Clearly, measuring the social integration of early modern migrants is a complex task. First, people could integrate into the local community in one arena of life while maintaining a distinct identity in another. Second, the significance of decisions that might indicate social integration (like becoming a citizen) depended on local circumstances. Third, understanding patterns that indicate the re-creation or transformation of social networks requires that we carefully consider the categories we use. We cannot research Dutch migrants with the assumption that they shared either a preexisting autochthonous “Netherlandish” or “Dutch” identity or that they developed such an identity as result of shared experiences. However, our examination of the social profiles of the migrants and their integration into host communities has revealed three important conclusions, contributing to a deeper understanding of these migrations.
First, even in the most hostile environments, Dutch migrants were never simply cowering victims moving from hardship to hardship. They maintained vibrant economic lives, spoke up for themselves, built friendships among themselves and with their hosts, built and rebuilt social networks depending on local circumstances, nourished local alliances, adapted to local conditions, and sustained stable lives alongside their new neighbors. The strategies by which they achieved this depended not only on local conditions but also on their own demographic profiles.
Second, geographical distance from the Netherlands plays a key role in understanding the vastly different experiences of Dutch Reformed living in the Empire. Close proximity meant more linguistic and cultural similarities between newcomers and their hosts. It meant that these new relationships were built on stronger preexisting regional connections and identities. Moving farther afield meant that migrants were more linguistically and culturally distinct from their hosts and often had to make more radical compromises to manage their stay abroad, whether that be worshipping underground or building a community from scratch. Moving farther away also meant greater isolation and resultant limitations, like fear of expulsion in Cologne or lack of access to markets in Frankenthal. But the relative isolation in Cologne and Frankenthal also brought greater freedom to express identities within their Dutch Reformed community than in places like Aachen or Wesel, where confessional, cultural, or linguistic boundaries were blurrier.
Third, while scholars have often treated all Dutch migrants equally as “refugees,” such generalizations can no longer be maintained. Of all the locations in our study, Wesel was most unambiguously a “refugee community.” The city roughly doubled in size as forced migrants fled the violence and warfare taking place across the Netherlands. These refugees moved just across the border, hoping to return home when conditions allowed and willing to compromise until that happened. Migrants in the small towns of Cleves and in Aachen were more difficult to distinguish from their hosts. Some fled as refugees, but the German-Dutch distinction hardly makes sense in describing the relationships that developed there. Frankfurt and Cologne operated much more as expatriate communities formed around wealthy merchants and businessmen with deep ties to the commercial metropolis of Antwerp. They worshipped in underground or semiunderground churches, but their economic utility to their host city provided them a degree of protection, even in the face of hostility from confessional adversaries or complaints from economic competitors. Finally, Frankenthal was a kind of utopian colony of migrants seeking to build a Dutch Reformed settlement from scratch in the wilderness, only to find that it lacked sufficient “pull factors” to achieve that dream. Here, Netherlanders developed the most distinctly Dutch identity and the most overtly Reformed one. Of course, the migrants of these diverse communities shared a commitment to the Reformed faith, regardless of whether they worshipped openly. In the following chapter, we will explore just how they lived and practiced their faith.