On November 16 we celebrate “Dutch-American Heritage Day." A joint resolution sponsored by congressman Guy Vander Jagt, passed by both the House and Senate, was signed into law by president George Herbert Walker Bush on November 13, 1991.
On November 16, 1776, the Netherlands became the first country to formally recognize the United States of America as an independent nation. On that day, the governor of Sint Eustasius ordered the island’s cannons to be fired in response to the 13-gun salute from the Andrew Doria as it sailed into the harbor of the Dutch island. Only four months before, the United States declared its independence from Great Britain. Captain Isaiah Robinson sailed the Andrew Doria down the Delaware River on 17 October 1776, for a voyage to the West Indies to obtain a cargo of munitions and military supplies at the Dutch Island of Sint Eustatius. The Andrew Doria also carried a copy of the Declaration of Independence to the island. This so-called “first salute” was widely reported in the United States at the time and is recorded as the first salute to the American flag by a foreign nation.
With their old memories of establishing New Amsterdam in 1609, and the subsequent loss of sovereignty when Peter Stuyvesant surrendered it to the British in 1664, the Dutch were ready to salute American independence from the British when it was declared in 1776. The British, took offense to the “first salute” and disagreed with Sint Eustasius by supplying arms to the American forces. They launched an attack on Sint Eustasius in 1781 (5 years later) and took control of the island. It was then conquered by the French, allies of the Dutch, and regained by the Netherlands in 1784. During the American Revolutionary War,(1775-1783), John Adams became the first US ambassador to the Netherlands on April 19, 1782. He knew that Dutch bankers held the best hope for stabilizing the US economy. On May 17, 1782, John Adams secured a loan of 5 million guilders from Amsterdam banking firms.
The U.S. partnership with the Netherlands is one of its oldest continuous relationships and dates back to the American Revolution. On October 11, 1614 (over 400 years ago) the first trade free trade agreement between the Netherlands, and what is now the United States, was signed and trade and economic ties between the two nations began. We are proud of this relationship and the fundamental goal of the Dutch American Chamber is to maintain and strengthen Dutch-American ties in every possible way. Today, Dutch businesses employ over 800,000 workers in the United States and the Netherlands is historically the third largest investor in the United States. US businesses, are for many years, the largest foreign investors in the Netherlands.
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