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‘Behaviour and Morality have Remained Irreproachable, and his Commercial Reputation is Good’ Applying for Naturalisation in Late-Nineteenth-Century Antwerp and Rotterdam

In the late nineteenth century, with the expansion of their harbours and the growth of transatlantic mobility, the port cities of Antwerp and Rotterdam became home to economically important and large migrant communities. In a context marked by the often-claimed rise of the nation state, when national legislation concerning nationality and citizenship was shifting, local authorities and citizens played an important but still underestimated role when it came to enforcing the naturalisation of foreign nationals. Applications for naturalisation in both Antwerp and Rotterdam were firmly rooted in the local context, and economic performance was key to the police commissar’s support of an applicant’s case towards the national authorities. By comparatively analysing individual applications for naturalisation in Antwerp and Rotterdam, this paper argues that the close relationship between the nation-state and the mechanisms of legal inclusion and exclusion on which it rested, has to be relativised. Aan het eind van de negentiende eeuw werden de steden Antwerpen en Rotterdam, dankzij de uitbreiding van hun havens en de groei van de trans-Atlantische mobiliteit, de thuisbasis van grote en economisch belangrijke migrantengemeenschappen. In een periode die in de historiografie vaak gekenmerkt wordt door de veronderstelde opkomst van de natiestaat en veranderende wetgeving omtrent nationaliteit en burgerschap, speelden lokale overheden en burgers een belangrijke, maar nog vaak onderschatte rol bij het bewerkstelligen van naturalisatie van mensen met een migratieachtergrond. Zowel in Antwerpen als in Rotterdam waren naturalisatieverzoeken duidelijk gesitueerd in de lokale context van de aanvrager. Zo was het economische succes van een aanvrager een doorslaggevende factor voor het verkrijgen van steun van de politiecommissaris. Deze steun vergrootte de kans van slagen van een naturalisatieaanvraag bij de nationale overheid. Aan de hand van een vergelijkend onderzoek naar individuele naturalisatieaanvragen in Antwerpen en Rotterdam, stelt dit artikel dat de hechte relatie tussen de natiestaat en de mechanismen van wettelijke in- en uitsluiting waarop die berust, moet worden gerelativeerd.

This article tells a local history of national belonging by emphasising the role that local authorities played in re-defining the boundary between nationals and foreigners in the late nineteenth century. To be sure, the final decision about whether an application for naturalisation was successful was made solely by the national parliaments. This article does not study these 'final results' or to what extent the local authorities could actually influence parliamentary decisions. It is nearly impossible to speculate on this, since the parliaments did not have to account for their decision-making. Rather, this article considers the applications for naturalisation made by 'typical' foreign-born, mobile, port city residents within their local context, by acknowledging that local practices were embedded in a national legal framework.
At the turn of the nineteenth century, a period in Western Europe marked by democratisation and the increasing involvement of the nation state in social matters, the possession of national citizenship took on a new significance for both individuals and the state. Nationality and citizenship entailed more rights, such as basic social rights and the right to vote, and obligations, in other words military duties. These rights and obligations gave meaning to the otherwise abstract legal bond between the individual and the reimann state. The reform of legal norms between the 1880s and the early 1900s that defined nationality and citizenship also transformed the dynamic dimensions of these concepts, namely the naturalisation procedure, the granting of the denizen status, and the option for nationality by foreign-born residents.
Still, the shift in the content and significance of nationality and citizenship was far from uniform in Western Europe. This becomes clear in Belgium and the Netherlands, two neighbouring countries with a common past, but with important differences in political culture, economic development, and social structure. The frequently-drawn picture of a general 'nationalisation' of Western European societies indeed masks the nuances and lived experiences of possessing or receiving nationality, which, despite the increasing importance of the nation state, were bound to people's local living worlds. This was particularly the case in the reshaping of legal terms of nationality when port cities worldwide became hubs of international mobility.
International business and labour migration, transmigration, and inner-state migration increasingly affected port cities, transforming them into places of arrival, passage, and departure 8 , and into places that dealt with national belonging in a specific way.
This article will proceed in four steps. It begins by outlining the contrasting development of the Belgian and Dutch legislation concerning accessibility to nationality and citizenship. Following this, it provides an overview of the national naturalisation procedures. In its third and fourth parts, it analyses the local management of applications made by foreign-born residents with transnational life paths. The applicants belonged to the largest and economically most important migrant communities in Antwerp and Rotterdam, which were largely composed of highly-mobile businesspeople from neighbouring countries. German-born residents in particular, often were part of the socio-economic elite in these port cities: during the late nineteenth century, German merchants played an important role in the ports' transit economies and owned a number of international trading firms. 9 article -artikel

Nationality and Citizenship Law in Nineteenth-Century Netherlands and Belgium
According to the Civil and Alien Laws of both countries, foreign-born residents of Antwerp and Rotterdam could have a number of different overlapping statuses of belonging: foreign nationals without any formal link to their actual place of residency; foreign nationals with an official residency permit; foreign nationals possessing civil equality with nationals (denizen status); naturalised Belgian or Dutch allowed to hold public offices; naturalised citizens who thanks to their gender and property received active and passive voting rights together with naturalisation 9 ; and colonial subjects who were denied the status of nationals, let alone citizens. 10 What these different statuses entailed in terms of individual rights and obligations became subject to change with suffrage reforms and the establishment of public social security systems in particular.
In the late nineteenth century, however, nationality and citizenship were not equivalent concepts or forms of social status. This is for example underlined by the fact that women possessing nationality were not citizens of their country. In the Netherlands and Belgium, citizenship remained inaccessible to all female nationals up until 1919 and 1948 respectively.
As long as suffrage remained linked to property, citizenship did not automatically come with being male either. Yet, nationality as the legal bounds of the national community was, and still is, a pre-condition for citizenship. Nationality denotes the 'relationship between an individual and a nation involving the duty of obedience or allegiance on the part of the subject and protection on the part of the state'. 11 Citizenship is the basis for the individual's right to political participation. 12 In Belgium, the process of defining national belonging was accompanied by legal reforms designed to broaden the national community, by making Belgian nationality and citizenship more accessible to foreignborn residents. In the Netherlands, the increasing importance of nationality and citizenship was accompanied by a closer legal demarcation between the national community and foreign residents who aspired to Dutch nationality and citizenship. While building their empires, both the Netherlands and reimann Belgium excluded colonial populations from the legal nation by denying them all formal means of belonging as well as the right to vote. In Article Eight, the Burgerlijk Wetboek also stipulated that foreign-born residents could achieve legal equality with Dutch nationals on the level of civil rights, without possessing Dutch nationality. Such a request could be made after six years of residency on Dutch territory. 14 Until the denizen status was abolished in 1892, foreign-born city dwellers in Rotterdam chose to apply for denizen status rather than naturalisation, which was a much more complicated procedure. 15 To apply for Dutch nationality via naturalisation, a person had to be twenty years old, be a resident of the Netherlands or its colonies for at least ten years, and had to declare that he or she intended to remain living there. The price for naturalisation, as declared in the 1850 law, was raised to 75 guilders in 1882. 16 With the 1892 law on Dutch nationality, the costs for registration and the required seal were raised as well.  Indies was legally excluded from the Dutch nation because colonised people were defined as Dutch subjects, not as nationals, let alone citizens. 18 The 1892 nationality law had implications in particular for Rotterdam, as this was a location where many newcomers arrived. With the 1892 law, legislators came to consider double nationality as a social problem, in as much that foreign nationals who aspired to become a Dutch national were now forced to give up their original nationality. 19 The possibility of long-term residents becoming legally equal to Dutch nationals was abolished. 20 In Belgium, naturalisation developed into a more open and popular legal institution from the 1880s onwards; Belgian authorities began to encourage foreign-born residents to integrate with the Belgian legal nation. 21 Before 1881, naturalisation was regulated by the Civil Code, which stipulated that Belgian nationality followed the jus sanguinis principles. But, in administrative practice, people born to foreign parents on Belgian soil were seldom expelled and were instead considered to be lawful residents of the country. 22 Like in the Netherlands, foreign-born residents could also hold equal civil rights as Belgian nationals, the so-called domicilié status. This status entitled aliens to municipal welfare and protected them from expulsion. In the early years of the Belgian state, becoming a domicilié was an exceptional favour granted to very few foreign-born residents, most of them members of the bourgeoisie. 23 Unlike in Rotterdam, where numerous foreign-born residents applied for the denizen status up until 1892, applications for civil equality seem to have been a rare phenomenon in late-nineteenth-century Antwerp that left hardly any trace in the city archives. Supposedly, the applications for denizen status were taken over by the naturalisation procedure that became more popular after 1881.
The Belgian Civil Code provided for an ordinary and a grand naturalisation. The latter not only conferred on its male holder Belgian nationality, but citizenship rights as well. The applicant for ordinary naturalisation had to be twenty-one years old and was required to have resided in Belgium for at least five years. The Naturalisation Law of 1881, followed up by the Nationality Law of 1909, introduced a shift in attitude and practice, reflecting the political elite's intention to integrate foreign-born residents into the Belgian legal nation. 24 The law eased the requirements for those foreign nationals interested in applying for grand naturalisation and halved the price for ordinary naturalisations. The law particularly encouraged foreign nationals born in Belgium to opt for Belgian nationality, and contrary to the Netherlands, dual nationality was widely accepted. 25

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The liberalisation of nationality legislation and the will to assimilate settled immigrants went along with a strict division between Belgian nationals and foreigners, who in the late nineteenth century had begun to face increasing discrimination. 26 The same was true for colonised people whose status resembled that of subjects under the Ancien Régime. Among the Congolese subjects, a differentiation was made between those who, on a 'meritocratic' basis, were registered in the population records, the so-called évolués, and those who were not officially registered. 27 Only certain privileged members of the Congolese elite were theoretically allowed to ask for legal equality with Belgian nationals in some areas of civil and penal law, though the granting of these rights was rare. 28

Naturalisation in Late-Nineteenth-Century Belgium and the Netherlands
In late-nineteenth-century Belgium and the Netherlands, where the importance of the category 'nationality' had begun to increase, very few foreign nationals were applying for naturalisation and even fewer would  reimann Naturalisation in both countries was a costly and time-consuming procedure involving both parliamentary chambers. It was considered a favour granted by the state, rather than a right. The granting of Belgian or Dutch nationality was a discretionary act of parliament, and even candidates who fulfilled all formal criteria could have their applications rejected. Vice versa, parliament could accept applications that did not comply with the formal criteria as parliamentarians did not have to account for whether an application was accepted or rejected. 34 Consequently, only members of the higher social ranks, in particular those foreign-born residents who were planning a career in the public sector, including the military, and those who were well off enough to receive voting rights together with nationality, had an incentive to go through the long naturalisation procedure. 35 In Belgium, about one third of those naturalised between 1880 and 1900 belonged to two professional groups: they were members of the armed forces and civil servants. 36 In the Netherlands during the same period, senior members of the armed forces and tradesmen were the ones most likely to become naturalised. 37 In both countries between 1880 and 1900, almost all people who became naturalised were foreign nationals from neighbouring countries, with Germans representing the biggest share. 38 Many German residents belonged to the social elite and could expect advantages from naturalisation, especially in the trading cities of Antwerp and Rotterdam. 39 In the case of Antwerp, the Catholic Party even feared that if the German residents received voting rights alongside grand naturalisation, the protestant German trading community would represent a firm 'voting block' for the Liberal Party in the port city. 40 Residents of German origin in some cases also opted for Belgian or Dutch nationality to avoid the heavier Among the naturalised in Belgium were also numerous people originating from the parts of Limburg and Luxembourg that the 1839 Treaty of London had integrated into the Netherlands, but which Belgium had reclaimed at its independence. Several legal measures enacted between 1879 and 1909 facilitated the naturalisation of the residents of these territories. 43 In the Netherlands, after the legal reform in 1892, the so-called former-Dutch (oud-Nederlanders) who had resided abroad for ten years lost their nationality if they did not declare in writing to the authorities that they wanted to remain Dutch. Those among the oud-Nederlanders who neglected to make this declaration before 1903 contributed to the sharp increase in naturalisation numbers after the Dutch government had introduced special conditions for them to become re-naturalised. 44

Candidates for Naturalisation in Antwerp
At the end of the nineteenth century, Antwerp developed from a peripheral textile centre in the Austrian Netherlands into a major distribution port for rapidly industrialising Belgium. 45 By 1900, the city's population totalled about 300,000 residents, making it the country's biggest city. 46 As with many port cities, both Antwerp and Rotterdam owed their demographic expansion to in-migration. In 1900, about thirteen percent of Antwerp's inhabitants were non-Belgian, most often of German or Dutch origin. 47 An important share of the foreign, especially German-born, residents was active in the port economy and worked within the (German) export business. 48 Eastern Europeans, many of them migrants who were unable to continue their planned migration to the Americas, also contributed to the rising migrant reimann population in the port cities from the 1880s onwards. By 1900, the third-largest migrant community in Antwerp was composed of people from the Russian Empire. 49 Nevertheless, the overwhelming majority of applicants for naturalisation in Antwerp originated from neighbouring countries, in particular from Germany and the Netherlands, just as it was at the national level. 50 The Belgian application procedure for naturalisation started and ended at the local level. Yet, the national parliament made the final decision in a discretionary manner as to whether or not an application for naturalisation was accepted. 51 The process began with a foreign national turning in a request to the local administration. After receiving the application, the local representative of the royal prosecutor, the parquet de la ville d'Anvers, would inform national institutions about the procedure and send a note to the national prosecutor so that the responsible department at the Ministry of Justice, the Sûreté publique 52 , could review the application. Naturalisation essentially involved these two national institutions, the national prosecutor and the Sûreté publique, alongside the Antwerp mayor and police. As will be shown, after the national authorities had given green light it was up to the mayor and the police to evaluate the applicant and support or oppose his or her request. The large majority of naturalisation candidates were male.
In the name register of foreign nationals living in the province of Antwerp who applied for naturalisation in 1895, for example, we find only six women among the 370 candidates, while in 1896 only six out of 656 applicants were female. 53 Due to this gender imbalance 54 , I will generally use masculine pronouns when referring to the naturalisation candidates.
Before the beginning of the legislative process that would ultimately grant naturalisation by involving both parliamentary chambers, the Sûreté publique would turn the affair over to the local authorities if the application was deemed worthy of consideration. The Sûreté would ask the mayor of the 49 Vladimir K. Ronin, Antwerpen en zijn 'Russen': Onderdanen van de tsaar, 1814van de tsaar, -1914van de tsaar, (Ghent 1993 353. article -artikel city to set up a report about the applicant's 'behaviour, morality, criminal record, and solvency'. 55 The mayor would then pass the case further down the administrative scale to the police force for the city section where the foreign national was registered. A police agent would have to inform the mayor as to whether the candidate had a record of outstanding morality and behaviour, and whether there were any recorded judicial incidents. He would also need to confirm the candidate's financial solvency by investigating his profession and income. If the Antwerp mayor transferred a positive report of the candidate to the royal prosecutor, he had officially confirmed his support for the foreign resident's application for naturalisation by acting as his guarantor. After the legislative procedure had been carried out on the national level, the foreign national would present himself to the mayor and declare that he accepted the naturalisation and would pay the necessary fees. If the applicant failed to do so within three months, his Belgian nationality would be withdrawn.
In the case of the German national Carolus-Frederik-Eduardus Karcher, who applied for grand naturalisation in 1887, the police commissar confirmed that the candidate resided in Antwerp, and had lived there for sixteen years with only one year of interruption. 56 Continuous residency was crucial when applying for naturalisation in Antwerp, as well as in Rotterdam. A formal proof of residency would not have sufficed; rather it was the candidate's actual local presence and reputation that mattered. Paradoxically, foreign nationals had to prove their local rootedness and belonging when applying for naturalisation.
Yet, in the case of the port cities, where an increasing number of foreign tradespeople set up their business in the late nineteenth century, long-time local presence in the ports was supposedly attributable to economic activities and not proof of meaningful allegiance to their country of residence. Hence, the city's interests -and especially the economic advantages a city could expect from the continued presence of the foreign national -played a key role in the naturalisation procedures at the local level. References to national allegiance and belonging are hardly discernible in the local administrative procedures.
Besides irreproachable moral behaviour, the police commissar had to testify to the applicant's marital status, which was generally recorded in the local register books kept at the police station. 57 The 1881 Belgian naturalisation law required people applying for grand naturalisation to be married or, if their spouse was deceased, to have children from that marriage.  residency, marriage was considered a stabilising factor binding the foreign national to the local community. Although being married to a Belgian woman was advantageous for the candidate 58 , it was still better to be married to a non-Belgian woman than to not be married at all. 59 The local authorities took marriage as an indication that the foreign national was settled in Antwerp.
Thus, a marriage certificate was generally enclosed with the application for ordinary or grand naturalisation. At the same time, the naturalisation law from 1881 also stipulated that marriage was not required if the candidate's father had already received grand naturalisation in Belgium. Accordingly, the German applicant Carolus-Frederik-Eduardus Karcher, a single man working as a commission agent at his father's harbour business in Antwerp, could apply for grand naturalisation because his father was a naturalised Belgian.
Hence, local belonging could likewise be proven with family ties that linked the foreign national to a particular place, rather than to the nation as an 'imagined community'. 60 Throughout the local naturalisation procedure, the candidate was in constant contact with the local administrations, sending letters back and forth and turning in various documents, such as a marriage certificate or proof of fulfilled military service. When transferring the completed dossier to the royal prosecutor, the mayor acted as an advocate for the foreign national living in Antwerp. 61 He presented his case in a favourable light and closed his letter with the standard formulation: 'J'estime que cette demande peut être favorablement accueillie' ('I think that this application deserves favourable consideration') 62 ; or '[s]a demande mérite tout appui' ('this request deserves all-out support'). 63 The different local authorities who contributed to the naturalisation process -the mayor, the police, and the parquet -spoke and acted on the candidate's behalf so that his request for naturalisation would be successful at the national level. Rather than establishing a closer bond between the foreign national and the nation state, the naturalisation procedure was a local endeavour to further integrate an often economically successful city dweller into the local community.
59 If the candidate was married to a Belgian woman and had children together a residence of five years was required, while a marriage to a foreign woman required a residence of ten years.

61
In the city archives, we only find dossiers by those candidates whose application the mayor forwarded to the national authorities. As to those applications that the mayor considered insufficient, we may assume that they were not transmitted to the national level.

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The local naturalisation practice was also framed by the national legal context. Indeed, local practice in Antwerp shifted after the introduction of the 1881 naturalisation law. The sheer volume of archival records demonstrates that the liberalisation of grand naturalisation provoked an increase in applications. 64 As will be shown, with the 1881 legal reform, local authorities became more inclined to support applications for naturalisation by wealthy individuals even if applicants did not fulfil all formal criteria. In 1887, he applied for grand naturalisation, available to him thanks to his father's naturalisation. Karcher's application for grand naturalisation, which also ensured his political rights, was supported by the Antwerp mayor. He owed this to being part of a successful and locally rooted family business. The cases of these candidates suggest that the Antwerp authorities were eager to accommodate the particularities of the port city's mobile inhabitants and the legal requirements for naturalisation. Local authorities showed a strong interest in supporting the rather problematic applications from these individuals with transnational trajectories, no fixed residency, and whose 68 Caestecker, 'La législation belge relative à la nationalité 1830-1984', 19-20. reimann connection to Belgium as a nation was minimal, but who were operating successful businesses in the port city. The local authorities certainly felt legitimised to reinforce these applications thanks to a legal context that, since 1881, made Belgian nationality more accessible for foreign-born residents.
In Rotterdam, on the contrary, the authorities dealing with applications for naturalisation on the local level had to take into account the more restrictive regulations of the 1892 nationality law that entered into force on 1 July 1893.

Applying for Dutch Nationality or Denizen Status in Rotterdam
In the last quarter of the nineteenth century, Rotterdam expanded demographically and transformed economically into an international port.
Around 1850 the city had about 90,000 inhabitants, but this number grew to approximately 320,000 by 1899. Rotterdam began to attract migrants during the 1870s port expansion, many of whom arrived from the national hinterland. Between 1880 and 1900, only a small share of migrants came from abroad, primarily from Germany and Belgium, with the community of German-born residents representing approximately two percent (circa 4,010 people) of Rotterdam's population in 1889. 73 The German-born residents, whose move to Rotterdam was often prompted by commercial and trade interests, had, on average, a higher social status than Rotterdam-born inhabitants. 74 Towards the end of the nineteenth century, the community of Eastern Europeans had grown in Rotterdam just as it had in Antwerp.
Russian migrants especially became more numerous, but their overall number remained small, with only 229 registered Russian nationals living in Rotterdam between 1893 and 1914. 75 As in Antwerp, applications for naturalisation came almost exclusively from people from neighbouring countries, with Germany representing the majority. 76 Before 1893, when the nationality law abolished the denizen status, in contrast to Antwerp where this procedure seemingly became obsolete after 1881, foreign-born residents in Rotterdam were more likely to apply Confederation and later the German Empire, there was only one woman, supposedly unmarried. In contrast to the application for Dutch nationality, the equalisation procedure was straightforward: the candidate was only asked to prove that he had resided in the municipality for at least six years. Such Rotterdam civil agent completed the naturalisation procedure. Nevertheless, even before this final act, naturalisation was a municipal concern. As in the case of legal equality, the applicant had to provide a certificate demonstrating that he was registered as a resident of the city. But, this formal proof of local residence did not suffice; in addition, the candidate's neighbours or acquaintances had to confirm by written statement that the applicant had a continuous presence in the neighbourhood and that they were personally familiar with him. 82 The local residents acted as guarantors by signing a formal declaration stating that 'op hunne persoonlijke verantwoordelijkheid' ('on their own responsibility') they affirmed being 'zeer goed bekend' ('very well acquainted') with the candidate. Only a few dossiers contain, apart from this declaration of oath, a note from the Rotterdam police commissar confirming these declarations and commenting on the applicant's good behaviour. where authorities supported or even pushed for the naturalisation of foreign nationals who could contribute to the local economy, we do not find evidence of such endeavours in the Rotterdam archives.
Compared to the Belgian procedure, the number of formal requirements to be met locally was low in the Netherlands, as morality and sufficient financial means were stricken from the formal criteria. In comparison to Antwerp, the individual naturalisation dossiers held at the Rotterdam archives are much thinner: the latter contain a certificate of registration, a declaration of oath signed by the local resident, and in some cases a note from the police commissar, most often regarding the applicant's morality. The Antwerp authorities manipulated different formalities by ignoring, overlooking, or insisting on one requirement over another.
With numerous formal requirements to be met at the local level, Antwerp authorities adapted their assessment of these criteria to suit the port city's interest in integrating a foreign national. If the person was married, possessed  article -artikel sufficient financial means, or if he had fulfilled military service, these formal criteria were assessed, with special consideration for economic merits.
The Antwerp authorities did so in a legal context designed to facilitate the integration of foreign-born residents into the legal nation. The opposite was true in the Netherlands, where the nationality law of 1892 made naturalisation even less accessible. Costs related to naturalisation rose and, most importantly, naturalised people were forced to relinquish their original nationality. While some states like Russia generally refused denationalisation requests, others, like Belgium, had special regulations regarding the denationalisation of young men bound to do military service. 89 In a legal context where foreign nationals were deterred from requesting formal integration into the Dutch legal nation, Rotterdam authorities, unlike their Antwerp counterparts, did not endeavour to foster the naturalisation of the city's foreign-born residents.

Conclusion
In the late nineteenth century, both Dutch and Belgian nationalisation legislation attempted to define the connection that foreign-born nationals had to their new home countries. However, the application for naturalisation both originated from, and was concluded in, the local context. After examining the local practice of naturalisation procedures in both Antwerp and Rotterdam, we can assume that local belonging played a role in whether an application for naturalisation was successful. In Rotterdam, applicants had to prove their local rootedness by mobilising their neighbours to speak on their behalf.
In Antwerp, if candidates were not able to convince the mayor and police commissar to issue the necessary certificates and to speak in their favour, they would have little chance of becoming naturalised, given that parliament generally rejected a large number of applications.
In both port cities, local authorities checked and reported on the applicants' morality and behaviour. In Antwerp, this control was not primarily a local initiative. The Belgian law required the local authorities to conduct these checks and applications could be rejected by parliament if candidates were considered to be political opponents. 90 According to the Dutch law of 1850, local authorities were no longer required to investigate and report on the applicants' morality. The Dutch state further refrained from openly expelling foreign anarchists because such action would have harmed the state's liberal image. 91 We might deduce that the Rotterdam authorities did not feel comfortable with the nation state's liberal attitude 89 Heijs, Van vreemdeling tot Nederlander,74. reimann and, hence, took their own initiative to ensure that those applying for naturalisation in their locality were morally irreproachable and would not disrupt the social order.
On the other hand, the local authorities in Rotterdam intervened less on behalf of their local candidates for naturalisation than their Antwerp counterparts did, as shown by the comparatively thin application files stored in the Rotterdam archives. One reason for this difference might be that the legal context in which the Dutch local authorities were acting provided no incentive for foreign nationals to apply for naturalisation. Compared to the authorities in Antwerp, the Rotterdam authorities seemed to feel less empowered to speak in favour of their local candidates. While acting in their cities' interests -either by further integrating an economically successful resident or by making sure that the new national would not disrupt the social order -the local authorities were operating within a national legal context.
We therefore need to acknowledge that the port cities' authority was shaped by national legislation with practices reflecting state-determined politics surrounding nationality and citizenship.
National ideology did not drive administrative procedures in the port cities. Yet, due to the importance of social standing and esteem, which, considering the competition between Europe's leading ports, were generally linked to the candidate's economic performance, most people who received Belgian or Dutch nationality via naturalisation, were Western Europeans. The members of the migrant communities from neighbouring countries, German communities in particular, were most successful economically, while they were, at the same time, particularly mobile and in many cases not especially attached to their country of residence. The Antwerp authorities endeavoured to accommodate these applicants' transnational life paths with the legal requirements, which expected the naturalised citizen to be loyal to the Belgian state rather than to any specific city.
In both cities, the local naturalisation practice favoured the naturalisation of Western Europeans by insisting on personal contacts between the applicant and their local acquaintances. This procedure benefitted those who were similar to the local population more than those who were different, thereby curbing the development of a diverse legal community. Moreover, the local naturalisation procedure in Antwerp and Rotterdam did not mirror the gender diversity of the port cities' migrant population: apart from very few exceptions, applicants for naturalisation were male, a reflection of women's marginal position within the legal nation. The cities' actual openness to mobile people, which increased during the age of steam (c. 1870-1940), did not mean that all newcomers were equally welcomed into formal membership in the city or national community. The vast majority of foreigners who lived in the port cities did so without requesting naturalisation.