Dutch Australians

Last updated

Dutch Australians
Nederlandse Australiërs
Australian Census 2011 demographic map - Australia by SLA - BCP field 1072 Dutch Total Responses.svg
Total population
381,946 (by ancestry, 2021) [1]
(1.5% of the Australian population)
66,481 (by birth, 2021)
Regions with significant populations
New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland [2]
Languages
Australian English, Dutch
Religion
Protestantism, Roman Catholicism
Related ethnic groups
Dutch people

Dutch Australians refers to Australians of Dutch ancestry. They form one of the largest groups of the Dutch diaspora outside Europe. At the 2021 census, 381,946 people nominated Dutch ancestry (whether alone or in combination with another ancestry), representing 1.5% of the Australian population. [3] At the 2021 census, there were 66,481 Australian residents who were born in the Netherlands. [3]

Contents

History

Early history

The history of the Dutch and Australia began with Captain Willem Janszoon, a Dutch seafarer, who was the first European to land on Australian soil in 1606. [4] [5]

The Dutch East Indies Company (VOC) had its headquarters in the Far East in Batavia (modern-day Jakarta) from 1619, but traded from many Asian harbours from 1602. The journey from the Netherlands to the Dutch East Indies would take more than a year by traditional route, but after the discovery of the Roaring Forties by Dutch captain Hendrick Brouwer, who established the so-called Brouwer Route in 1611 the voyage would be cut short by months, taking a trajectory along the southern latitudes of the Indian Ocean. By 1617 all VOC ships were ordered to take this route. The navigation technique of that time, known as dead reckoning, caused some ships to travel too far east so they sighted the Australian west coast, and a small number of them were wrecked there. Dirk Hartog made the first European landing of the Australian west coast with a pewter plate in 1616. Known ships wrecked off that include the Batavia , the Vergulde Dreak , the Zuytdorp and the Zeewijk . The wreck of the Batavia on Houtman Abrolhos during her maiden voyage, turned into a bloody mutiny led by Jeronimus Corneliszoon after the survivors had landed on an island and Commander Pelsaert had left to get help. On his return he court marshalled the mutineers, some were hanged. From the convicted mutineers, Wouter Loos and Jan Pelgrom the Bie were, because of their youth, put on the mainland with some provisions to fend for themselves. They became arguably the first convicts to be dumped on the mainland. The most famous Dutch seafarer to explore the Australian coasts is Abel Tasman, who was the first to circumvigate the continent in 1642–3. He established that the land was not the gigantic legendary southern continent that included the South Pole and he named it New Holland . Tasmania which Tasman had named Van Diemens Land and the Tasman Sea were eventually named after him. Most of the Australian coastline was first charted by VOC mariners, excluding the east coast and the eastern part of the south coast. The continent would be renamed "Australia" in the 19th century.[ citation needed ]

20th century

50,000 migrants arrived in 1950s Dutch Migrant 1954 MariaScholte=50000thToAustraliaPostWW2.jpg
50,000 migrants arrived in 1950s

A number of people from the Dutch East Indies (present-day Indonesia) found their way to Australia during World War II and joined Allied forces in the fight against the Japanese. The Dutch East Indies government operated from Australia during the war. Free Dutch Submarines operated out of Fremantle after the invasion of Java. The joint No. 18 and No. 120 RAAF squadrons formed at Canberra, and was a combined Dutch and Australian Squadron. It used B-25 Mitchell bombers, supplied by the Dutch Government before the war. The Netherlands East Indies Forces Intelligence Service (NEFIS) was based in Melbourne during the war.[ citation needed ]

Post-war settlers in Australia arrived as part of Australia's assisted migration program. Many arrived by sea on the MS Johan van Oldenbarnevelt, while others flew with KLM.[ citation needed ]

Demographics

Australian Census 2011 demographic map - Inner Sydney by SLA - BCP field 1072 Dutch Total Responses.svg

At the 2021 census, 381,946 people nominated Dutch ancestry (whether alone or in combination with another ancestry), representing 1.5% of the Australian population. [3] At the 2021 census, there were 66,481 Australian residents who were born in the Netherlands. [3]

Notable Dutch Australians

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Abel Tasman</span> Dutch seafarer, explorer and merchant (1603–1659)

Abel Janszoon Tasman was a Dutch seafarer and explorer, best known for his voyages of 1642 and 1644 in the service of the Dutch East India Company (VOC).

<i>Batavia</i> (1628 ship) Dutch East India Company flagship

Batavia ( ) was a ship of the Dutch East India Company (VOC). She was built in Amsterdam in 1628 as the flagship of one of the three annual fleets of company ships and sailed that year on her maiden voyage for Batavia, capital of the Dutch East Indies. On 4 June 1629, Batavia was wrecked on the Houtman Abrolhos, a chain of small islands off the western coast of Australia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dutch East India Company</span> 1602–1799 Dutch trading company

The United East India Company and commonly known as the Dutch East India Company, was a chartered trading company and the first joint-stock company in the world. Established on 20 March 1602 by the States General of the Netherlands existing companies, it was granted a 21-year monopoly to carry out trade activities in Asia. Shares in the company could be bought by any resident of the United Provinces and then subsequently bought and sold in open-air secondary markets. The company possessed quasi-governmental powers, including the ability to wage war, imprison and execute convicts, negotiate treaties, strike its own coins, and establish colonies. Also, because it traded across multiple colonies and countries from both the East and the West, the VOC is sometimes considered to have been the world's first multinational corporation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">European maritime exploration of Australia</span> Overview of the European maritime exploration of Australia

The maritime European exploration of Australia consisted of several waves of European seafarers who sailed the edges of the Australian continent. Dutch navigators were the first Europeans known to have explored and mapped the Australian coastline. The first documented encounter was that of Dutch navigator Willem Janszoon, in 1606. Dutch seafarers also visited the west and north coasts of the continent, as did French explorers.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jacob Le Maire</span> Dutch mariner and explorer (c.1585–1616)

Jacob Le Maire was a Dutch mariner who circumnavigated the Earth in 1615 and 1616. The strait between Tierra del Fuego and Isla de los Estados was named the Le Maire Strait in his honour, though not without controversy. It was Le Maire himself who proposed to the council aboard Eendracht that the new passage should be called by his name and the council unanimously agreed with Le Maire. The author or authors of The Relation took Eendracht captain Willem Schouten's side by proclaiming:

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dirk Hartog</span> Dutch sailor and explorer (1580–1621)

Dirk Hartog was a 17th-century Dutch sailor and explorer. Dirk Hartog's expedition was the second European group to land in Australia and the first to leave behind an artefact to record his visit, the Hartog Plate. His name is sometimes alternatively spelled Dirck Hartog or Dierick Hartochszch. Ernest Giles referred to him as Theodoric Hartog. The Western Australian island Dirk Hartog Island is named after Hartog.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anthony van Diemen</span> Dutch colonial governor (1593–1645)

Anthony van Diemen was a Dutch colonial governor.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jan Pieterszoon Coen</span> Dutch colonial administrator

Jan Pieterszoon Coen was an officer of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) in the early 17th century, holding two terms as governor-general of the Dutch East Indies. He was the founder of Batavia, capital of the Dutch East Indies. Renowned for providing the impulse that set the VOC on the path to dominance in the Dutch East Indies, he was long considered a national hero in the Netherlands. Since the 19th century, his legacy has become controversial due to the brutal violence he employed in order to secure a trade monopoly on nutmeg, mace and clove. During the last stage of the Dutch conquest of the Banda Islands, Coen depopulated the islands to such a degree he massacred about 14.400 people in Banda, about 800 of whom were transferred to Batavia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Batavia, Dutch East Indies</span> Capital of the Dutch East Indies

Batavia was the capital of the Dutch East Indies. The area corresponds to present-day Jakarta, Indonesia. Batavia can refer to the city proper or its suburbs and hinterland, the Ommelanden, which included the much larger area of the Residency of Batavia in the present-day Indonesian provinces of Jakarta, Banten and West Java.

<i>Duyfken</i> Dutch ship

Duyfken, also in the form Duifje or spelled Duifken or Duijfken, was a small ship built in the Dutch Republic. She was a fast, lightly armed ship probably intended for shallow water, small valuable cargoes, bringing messages, sending provisions, or privateering. The tonnage of Duyfken has been given as 25-30 lasten.

The Eendracht was an early 17th century Dutch wooden-hulled 700 tonne East Indiaman, launched in 1615 in the service of the Dutch East India Company (VOC). Its Dutch name means "concord", "unity" or "union", and was a common name given to Dutch ships of the period, from the motto of the Republic: Concordia res parvae crescunt . The ship was captained by Dirk Hartog when he made the second recorded landfall by a European on Australian soil, in 1616.

Ridderschap van Holland was a large retourschip, the largest class of merchantmen built by the Dutch East India Company to trade with the East Indies. In 1694 the ship sailed for Batavia on her fifth voyage, but was never heard from again. She is now thought to have been shipwrecked off the west coast of Australia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Janszoon voyage of 1605–1606</span> European voyage of discovery to Australia

Willem Janszoon captained the first recorded European landing on the Australian continent in 1606, sailing from Bantam, Java, in the Duyfken. As an employee of the Dutch East India Company, Janszoon had been instructed to explore the coast of New Guinea in search of economic opportunities. He had originally arrived in the Dutch East Indies from the Netherlands in 1598, and became an officer of the VOC on its establishment in 1602.

Thirteen ships of the Dutch East India Company and its pre-companies have been named Amsterdam.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Company rule in the Dutch East Indies</span> Early Dutch colonization in the East Indies

Company rule in the Dutch East Indies began when the Dutch East India Company appointed the first governor-general of the Dutch East Indies in 1610, and ended in 1800 when the bankrupt company was dissolved and its possessions were nationalized as the Dutch East Indies. By then it exerted territorial control over much of the archipelago, most notably on Java.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Australia on the Map</span>

Australia on the Map is the history and heritage division of the Australasian Hydrographic Society. It seeks to enhance Australians’ knowledge, understanding and appreciation of the nation's early history, beginning in 1606 with the voyages of Willem Janszoon in the Duyfken and Luis Váez de Torres in Los Tres Reyes and San Pedro, and continuing to the present.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Indo people</span> European/Eurasian ethnic groups in Indonesia

The Indo people are Eurasian people living in or connected with Indonesia. In its narrowest sense, the term refers to people in the former Dutch East Indies who held European legal status but were of mixed Dutch and indigenous Indonesian descent as well as their descendants today.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Governorate of Ambon</span>

Ambon was a governorate of the Dutch East India Company, consisting of Ambon Island and ten neighbouring islands. Steven van der Hagen captured Fort Victoria on 22 February 1605 from the Portuguese in the name of the Dutch East India Company. Until 1619, Ambon served as the capital of the Dutch possessions in East Asia. In that year Batavia was founded to function as the staple port for the Dutch East India Company in Asia. The island was the world center of clove production until the 19th century. The Dutch prohibited the rearing of the clove-tree in all the other islands subject to their rule, in order to secure the monopoly to Ambon.

<i>Heemskerck</i> (1638 ship) Abel Tasmans Flagship

Heemskerck was the flagship of Abel Janszoon Tasman's exploratory voyage of 1642. She and her consort Zeehaen were the first European ships to explore the south coast of Australia, including Tasmania, cross the Tasman Sea, and reach New Zealand among other achievements.

References

  1. "2021 Australia, Census All persons QuickStats". Australian Bureau of Statistics. Retrieved 27 July 2022.
  2. "Cultural diversity: Census, 2021 | Australian Bureau of Statistics". 7 April 2022.
  3. 1 2 3 4 "GCP AUS". Australian Bureau of Statistics.
  4. "Early Dutch Landfall Discoveries of Australia". Archived from the original on 4 August 2016. Retrieved 10 June 2007.
  5. Allies in Adversity at the Australian War Memorial
  6. the book of Australian Country Music. The Berghouse Floyd Tuckey Publishing Company

Further reading