Interview: Deeper Dutch Investment to Bring Solutions, Jobs to the South

But Consul General Ard Van der Vorst says investment decisions could be frustrated if Southern hospitality is undermined by discriminatory laws

DECEMBER 12, 2019 | TREVOR WILLIAMS

It’s no accident that Ard Van der Vorst picked mid-November for an interview focused on the Netherlands’ relationship with the Southeast U.S. 

The Dutch consul general in Atlanta was keen to build on the momentum around Dutch-American Heritage Day, which each year marks the ties linking the nations across the centuries.  

The Nov. 16 date derives from 1776, when a cannon salute from the Dutch island St. Eustatius to a U.S.-flagged vessel served as the first foreign recognition of the fledgling republic.  

But more than a century before that, there was the Halve Maen, the ship explorer Henry Hudson sailed into the river that would eventually bear his name, laying the groundwork for the colony of New Amsterdam on the island of Manhattan.  

The fact that the city is now known as New York says something about how the rush for North America played out, but that’s all the more reason to bring out the Dutch bits of America’s origin story, Mr. Van der Vorst hinted during a Global Atlanta Consular Conversation at Miller & Martin PLLC Nov. 13. 

“We know these (stories), but we have to say them more than our British friends,” he joked. Read the full article on Global Atlanta, written by Trevor Williams HERE