Swierenga -- Publications. Abstract: This paper describes Dutch immigration to Argentina during the final phase of the great century of migration, and compares it with the Dutch movement to the United States. During these years, nearly 5, Dutch nationals entered the port of Buenos Aires, compared to more than , who went to the United States.
The first wave, , included many farm families sponsored by the Argentine government, but thereafter laborers and businessmen predominated. The Dutch migration to Argentina was an individual movement for labor and trade, in contrast to the North American folk migration for land and family. Protestants predominated in both migration streams, but Argentina attracted proportionally more Catholics and unchurched, and the migration lacked the clerical leadership that characterized Dutch settlements in the United States.
From to , according to incomplete Netherlands government statistics, South American destinations attracted 8, 4 percent Dutch, South Africa 10, 6 percent , and East Asia 36, 20 percent Swierenga, Table 2, A few thousand Dutch had settled in Canada by and by some 30, had immigrated to Canada Ganzevoort, 2, The first Dutch immigrants to South America went to the Brazilian state of Espirito Santo between and , where they founded the settlement of Holanda.
This colony of mainly Reformed folk from West Zeeuws-Vlaanderen in the province of Zeeland was a flash in a pan. All further immigration ceased and contacts with the homeland withered. The weak and desperate "lost colony" was only rediscovered after one hundred and ten years, in !
Swierenga, a; Buysse. Except for the pitiful Zeelanders in Holanda, Brazil attracted few Dutch until after From through over 3, Dutch emigrated there, mainly in , but the rate of return migration was high Hartland, Chilean immigration was restricted until an agreement in when their consul in The Hague signed personal contracts with a group of forty farm families Hartland, ; Vande Beek.
