New Netherland and the Dutch Origins of American Religious Liberty by Evan Haefeli

Abstract

The title of Evan Haefeli's book leads the reader to expect a discussion of the standard view of how the Dutch from the melting pot that was seventeenth-century Amsterdam brought religious tolerance to New Netherland and thus to the Middle Colonies and ultimately to the United States. But this is not the case Haefeli makes. The subject is much more nuanced.