Crailo State Historic Site and the Friends of Fort Crailo are sponsoring a presentation on the Dutch Republic’s role in the struggle for American independence.
Wim Klooster, Professor and Robert H. and Virginia N. Scotland Endowed Chair in History and International Relations at Clark University, will present “Dutch Smugglers and the American Revolution” at the New York State Museum’s Huxley Theater from 2 to 3 pm on Saturday, November 14, 2026.
The lecture will examine how Dutch financiers helped fund the American cause, how merchants and smugglers circumvented British trade restrictions to supply the Patriots with essential goods and military supplies, and how Dutch commercial networks challenged British authority.
Klooster will also reveal how international trade, financial interests, and diplomatic relationships connected the Dutch Republic to the revolutionary movement and helped sustain the fight for independence.
An acclaimed historian of the Dutch Atlantic and the Age of Revolutions, Klooster is the author of The Dutch Moment: War, Trade, and Settlement in the Seventeenth-Century Atlantic World (2016) and editor of the Cambridge History of the Age of Atlantic Revolutions (2023), among other publications.
The lecture is free and open to the public. No registration is required. The New York State Museum is located at 222 Madison Avenue, Albany, NY 12230.
The program is part of the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation’s commemoration of the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution.
During this multi-year initiative, New York’s state historic sites and state parks are hosting special exhibitions, offering dynamic programs, showcasing preservation projects, sharing digital resources and more. For more information, visit this website.
Once the home of the Van Rensselaer family, Crailo State Historic Site is today the museum of the colonial Dutch in the Hudson River Valley. Through research, exhibits, archeological studies, guided tours, and educational programing, Crailo tells the stories of the early Dutch, Indigenous, and African inhabitants of the Upper Hudson Valley in the 17th century.
Read About Dutch Arms Dealers & Military Engineers in the Revolutionary War
Illustrations: The first official salute to the American flag on board an American warship Andrew Doria in a foreign port on the Dutch-held island St Eustatius, November 16 1776 (painting by Phillips Melville courtesy US Navy Art Collection).
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