somewhere along the way, Hudson forgot. It turned inward, cautious, nostalgic. The commercial and civic ambition that once made it shine faded.
Manhattan did not forget...
It’s time to remember. Local leaders, with a wisely appointed Planning Board, can incentivize three-story multi-family homes, modern echoes of the Dutch 'grachtenpanden', narrow canal houses adapted from Roman ideals. They proved that density, beauty, and productivity could coexist. Hudson must think the same way.
It must also do more to welcome and empower entrepreneurs, especially immigrants and new arrivals. More trade. More difference. More housing. These were Dutch ideas. And American ones. Reclaiming them could unlock Hudson’s next chapter (and some waffles).
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Last edited/updated:
May 26th, 2025.
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