This project asks: How did underlying religious worldviews inform the local, national, and global engagement of rural middle western Dutch communities in the nineteenth century, which are often characterized as isolated and provincial? More broadly, it queries, if the local, national, and global are united by this broad religious worldview, how does that transform our understandings of rural middle western ethnic enclaves and who contributed to the rich internationalism of the nineteenth century and from where? Close examination of these rural middle western ethnic enclaves reveals not only an ambitious vision for building local institutions but also for extending Dutch influence throughout the American West and eventually the entire world. Major historiographical themes of immigration, settler colonialism, assimilation, Christian evangelism and global imperialism intersect in these communities. Rural Dutch settlers engaged within a global context in three crucial and interrelated realms: religion, ethnicity, and politics. Each of these three arenas affected life in rural America, captured the attention of the men and women who settled there, and justified their settler colonialist and imperialist agenda. They influenced residents’ daily lives, peppered their local newspapers, and oriented both internal and external community affairs. These interrelated influences collectively informed the posture of the rural settlements and their positions within broader regional, national, and international contexts.