The celebration riveted the nation. The government spent years in planning, the news media tracked every development, and residents flocked to the events in droves.
The reason for all the hoopla was the 400th anniversary of Henry Hudson’s arrival in New York Harbor, which was marked with a week of events around the city that concluded in Lower Manhattan on Sunday. But the place where this anniversary is being celebrated so fiercely is the Netherlands, the small, waterlogged European nation of 17 million people 3,650 miles away.
The Dutch organized and paid for the week’s events, running up a tab of about $10 million. The Dutch media dispatched about 50 reporters to New York, with a major television station running nightly half-hour updates on the proceedings during prime time. And thousands of Dutch citizens crossed the Atlantic to take part, including Crown Prince Willem-Alexander, who declared New York the greatest city in the world.
But aside from perhaps hearing cannon fire, spotting the stately profiles of the Dutch sailing vessels shipped across the Atlantic for the occasion, or bumping into a gang of blond, blue-eyed sailors in Brooklyn Heights, New Yorkers, a busy bunch and long accustomed to spectacle, basically went about life as usual.
“It’s bigger there than over here,” said Babette Bullens, 38, who lives near Holland’s border with Belgium and was making her first trip to New York. “If you talk to New Yorkers, they don’t know what’s happening. It’s very disappointing,” she said in Battery Park on Sunday.
The reason for the Dutch interest, of course, is that the arrival of Hudson’s ship, the Half Moon, led to the founding of the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam. Hudson was British, but his financial backer was the Dutch East India Company. (“Who paid for the voyage,” the crown prince said, “really counts.”)
Dutch claims to the city ended nearly 350 years ago, when control was formally transferred to the British, yet they openly carry a lingering attachment, like that of a spurned romantic.
Jos Rozenburg, a commander in the Royal Netherlands Navy, said the week was a reminder of the country’s once-mighty past. “For us it was the golden age when the Dutch were all over the world,” he said. “It’s something we look back on with great fondness.”
“In a way, it’s refreshing,” said Russell Shorto, the author of “The Island at the Center of the World,” which examines Dutch influence on the development of New York. “The Dutch are a really self-effacing people.”
“The most Dutch thing about the Dutch contributions through history is how little you notice them, because they don’t promote themselves,” said Mr. Shorto, who lives in Amsterdam.
Stephen Chaffee, 54, an American who lives in Holland, came to New York with his wife, Josje, 51, who is Dutch. “She has a tremendous attachment to the idea that Holland contributed to American culture,” Mr. Chaffee said, as the Royal Marine Band played nearby. “I’m beginning to realize how important that is.”
Of course, the celebration has not gone unnoticed in the city. NYC & Company, the city’s tourism organization, has been heavily promoting it for months. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg stood alongside the crown prince at an opening ceremony on the Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum on Tuesday.
“It was really an extraordinary week,” said Angela Vona, 66, of Manhattan, who attended as many of the activities as she could. “I talk about this to all of my friends and they don’t care.”
That was the case with many of the New Yorkers who stumbled on the celebration’s activities. “It’s just another event,” said Ralph Montuoro, 67, of Queens, getting off his bicycle to negotiate the mostly Dutch crowd in Battery Park on Sunday. “We didn’t even know about it.”
And even if some Dutch were disappointed by the level of interest, most went out of their way to say they understood. “New Yorkers have a lot going on here,” said Vivi van Leeuwen, 34, of Breda. “New York is the capital of the world, and the Dutch are proud of their history here and don’t mind sharing that pride.”![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/blogger_img_proxy/AEn0k_uUvp4kkb-_biQ5n3dEzxeX_OWCbQBZMABKaXVgDT3pAErlc6N7vA0OVagEEp14oXkkNfk-5Y_txGo7hXpmKKCKVK6lI5YxhzpFpfJWDY-o057V40BDVjoAwI87CH_7wxoku0aKhUmPMaAmfA6BzAAh=s0-d)
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