by E.A. van Abbenes
THEY’RE SHORT roads, and unassuming, William Street, Anna Street, Orange Street. But the city is called Orangeburg, in an area where you would not expect that much orange. This is South Carolina, a state that saw Dutch immigration early on, but normally you’d first look for Orange in New York, New Jersey, Iowa or Michigan. Not in South Carolina where the climate is decidedly unDutch.
And yet it was immediately resolved, as soon as the first stone was laid in 1730, that the town would be named Orangeburg. In and by itself that wasn’t necessarily unusual. There are Orange and Nassau villages, towns, counties, rivers, bays, mountains and even a fjord in 22 of the 50 states, not counting schools and streets. Almost all are a tribute to Prince William III of Orange Nassau who was stadtholder of the Dutch Republic and King of England, therefore by default also King of America. William III was popular, the most popular among all the eight English monarchs America was subject to.
HOWEVER, HERE in South Carolina it was not about him but about his nephew, William IV. Which was remarkable, because Prince Willie wasn’t much of anything yet. If you ask around in Orangeburg today, they’ll stress that his wife being an English princess was also a factor. But William was at the time not married at all, he had only just turned 19 and there was at that point no unanimity whatsoever about who should be the future Mrs. Van Oranje.
Sometimes you learn more about your national history by looking at it through a foreign lens. It was not just the group of Dutch immigrants who, together with Germans and Swiss, wanted to settle in Orangeburg – it was the entire South Carolina government that decided to promote the name of the teenage prince. By 1730, American independence was still almost a half century away. But Holland was the example, the republic of seven united provinces that had permanently, and all by itself, kicked out a superior Spanish army.
IN SOUTH CAROLINA, they were looking ahead. Like everywhere else, they could have honored William III, and no one would have been surprised. But no, this 19-year-old boy represented the future, a continuity of independence. They were not born yesterday, they knew as well as everyone that the Dutch golden age was over, and also that the republic was lacking unity. When William III died childless, William IV was not even born yet. It was one of those periods that the Dutch gave funny labels: a stadtholderless era.
But the big picture was clear: Holland would do everything within its power to remain independent, and the name Orange would be permanently linked to that. South Carolina gave off a signal. Orangeburg was like a flag that you plant on top of a fort, as in: we know exactly what we want.
They turned out to be right. It took a while, for William didn’t become the entire Dutch republic’s political and military leader until seventeen years later – and not for long, since he died four short years after that. But South Carolina and 12 other states did eventually declare their independence, just like the Dutch, with texts taken directly from Holland’s own declarations of independence. By then, Dutch money would finance all of independent America’s foreign debt. And Orange, you bet, that remained for good Holland’s symbol of liberty.
* E.A. van Abbenes is a historian and a writer.
