Voices from New Netherlands: Unsealing the Vrooman Letters

Wed, Jun 12 - Wed, Jun 12  2024

Brooklyn Public Library, 128 Pierrepont St., Brooklyn, NY

The Center for Brooklyn History welcomes Dutch historian Frans Blom for “Voices from New Netherlands: Unsealing the Vrooman Letters”, a free program on the history of Dutch migrants newly settled in the colony of New Netherlands.

Penned in the mid-1600 in what was then New Netherlands, the Vroomans-family wrote home to share the struggles, concerns, and minutiae of their daily lives. The letters were intercepted at sea by the British and sat unopened for centuries in the Tower of London and then the British National Archives. They were rediscovered in the late 20th century by Dutch historians and tell  wealth of information about the personal experiences and emotional reality of ordinary Dutch migrants.

Details and Registration here. 

New Netherlands

The Dutch scholar Frans R.E. Blom had an experience that every historian dreams of. He was the first to open and read sealed documents of historic significance that were centuries old – in his case letters written by Dutch migrants newly settled in the colony of New Netherlands. The letters, written by members of the Vrooman family, are part of a vast collection known as The Prize Papers.

The Vroomans wrote home to share the struggles, concerns, and minutiae of their daily lives. After the letters were intercepted at sea by the British, they sat unopened for centuries in the Tower of London and then the British National Archives. They hold a wealth of information about the personal experiences and emotional reality of ordinary Dutch migrants, and include the rare voice of a woman, Geetruijt, or Gertrude, Weckmans-Vrooman.

As New York City acknowledges the 400 years since the Dutch first set foot on this land, join Blom for an illustrated exploration of letters that are as ordinary as they are remarkable. He brings to light the experiences of one family caught within the global entanglements of the early modern world.

The Prize Papers

The Prize Papers are a trove of 40,000 commercial and private Dutch letters that never reached their destinations. They were intercepted at sea and brought as intelligence information to England during the Anglo-Dutch sea wars of the 17th and 18th centuries. Stored in the British National Archives and forgotten for centuries, they were rediscovered in the late 20th century by Dutch historians.

The Prize Papers were collected as a result of the early modern naval practice of prize-taking: capturing ships of hostile powers and confiscating the cargo. This practice was at its height during the 17th and 18th centuries. The resulting collection provides fascinating insights into the formative period of European colonial expansion. The collection contains documents from more than 35,000 captured ships, held in over 4,000 boxes and 71 printed volumes, and include at least 160,000 undelivered letters intercepted on their way across the seas, many of which remain unopened to this day.

About Frans Blom

Frans R.E. Blom is an expert of Historical Literature and Dutch Literary Heritage. At the University of Amsterdam, his teaching and research centers on Amsterdam as a creative city in its global context, with a focus on migration stories. In April 2024, his latest book on Historical Literature and post-war Migration was released in the Netherlands, titled Het land achter de zee. Migranten na de Holocaust in detentiekampen op Cyprus – de reis van Emile Pimentel (The Land Beyond the Sea: Post-Holocaust Migrants in Detention Camps in Cyprus. The Journey of Emil Pimentel). Blom has a special love for the city’s international Grand Theatre, or Schouwburg. He is general editor of the ONSTAGE online datasystem for Theatre in Amsterdam from Golden Age to the present, and writes about the A’dam theatre as an international cultural enterprise in his well-received 2021 book, Podium van Europa. Creativiteit en ondernemen in de Amsterdamse Schouwburg van de zeventiende eeuw  or Stage of Europe: Creativity and Entrepreneurship in the Amsterdam Theater of the Seventeenth Century. Blom also devotes many of his works and days to multidisciplinary studies of Dutch Cultural History, as in the recent exhibition Directed by: Rembrandt. Rembrandt and the World of Theatre at the Rembrandt House Museum in Amsterdam.