A Perfect Babel of Confusion

Examining the transformation of European culture in North America, this important study makes use of both primary and secondary sources. Balmer identifies, as no one else has to date, the manner in which socio-economic concerns of Dutch merchants and clerics, and policies engineered by English officials in England and America, combined to destroy the integrity of Dutch language, religious practice, and legal customs in the New World. Enlivening his subject with anecdotes and character sketches, Balmer takes the reader `inside' the Dutch Reformed Church and shows how divisions within the church gradually hardened along socio-economic lines and persisted well into the Revolutionary era. These divisions, he conclusively demonstrates, provide the most accurate predictor of political sympathies among Dutch colonists during the American Revolution. The book is aimed at students of ethnicity and religion; all who have an interest in Dutch-American immigration, religion, family and culture.