Anabaptist settler colonialism

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Historical marker for the Northkill Amish Settlement, an 18th-century Amish settlement destroyed by Lenape and Shawnee people who resented encroachment on their lands. Northkill Amish.jpg
Historical marker for the Northkill Amish Settlement, an 18th-century Amish settlement destroyed by Lenape and Shawnee people who resented encroachment on their lands.

Anabaptists, including the Amish, Hutterites, and Mennonites, have played a role in settler colonialism since the 1700s, in regions such as Eastern Europe, North America, and Latin America. The Russian Mennonites were invited to Novorossiya (what is now Southern Ukraine and Russia) by Catherine the Great following the Russo-Crimean Wars that resulted in the annexation of the Crimean Khanate; Mennonites settled on and farmed land that had been or would be ethnically cleansed of the Indigenous Crimean Tatar and Nogai populations. In the United States, Amish people, Hutterites, and Mennonites settled and farmed land after American Indian populations were displaced. In Canada, Hutterite and Mennonite settlers were incentivized to settle and cultivate farmland on the western Prairies following the displacement of Cree and Métis peoples, part of state-supported efforts to increase the white population. Across Latin America, Mennonite colonization has been seen as a driver of environmental damage, notably deforestation of the Amazon rainforest through land clearance for agriculture. [1] [2] [3] While Mennonite communities are often called "colonies", some Mennonite communities in Africa avoid the term due to the legacy of European colonialism. [4] In the 21st century, some Mennonites have begun to reckon with the Mennonite legacy of settler colonialism and its relationship with Mennonite pacifism as a historic peace church. [5]

Contents

About

There have never been Anabaptist states, but Anabaptists have participated in surrogate colonialism. While the majority of Anabaptists worldwide are non-white in the 21st century, historically the Amish, Hutterites, and Mennonites were overwhelmingly white people of European descent for several centuries. While the Amish and Hutterites are still mostly white, most Mennonites are not. According to Professor John Eicher, author of Exiled Among Nations: German and Mennonite Mythologies in a Transnational Age, Mennonites "routinely sought out states with weak or amorphous borders where they could establish agrarian communities that were relatively free from state control", aiding in nation-states' attempts to colonize land and displace Indigenous peoples. On three continents within the span of 150 years, Eicher writes, Mennonites "sought indigenous lands confiscated by state authorities" with the aim of clearing and cultivating the land, aiding in government-supported settlement schemes. [6] In the 21st century, scholars, historians, and Anabaptists themselves have begun to research and debate the Anabaptist role in settler colonialism, racism, antisemitism, and white supremacy, a legacy that may be perceived as at odds with the traditional Anabaptist dedication to pacifism. [7] [8]

Africa

While many Mennonite communities have traditionally been called "colonies", Mexican Old Order Mennonite families who have immigrated to Angola eschew the word "colony" due to the violent legacy of Portuguese colonialism in Africa. As part of a deal with a diamond mining corporation, the Mennonites have cleared and farmed almost 2,000 acres of land. [4]

Europe

Following the Russo-Crimean Wars, Catherine the Great invited German and Vistula delta Mennonites to settle in what is now Southern Ukraine. These supposedly "empty lands" were inhabited by Tatars. [9] Mennonites of the Molotschna colony arrived in 1803 and lived in close proximity to the Nogais, as both Mennonites and Nogais were involved in sheepherding. The Nogais were a semi-nomadic Tatar Muslim ethnic group. The Nogais resented the Mennonite settlers and relations between the two groups were often mutually strained. Conflicts sometimes arose because the Mennonites objected to the Nogai practice of allowing cattle to freely roam and graze. As Christians, the Mennonites often held Islamophobic views and perceived Muslims as backwards nonbelievers. [10] Mennonites and Nogais lived in close proximity until 1860, when Nogais departed from the region. Both landless and landed Mennonites had extensive share-pasturing contracts with Nogais, a practice that disadvantaged and harmed the Nogai economy and society. The Nogai exodus was caused by the practice of landless Mennonites leasing large tracts of Nogai land. The departure of Nogais caused a landlessness crisis among Mennonite colonists, as the Russian government then granted land leases to Bulgarian colonists. [11] By October 1860, 35,000 Nogais had fled to Ottoman Turkey, leaving only 105 Nogais left in what is now Ukraine. [12]

North America

Canada

Mennonites of European descent first settled near what is now the Waterloo, Ontario in 1786, the traditional territory of the Attawandaron, Anishinaabeg and Haudenosaunee people on the Haldimand Tract, land that was granted in 1784 to support the Six Nations, but was instead sold to Mennonite settlers in 1805. [13]

Low German Mennonite settlers from the Russian Empire first arrived in Manitoba in the 1870s. Treaty 1, Treaty 2, and the Manitoba Act of 1870 were ostensibly crafted to protect Indigenous rights, but treaties were broken by the Canadian government, who incentivized white European immigrants to settle on "empty space" that had been recently inhabited by various Indigenous peoples. White Mennonites of European descent were granted blocks of land in Treaty 1 territory, including the East Reserve in 1874 and the West Reserve in 1875, which originally belonged to Anishinaabe and Swampy Cree people. Although these land grants and privileges allowed Mennonites and other European settlers to enjoy religious and cultural freedom, thousands of Indigenous people were displaced and killed due to these policies. [14]

Upon early Mennonite settlement in Western Canada, Indigenous peoples and Mennonite settlers also agreed to secret "handshake" treaties, as a way to signal they would "share the land and help each other out." [15] Remembered through oral tradition in Indigenous communities, these treaties were often broken and forgotten by Mennonite settler groups. [16]

In Western Canada, many Russian Mennonites settled on the Prairies. In Saskatchewan, the Canadian Mennonite Board of Colonization was established in 1922. [17] Beginning in the 1920s, Mennonites and other settler groups, also settled unceded land in British Columbia, particularly in the Fraser Valley. [18]

Mexico

Mennonites first arrived in Mexico in 1922. Mexican Mennonites descend from Canadian Mennonites who themselves were of Russian Mennonite descent. The settlement of Mennonite immigrants was supported by the Mexican government. Mennonite settlement contributed to adverse societal effects to and displacement of Indigenous and mestizo people. Plautdietsch-speaking Mennonite communities lived separately from Indigenous and mestizo Mexicans and did not try to assimilate to surrounding cultures. The settlement was shortly after the Mexican Revolution (1910-1920), during which land reform was a major political question. Mennonites came into conflict with mestizo and Indigenous Mexicans by gaining land that was already claimed. [19]

United States

The first Anabaptist settlers in North America were German and Swiss Mennonites and Amish people who settled in the Province of Pennsylvania in the 1700s. From Pennsylvania, Anabaptists then settled in other colonies and later in additional US states. [20] In some places, such as Washington and Johnson counties in Iowa, Amish people were the very first white settlers to settle on Indigenous land. Amish settlers arrived in Johnson and Washington counties in the 1840s. [21]

The first Amish settlement in North America, the Northkill Amish Settlement in Pennsylvania, was destroyed in 1757 following the Hochstetler massacre. The massacre was committed during the French and Indian War by French-allied Native Americans who resented English encroachment on their land. The settlement had been located close to the edge of the legal boundary upon which European settlers were permitted by colonial authorities to settle. [22]

From 1873 on, many Russian Mennonites settled the Great Plains on the western frontier of the United States. Mennonites settled land in Indian Territory (now Oklahoma), and in 1880 established missionary work in an attempt to convert inhabitants of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes to Christianity. A decade later, the Mennonite Brethren Church began missionary work in an attempt to convert the Comanche. [23]

Hutterites who settled in western states like South Dakota gained formerly Indigenous land through the Homestead Acts. [24] [25]

South America

Paraguay

Russian Mennonite settlers first settled Paraguay in the 1920s, fleeing persecution under Stalinism. Mennonites settled land in the Gran Chaco region, which helped the Paraguayan government reassert its territorial claims and displaced Indigenous peoples. [26]

Suriname

Mennonite settlement in Suriname has raised local concerns among Indigenous communities about colonialism and the deforestation of the Amazon rain forest. About 50 Mennonites families, mostly from Bolivia, have settled in Suriname. [27]

See also

References

  1. ↑ le Polain de Waroux Y, Neumann J, O'Driscoll A, Schreiber K (2021). "Pious pioneers: the expansion of Mennonite colonies in Latin America". Journal of Land Use Science. 16 (1): 1–17. Bibcode:2021JLUS...16....1L. doi:10.1080/1747423X.2020.1855266. ISSN   1747-423X. S2CID   230589810. Archived from the original on 2 January 2024. Retrieved 28 June 2025.
  2. ↑ Hanners SM (2016). "Promised lands: the Anabaptist immigration to Paraguay and Bolivia and its unintended consequences for the environment". The University of Miami Inter-American Law Review. 48 (2): 186–223. ISSN   0884-1756. Archived from the original on 18 December 2023. Retrieved 28 June 2025.
  3. ↑ "Mennonite colonies - new deforestation driver in the Amazon". MAAP (#112). Amazon Conservation Association. 2019. Archived from the original on 23 March 2023.
  4. 1 2 "The Mennonite Colony That Made a Deal With a Diamond Company". The New York Times . 15 June 2025. Retrieved 2025-06-28.
  5. ↑ "Echoes of Colonialism". Coalition to Dismantle the Doctrine of Discovery. 11 March 2022. Retrieved 2025-06-28. Despite their reputation as a Christian peace tradition, European Mennonites, like many white people, have tended to dwell on narratives of their own innocence and God's providence at the expense of reckoning with the histories of harms in which they are implicated.
  6. ↑ "When Mennonites were settlers". The Christian Century . Retrieved 2025-06-28.
  7. ↑ Yum, Hyejung Jessie (9 November 2020). "Unsettling the Radical Witness of Peace". Anabaptist Witness. Retrieved 2025-06-28.
  8. ↑ Wiebe, Joseph; Thackeray, Sydney (2024). "The Mennonite case for counter-sovereignty through Indigenous assimilation: Settler colonialism, self-determination and relation to place in religious identity". Studies in Religion/Sciences Religieuses. 53. Sage Journals: 113–133. doi:10.1177/00084298231165443 . Retrieved 2025-06-28.
  9. ↑ "Mennonite diaspora encounters Muslims in the Russian Empire". CanadianMennonite.org. Retrieved 2025-06-28.
  10. ↑ "A Critical Gaze: Daniel Schlatter and Mennonite-Nogai Relations". Plett Foundation. Retrieved 2025-06-28.
  11. ↑ ""On Civilizing the Nogais": Mennonite-Nogai Economic Relations, 1825-1860". Goshen College. 16 June 2000. Retrieved 2025-06-28.
  12. ↑ "Putting 'Russia' Back into Russian Mennonite History : The Crimean War, Emancipation, and the Molochna Mennonite Landlessness Crisis". Bethel . Retrieved 2025-06-28.
  13. ↑ "Indigenous Content in the Mennonite Archives of Ontario". University of Waterloo.
  14. ↑ "Mennonites, Metis and First Nations People". Mennonite Heritage Village. 6 September 2018. Retrieved 2025-06-28.
  15. ↑ John Longhurst (June 24, 2024). "'Secret treaty' of 1870s focus of new comic book". Winnipeg Free Press.
  16. ↑ John Longhurst (October 1, 2024). "Promise preserved". Anabaptist World.
  17. ↑ "Canadian Mennonite Board of Colonization". Mennonite Historical Society of Alberta. 10 August 2013. Retrieved 2025-06-28.
  18. ↑ "MC B.C. posts land acknowledgement". Canadian Mennonite Magazine.
  19. ↑ Janzen, Rebecca (13 November 2020). "Land Conflict in Mexico between Mennonite Colonies and Their Neighbors". Anabaptist Witness. Retrieved 2025-06-28.
  20. ↑ "Amish and Mennonites". Max Kade Institute for German-American Studies . Retrieved 2025-06-28.
  21. ↑ "Old Order Amish". Teaching Iowa History. Retrieved 2025-06-28.
  22. ↑ Beth L. Mark, "Our flesh and blood: A documentary history of the Jacob Hochstetler family during the French and Indian War period, 1757-1765, Elkhart, IN: Jacob Hochstetler Family Association, 2009.
  23. ↑ "Natives and Settlers: The Mennonite Invasion of Indian Territory". Bethel College . Retrieved 2025-06-28.
  24. ↑ "The Hutterites". IU Indianapolis . Retrieved 2025-07-05.
  25. ↑ "Origins of Leut". Hutterites.org. Retrieved 2025-06-05.
  26. ↑ "Mennonites helped turn Paraguay into a mega beef producer – indigenous people may pay the price". University of Florida . Retrieved 2025-06-28.
  27. ↑ "'We live off the forest': fears rise in Suriname as Mennonites look to settle". The Guardian . 15 December 2023. Retrieved 2025-07-25.
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