Wesel

Dutch migrants to Wesel were also more distinct demographically from the local population than the migrants to Aachen or nearby towns in Cleves. We have identified 880 Reformed Netherlanders in Wesel in the second half of the sixteenth century. Some 35 percent of those whose origin is known came from Brabant (40 percent of whom came from Antwerp) while 21 percent came from Flanders. Fifteen percent came from neighboring Guelders. Significant numbers came from Zeeland, Limburg, and Overijssel as well. Basically, every region of the Low Countries was represented in Wesel. This diversity encouraged the Dutch Reformed consistory there to assign elders to supervise coreligionists according to the province (natie, or “nation”) of their origin, rather than the more common Reformed practice of dividing up elders by neighborhood. Initially, there were four “nations”—Brabant, Flanders, Holland (which included migrants from Zeeland and Utrecht), and Guelders (which included migrants from Drenthe and Friesland).5 Spohnholz, Tactics of Toleration, 76. In 1577 and again in 1581 these “nations” were reorganized as the demographics of the community changed to include fewer Netherlanders and more Reformed Protestants from nearby locations lands of the Empire.6 In 1577, the nation of Guelders became the nation of Guelders and Jülich. In 1581, the nations of Flanders and Holland merged, and a new nation was created for Jülich and Cleves. EKAW Gefach 72,2 fols. 62v, 217r. By 1586, these regional organizations had been replaced by city districts.

In accordance with their diverse origins, the Dutch Reformed migrants in Wesel spoke a diverse array of dialects. They included the Low Franconian dialects of sixteenth-century Dutch that were mutually comprehensible but noticeably distinct, including Flemish (and its relative Zeeuws), Brabantic, Hollandic, and Limburgic, but also the Lower Saxon dialects of German spoken in Overijssel, Drenthe, and parts of Guelders and Groningen.7 In printed publications, Brabants Dutch and High German were both spreading in the sixteenth century, though scribal and oral languages changed at different speeds and sometimes in different directions. Likely the most important touchstone that they shared in the early years was a shared antipathy for both Catholicism and the Habsburg government in Brussels. But there is little reason to think that most migrants from the Low Countries arriving in Wesel imagined themselves as a single people, despite William of Orange’s attempts to present them as such in the propaganda produced by Wesel’s printing presses.8 See, for example, Orange, De verantwoordinge. For printing in Wesel, see chapter 5.

While Dutch migrants to Wesel clearly stood apart from their hosts, the ethnic and linguistic boundaries were still blurrier than any simple German-Dutch distinction recognizes. In Wesel, the local dialect of Kleverlands, as noted earlier, was more closely related to Brabantine Dutch than dialects of German used further south and east. As a member of the Hanseatic League, many Weselers also communicated regularly in Middle Low German, the trade language of the league used by merchants from Deventer to Riga (in present-day Latvia). While High German was beginning to influence Wesel’s printed language, fluid and uneven linguistic mixing in Wesel remained common in all parts of society, both formal and informal.9 Tervooren, “Sprache und Sprachen,” 30–38. The shift toward High German in the region was not linear but depended on political and economic developments relative to the Dutch Republic and central German lands. This change took place faster in Catholic areas than Protestant areas. Meanwhile, multilingualism remained common among social elites. Mihm, “Rheinmaasländische Sprachgeschichte,” 146–48. As a result, the dialects spoken by migrants from the Low Countries to Wesel were largely comprehensible to locals and vice versa. There was enough of a difference that one married Dutch couple explained that they were returning to Leiden in August 1581 because “they could not understand the German language [de Duytsche sprake] of our church’s ministers.”10 EKAW Gefach 72, 2 fol. 240v. The adjective Duytsche could refer to a range of Germanic tongues and does not reflect the modern distinction between German and Dutch. But the fact that they were the only Netherlanders to ever make this claim suggests that this was not a common problem. Mutual comprehensibility in Wesel made it realistic for city officials to require Dutch-speaking migrants to attend the local church and difficult for migrants unsatisfied with this arrangement to argue that they should hold separate services because of language differences (as happened in Frankfurt). Such social interactions also meant that, over time, migrants and hosts influenced one another’s language.11 Hassall, “Dialect Focusing and Language Transfer.” Thus migrants to Wesel were relatively similar to locals even though, as a group, they were more diverse than migrants to neighboring towns in Cleves or Aachen.

In terms of wealth and status, Dutch migrants to Wesel looked a lot like residents of Wesel, a river town dominated by regional merchants and whose economy depended on the small-scale production of goods. The dominant industries were wool weaving, furriery, and armor making; the city also had an assortment of other artisans and craftsmen common in early modern cities. Roughly 43 percent of the Dutch-speaking migrants to Wesel were also artisans and craftsmen. However, the kinds of work they did proved to be different. Most artisans, craftsmen, and merchants who came to Wesel were involved in textile production, especially the so-called new draperies, lighter and mixed cloths popular among northern Renaissance elites.12 These numbers are slightly different than those presented in Spohnholz, Tactics of Toleration, 186. The difference reflects additions of new prosopographical data added to the database since that original project and the fact that earlier numbers included Lutheran and Anabaptist migrants from the Netherlands, whom we excluded for this project. On the “new draperies” see Coleman, “An Innovation and its Diffusion.” The newcomers established factories in Wesel, producing silk-velvet blends, silk-wool blends, cords, edgings, belts, buttons, and other similar products. Taxes collected on per-unit production of cloth goods skyrocketed during Wesel’s time as a refugee center.13 Spohnholz, Tactics of Toleration, 186–87.

Merchants made up 24 percent of the Dutch Reformed population in Wesel—about twice the percentage in the local population. In Wesel, though, the most important trade was in locally produced wool, Rhenish wine, and lumber brought in on flat-bottomed barges along the Lippe River from further inland and transferred to river boats at the city’s docks for shipment down the Rhine to the Rhine-Maas-Scheldt Delta.14 Münker, Die Weseler Schiffahrt, 40–41. Wesel’s traders returned with herring and salt for local and further inland distribution. By contrast, Dutch merchants in Wesel mostly traded in higher value, locally produced “new draperies” at factories primarily owned by the merchants themselves. These luxury fabrics were intended for distant markets in Italy, England, or elsewhere. Meanwhile, educated professionals—like ministers, schoolteachers, doctors, lawyers, and printers—made up another 28 percent of the Reformed migrants—roughly the same percentage as Wesel’s population. Thus, Netherlanders fleeing to Wesel were not dramatically wealthier than the local population, but they did stand out. They brought new skills, new trade connections, and new sources of local revenue, and their numbers were large enough that their social and economic impacts were dramatic.

In several ways, then, Wesel’s Dutch Reformed migrants more clearly constituted a refugee community than did the immigrants from the Low Countries moving to other areas in our study. Because they had a separate consistory, education, and system of poor relief, they also had some clear institutional markers that separated them from their hosts. Netherlanders in Wesel faced higher degrees of poverty as well. Their arrival in this river town was more driven by push factors (e.g., fleeing persecution) than pull factors (e.g., following economic opportunities or family connections). Indeed, there was little drawing them to Wesel except its convenient location along the Rhine River—it was the closest major settlement upriver from Habsburg territory—and the willingness of its Protestant-dominated city government to welcome them.