Abstract
AbstractThis chapter analyses the major trends in Rotterdam’s migration history in three periods: the early-modern period (1600–1800), the era in which the Working Class Port City was created (1850–1940), and the post-war period until the 1980s. Rotterdam’s pre-industrial history convincingly reveals a multi-ethnic and religious diverse society. Small foreign minorities could have a significant influence on Rotterdam’s cultural, political and economic development. Even strong national identities did not restrict a strong sense of local attachment. The port city of the nineteenth century was less diverse, considering the smaller number of foreign migrants that settled in the city. The migration narrative of the port city in this period is inexorably linked to that of the working city. This narrative became highly popular in the post-war reconstruction period. The offspring of Rotterdam’s nineteenth century rural-urban migrants had rebuilt the city after the fatal German bombardment in May 1940 and had been responsible for its successful post-war industrial port development. The arrival of non-Western migrants in the 1960s and 1970s challenged Rotterdam’s nineteenth century popularised migration narrative. Policy-makers have suggested that this post-war migration process is fundamentally different from older migration patterns. In general, we tend to be too pessimistic about the post war integration and too optimistic about patterns of integration in the past, particularly during the nineteenth century. Notwithstanding the fact that by then the large majority of the migrants were Dutch, marginalisation and exclusion took place on a larger scale than realised. Our long-term perspective hopes to contribute to link earlier migration narratives to Rotterdam’s recent superdiversity.
Highlights
Scholars of globalisation describe pre-industrial cites as being relatively closed compared to their modern global counterparts, thereby underestimating their dynamics and openness (Coutard et al 2014)
The modest trade and merchant navy city of Rotterdam grew to number 7000 inhabitants around the middle of the sixteenth century
The abovementioned Flemish influx after the fall of Antwerp in 1585 is an early example, whereas the French Protestants who fled to the Dutch Republic after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685 are an example from a century later (Van der Linden 2015). These often wealthy Huguenots caused the French community in Rotterdam to flourish from 1685 onwards, until a decline set in 10 years later
Summary
Scholars of globalisation describe pre-industrial cites as being relatively closed compared to their modern global counterparts, thereby underestimating their dynamics and openness (Coutard et al 2014). As debates about modernity began in the 1970s, migration historians have challenged the static character of early-modern societies (Lucassen and Lucassen 2009) They argue that traces of earlier forms of globalisation are path-dependant and can be dated from pre-industrial trade and maritime networks, including international migration movements (Schmoll and Semi 2013; Meissner 2015). This chapter’s main focus is to understand contemporary discourses on diversity and address today’s issues not as being unique, but by placing them in a longitudinal historical perspective We will do this by looking for major differences between Rotterdam’s early-modern and modern periods (after 1850) until the 1980s. Hope to show that, despite Rotterdam’s major port development following the 1850s, the city before 1940 was less diverse from an international migration perspective than its pre-modern predecessor. This argument will be elaborated on in the third part of this chapter
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