In the third quarter of the nineteenth century a curious movement came into being in the United States. Its adherents opposed the view that Great Britain had provided the basis for American society. Well-known and less well-known, rich and not so rich Americans maintained that the Dutch Republic, which they endearingly called Holland, was the "mother of America". This was a fundamental change in the history of the United States. The American historian J.L. Motley first expounded this view in 1856, in his book entitled The Rise of the Dutch Republic.

This curious episode in American history was to become known as "Holland-Mania". Annette Stott published a book about it in 1998, which drew renewed attention to this phenomenon from both American and Dutch readers (the translation of the book was published in the same year).

The immediate cause for the rise of the movement was the centennial of the United States in 1876. There was every reason to celebrate the centennial in a grand style. The terrors of the American Civil War (1861-1865) were over, slavery was officially abolished and the country was experiencing unprecedented economic growth. Millions of Europeans left 'Old Europe' to build a new life in the 'New World'. This was sufficient reason to look ahead to a bright future. The economic growth of the United States resulted in the country manifesting itself on the world market. There it constituted a threat to the most powerful industrial nation of the world at the time: Great Britain.

Against this background, people in certain circles in America started to look for a new source of social inspiration. These circles consisted mainly of white protestant Americans who had already been in the US for a longer period of time. In general they were reasonably well off. For this group the new influx of mostly catholic and Jewish immigrants posed a direct threat. New immigrants, who where not familiar with the American identity, might perhaps want to introduce in the US views on norms and values from their countries of origin. These needed to be countered by American norms and values. The problem was that it was hard to explain what these norms and values amounted to, and from which source they originated.
  
That source was found in the cultural and political world of the Republic of the Seven United Provinces, in particular as it had manifested itself during the "Golden Age". Descendants of Dutch immigrants and Americans who felt affinity with them set up study groups. They studied the history of the Republic and published a growing number of scholarly and semi-scholarly papers on Dutch culture.

The interest in and identification with the Netherlands was not focused exclusively on political and social aspects of Dutch history. The workings of Dutch democracy, the States General and the outcomes of the Dutch Revolt (the 80 Years' War) kept inspiring Americans. This was accompanied by an interest in Dutch art and culture. Wealthy American collectors began to buy Dutch seventeenth- and eighteenth-century art on a large scale. Because the supply of authentic Dutch masters was of course limited, the prices went up quickly. Another effect was that American artists (sometimes on commission) started to copy Dutch masters. Not always with the right intentions. Inevitably copies of paintings were sold as the real thing.
 
American artists also developed their own style, that was strongly influenced by the Dutch masters. To please their prospective buyers, they traveled to Holland to paint. They wanted to become acquainted with the 'Dutch light', and in particular with the Netherlands of the Golden Age. But that did no longer exist. The trekschuit (horse-drawn barge) had since long been replaced by the steam engine. Only in certain areas of the Netherlands time seemed to have stood still. In fishing villages on the coast of what was still the Zuiderzee (later to be closed off from the sea by a dyke, and renamed IJsselmeer), or along the North Sea coast, and occasionally in small towns in the Veluwe region and in the province of Zeeland, with a bit of imagination the atmosphere of the past could still be evoked. These were the locations where communities (six of them all in all) of American artists went to work. They painted Dutch fishermen and farmers in clogs and their wives in lace caps and smocks, in an idyllic style. All these people lived in a peaceful land, flowing with milk and honey, at least in the paintings. The people they depicted always resembled the stereotypes, what Americans took to be 'real Dutch heads'.

During their stay the American artists became acquainted with painters of the "The Hague School", such as Jozef Israëls, Anton Mauve, Hendrik Willem Mesdag. These modern Dutch painters in their turn profited from the American interest. Their works too started to disappear quickly to American museums and collectors.  

In addition to the paintings and other forms of pictorial art, novels and children's books appeared in the third quarter of the nineteenth century that were also rooted in Dutch past society. These books described the 'typically Dutch' values such as honesty, sincerity, piety, independence and frugality which were assumed still to be present and correct in the Netherlands at that time.

No wonder that Americans who had money and leisure at their disposal departed for that enchanting little country on the coast of the bleak North Sea as soon as the opportunity presented itself. They wanted to see this wonderful world with their own eyes.

The outbreak of the First World War and the period of shortages and economic recession that followed it, ended the interest in the 'Dutch roots'. Around the year 1920 Holland-Mania was over for good.