New Netherland

The West India House in Amsterdam, headquarters of the Dutch West India Company from 1623 to 1647

The storehouse of the Dutch West India Company in Amsterdam, built in 1642, became the headquarters of the board in 1647 because of financial difficulties after the loss of Dutch Brazil.

The immediate and intense competition among Dutch trading companies in the newly charted areas led to disputes in Amsterdam and calls for regulation. The States General was the governing body of the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands, and it proclaimed on 17 March 1614, that it would grant an exclusive patent for trade between the 40th and 45th parallels. This monopoly would be valid for four voyages, and all four voyages had to be undertaken within three years of the award. The New Netherland Company was an alliance of trading companies, and they used Adrian Block's map to win a patent that expired on 1 January 1618.[17]

The New Netherland Company also ordered a survey of the Delaware Valley, and Cornelis Hendricksz of Monnickendam explored the Zuyd Rivier (South River) in 1616 from its bay to its northernmost navigable reaches. His observations were preserved in a map drawn in 1616. Hendricksz made his voyages aboard the IJseren Vercken (Iron Hog), a vessel built in America. Despite the survey, the company was unable to secure an exclusive patent from the States General for the area between the 38th and 40th parallels.[18]

The States General issued patents in 1614 for the development of New Netherland as a private, commercial venture. Soon after, traders built Fort Nassau on Castle Island in the area of Albany up Hudson's river. The fort was to defend river traffic against interlopers and to conduct fur trading operations with the Indians. The location of the fort proved to be impractical, however, due to repeated flooding of the island in the summers, and it was abandoned in 1618[19] when the patent expired.

The Republic of the Seven United Netherlands granted a charter to the Dutch West India Company (GWC) (Geoctroyeerde Westindische Compagnie) on 3 June 1621,[20] which gave the company the exclusive right to operate in West Africa (between the Tropic of Cancer and the Cape of Good Hope) and the Americas.[20]

Willem Usselincx was one of the founders of the GWC, and he promoted the concept that a main goal of the company should be to establish colonies in the New World. In 1620, Usselincx made a last appeal to the States General, which rejected his principal vision as a primary goal. The legislators preferred the formula of trading posts with small populations and a military presence to protect them, which was working in the East Indies, versus encouraging mass immigration and establishing large colonies. The company did not focus on colonization in America until 1654, when it was forced to surrender Dutch Brazil and forfeit the richest sugar-producing area in the world.

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The first trading partners of the New Netherlanders were the Algonquins who lived in the area.[21] The Dutch depended on the native nations to capture, skin, and deliver pelts to them, especially beaver. It is likely that Hudson's peaceful contact with the Mahicans encouraged them to establish Fort Nassau in 1614, the first of many garrisoned trading stations. In 1628, the Mohawks (members of the Iroquois Confederacy) conquered the Mahicans, who retreated to Connecticut. The Mohawks gained a near-monopoly in the fur trade with the Dutch, as they controlled the upstate Adirondacks and Mohawk Valley through the center of New York.[22]

The Algonquin Lenape population around New York Bay and along the lower Hudson River were seasonally migrational people. The Dutch called the numerous band collectively the River Indians,[22][23] known the exonyms associated with place names as the Wecquaesgeek, Hackensacks, Raritans, Canarsee, and Tappans. These groups had the most frequent contact with the New Netherlanders. The Munsee inhabited the Highlands, Hudson Valley, and northern New Jersey,[22] while the Susquehannocks lived west of the Delaware River along the Susquehanna River, which the Dutch regarded as their boundary with Virginia.

Company policy required land to be purchased from the Indians. The Dutch West India Company would offer a land patent, and the recipient would be responsible for negotiating a deal with representatives of the local tribes, usually the sachem or high chief. The Indians referred to the Dutch colonists as Swannekins, or salt water people; they had vastly different conceptions of ownership and use of land than the colonists did, and difficulties sometimes arose concerning the expectations on both sides.[22] The colonists thought that their proffer of gifts in the form of sewant or manufactured goods was a trade agreement and defense alliance, which gave them exclusive rights to farming, hunting, and fishing. Often, the Indians did not vacate the property, or reappeared seasonally according to their migration patterns. They were willing to share the land with the colonists, but the Indians did not intend to leave or give up access. This misunderstanding and other differences led to violent conflict later. At the same time, such differences marked the beginnings of a multicultural society.[24]

Map showing the area claimed by the Dutch in North-America and several Dutch settlements, against modern state boundaries

Like the French in the north, the Dutch focused their interest on the fur trade. To that end, they cultivated contingent relations with the Five Nations of the Iroquois to procure greater access to key central regions from which the skins came.

The Dutch encouraged a kind of feudal aristocracy over time, to attract settlers to the region of the Hudson River, in what became known as the system of the Charter of Freedoms and Exemptions. Further south, a Swedish trading company that had ties with the Dutch tried to establish its first settlement along the Delaware River three years later. Without resources to consolidate its position, New Sweden was gradually absorbed by New Holland and later in Pennsylvania and Delaware.

The earliest Dutch settlement was built around 1613, and consisted of a number of small huts built by the crew of the "Tijger" (Tiger), a Dutch ship under the command of Captain Adriaen Block, which had caught fire while sailing on the Hudson.[25] Soon after, the first of two Fort Nassaus was built, and small factorijen or trading posts went up, where commerce could be conducted with the Algonquian and Iroquois population, possibly at Schenectady, Esopus, Quinnipiac, Communipaw, and elsewhere.

In 1617, Dutch colonists built a fort at the confluence of the Hudson and Mohawk Rivers where Albany now stands. In 1624, New Netherland became a province of the Dutch Republic, which had lowered the northern border of its North American dominion to 42 degrees latitude in acknowledgment of the claim by the English north of Cape Cod.[nb 1] The Dutch named the three main rivers of the province the Zuyd Rivier (South River), the Noort Rivier (North River), and the Versche Rivier (Fresh River). Discovery, charting, and permanent settlement were needed to maintain a territorial claim. To this end in May 1624, the GWC landed 30 families at Fort Orange and Noten Eylant (today's Governors Island) at the mouth of the North River. They disembarked from the ship New Netherland, under the command of Cornelis Jacobsz May, the first Director of the New Netherland. He was replaced the following year by Willem Verhulst.

In June 1625, 45 additional colonists disembarked on Noten Eylant from three ships named Horse, Cow, and Sheep, which also delivered 103 horses, steers, cows, pigs, and sheep. Most settlers were dispersed to the various garrisons built across the territory: upstream to Fort Orange, to Kievits Hoek on the Fresh River, and Fort Wilhelmus on the South River.[26][27][28] Many of the settlers were not Dutch but Walloons, French Huguenots, or Africans (most as enslaved labor, some later gaining "half-free" status).[29][30]

Map (c. 1639), Manatvs gelegen op de Noot Riuier [Manhattan situated on the North River] (north arrow pointing to the right)

Peter Minuit became Director of the New Netherland in 1626 and made a decision that greatly affected the new colony. Originally, the capital of the province was to be located on the South River,[31] but it was soon realized that the location was susceptible to mosquito infestation in the summer and the freezing of its waterways in the winter. He chose instead the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the river explored by Hudson, at that time called the North River.

Minuit traded some goods with the local population, and reported that he had purchased it from the natives, as was company policy. He ordered the construction of Fort Amsterdam at its southern tip, around which grew the heart of the province called The Manhattoes in the vernacular of the day, rather than New Netherland.[32][33] According to a letter by Pieter Janszoon Schagen, Peter Minuit and Walloon colonists of the West India Company acquired the island of Manhattan on May 24, 1626, from unnamed native people, who are believed to have been Canarsee Indians of the Manhattoe, in exchange for traded goods worth 60 guilders,[34] often said to be worth US$24. The figure of 60 guilders comes from a letter by a representative of the Dutch Estates General and member of the board of the Dutch West India Company, Pieter Janszoon Schagen, to the Estates General in November 1626.[35] In 1846, New York historian John Romeyn Brodhead converted the figure of Fl 60 (or 60 guilders) to US$24 (he arrived at $24 = Fl 60/2.5, because the US dollar was erroneously equated with the Dutch rijksdaalder having a standard value of 2.5 guilders).[36] "[A] variable-rate myth being a contradiction in terms, the purchase price remains forever frozen at twenty-four dollars," as authors Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace remarked in their history of New York.[37] Sixty guilders in 1626 was valued at approximately $1,000 in 2006 and $963 in 2020, according to the Institute for Social History of Amsterdam.[38] Based on the price of silver, "The Straight Dope" newspaper column calculated an equivalent of $72 in 1992.[39] Historians James and Michelle Nevius revisited the issue in 2014, suggesting that using the prices of beer and brandy as monetary equivalencies, the price Minuit paid would have the purchasing power of somewhere between $2,600 and $15,600 in current dollars.[40] According to the writer Nathaniel Benchley, Minuit conducted the transaction with Seyseys, chief of the Canarsee, who were willing to accept valuable merchandise in exchange for the island that was mostly controlled by the Weckquaesgeeks, a band of the Wappinger.[41]

The port city of New Amsterdam outside the walls of the fort became a major hub for trade between North America, the Caribbean, and Europe, and the place where raw materials were loaded, such as pelts, lumber, and tobacco. Sanctioned privateering contributed to its growth. It was given its municipal charter in 1653,[42] by which time the Commonality of New Amsterdam included the isle of Manhattan, Staaten Eylandt, Pavonia, and the Lange Eylandt towns.[43]

In the hope of encouraging immigration, the Dutch West India Company established the Charter of Freedoms and Exemptions in 1629, which gave it the power to offer vast land grants and the title of patroon to some of its invested members.[44] The vast tracts were called patroonships, and the title came with powerful manorial rights and privileges, such as the creation of civil and criminal courts and the appointing of local officials. In return, a patroon was required by the Company to establish a settlement of at least 50 families within four years[45] who would live as tenant farmers. Of the original five patents given, the largest and only truly successful endeavour was Rensselaerswyck,[46] at the highest navigable point on the North River,[47] which became the main thoroughfare of the province. Beverwijck grew from a trading post to a bustling, independent town in the midst of Rensselaerwyck, as did Wiltwyck, south of the patroonship in Esopus country.

Willem Kieft was Director of New Netherland from 1638 until 1647. The colony had grown somewhat before his arrival, reaching 8,000 population in 1635. Yet it did not flourish, and Kieft was under pressure to cut costs. At this time, Indian tribes which had signed mutual defense treaties with the Dutch were gathering near the colony due to widespread warfare and dislocation among the tribes to the north. At first, he suggested collecting tribute from the Indians,[48] as was common among the various dominant tribes, but his demands were simply ignored by the Tappan and Wecquaesgeek. Subsequently, a colonist was murdered in an act of revenge for some killings that had taken place years earlier and the Indians refused to turn over the perpetrator. Kieft suggested that they be taught a lesson by ransacking their villages. In an attempt to gain public support, he created the citizens commission the Council of Twelve Men.

The Council did not rubber-stamp his ideas, as he had expected them to, but took the opportunity to mention grievances that they had with the company's mismanagement and its unresponsiveness to their suggestions. Kieft thanked and disbanded them and, against their advice, ordered that groups of Tappan and Wecquaesgeek be attacked at Pavonia and Corlear's Hook, even though they had sought refuge from their more powerful Mohican enemies per their treaty understandings with the Dutch. The massacre left 130 dead. Within days, the surrounding tribes united and rampaged the countryside, in a unique move, forcing settlers who escaped to find safety at Fort Amsterdam. For two years, a series of raids and reprisals raged across the province, until 1645 when Kieft's War ended with a treaty, in a large part brokered by the Hackensack sagamore Oratam.[22]

The colonists were disenchanted with Kieft, his ignorance of indigenous peoples, and the unresponsiveness of the GWC to their rights and requests, and they submitted the Remonstrance of New Netherland to the States General.[49] This document was written by Leiden-educated New Netherland lawyer Adriaen van der Donck, condemning the GWC for mismanagement and demanding full rights as citizens of the province of the Netherlands.[24]

St. Mark's Church in-the-Bowery, site of Peter Stuyvesant's grave

Peter Stuyvesant arrived in New Amsterdam in 1647, the only governor of the colony to be called Director-General. Some years earlier land ownership policy was liberalized and trading was somewhat deregulated, and many New Netherlanders considered themselves entrepreneurs in a free market. The population had reached about 15,000, including 500 on Manhattan Island.[24]

During the period of his governorship, the province experienced exponential growth.[46] Demands were made upon Stuyvesant from all sides: the GWC, the States General, and the New Netherlanders. Dutch territory was being nibbled at by the English to the north and the Swedes to the south, while in the heart of the province the Esopus were trying to contain further Dutch expansion. Discontent in New Amsterdam led locals to dispatch Adriaen van der Donck back to the United Provinces to seek redress. After nearly three years of legal and political wrangling, the Dutch Government came down against the GWC, granting the colony a measure of self-government and recalling Stuyvesant in April 1652. However, the orders were rescinded with the outbreak of the First Anglo-Dutch War a month later.[24] Military battles were occurring in the Caribbean and along the South Atlantic coast. In 1654, the Netherlands lost New Holland in Brazil to Portugal, encouraging some of its residents to emigrate north and making the North American colonies more appealing to some investors. The Esopus Wars are so named for the branch of Lenape that lived around Wiltwijck, today's Kingston, which was the Dutch settlement on the west bank of Hudson River between Beverwyk and New Amsterdam. These conflicts were generally over settlement of land by New Netherlanders for which contracts had not been clarified, and were seen by the natives as an unwanted incursion into their territory. Previously, the Esopus, a clan of the Munsee Lenape, had much less contact with the River Indians and the Mohawks.[50] According to historian Eleanor Bruchey:

Peter Stuyvesant was essentially a difficult man thrust into a difficult position. Quick tempered, self-confident, and authoritarian, he was determined...to rule firmly and to repair the fortunes of the company. The company, however, had run the colony solely for trade profits, with scant attention to encouraging immigration and developing local government. Stuyvesant's predecessors...had been dishonest or, at best, inept, so there was no tradition of respect and support for the governorship on which he could build. Furthermore, the colonists were vocal and quick to challenge authority....Throughout his administration there were constant complaints to the company of his tyrannical acts and pressure for more local self-government....His religious intolerance also exacerbated relations with the colonists, most of whom did not share his narrow outlook.[51]

Apart from the second Fort Nassau, and the small community that supported it, settlement along the Zuyd Rivier was limited. An attempt by patroons of Zwaanendael, Samuel Blommaert and Samuel Godijn was destroyed by the local population soon after its founding in 1631 during the absence of their agent, David Pietersen de Vries.

Peter Minuit, who had construed a deed for Manhattan (and was soon after dismissed as director), knew that the Dutch would be unable to defend the southern flank of their North American territory and had not signed treaties with or purchased land from the Minquas. After gaining the support from the Queen of Sweden, he chose the southern banks of the Delaware Bay to establish a colony there, which he did in 1638, calling it Fort Christina, New Sweden. As expected, the government at New Amsterdam took no other action than to protest. Other settlements sprang up as colony grew, mostly populated by Swedes, Finns, Germans, and Dutch. In 1651, Fort Nassau was dismantled and relocated in an attempt to disrupt trade and reassert control, receiving the name Fort Casimir. Fort Beversreede was built in the same year, but was short-lived. In 1655, Stuyvesant led a military expedition and regained control of the region, calling its main town "New Amstel" (Nieuw-Amstel).[59] During this expedition, some villages and plantations at the Manhattans (Pavonia and Staten Island) were attacked in an incident that is known as the Peach Tree War.[24] These raids are sometimes considered revenge for the murder of an Indian girl attempting to pluck a peach, though it was likely that they were a retaliation for the attacks at New Sweden.[24][60] A new experimental settlement was begun in 1673, just before the British takeover in 1674. Franciscus van den Enden had drawn up charter for a utopian society that included equal education of all classes, joint ownership of property, and a democratically elected government.[24] Pieter Corneliszoon Plockhoy attempted such a settlement near the site of Zwaanendael, but it soon expired under English rule.[61]

Nicolaes Visscher I (1618–1679), Novi Belgii Novæque Angliæ, reprint of 1685 which is not a completely correct representation of the situation at the time. The border with New England had been adjusted to 50 miles (80 km) west of the Fresh River, while the Lange Eylandt towns west of Oyster Bay were under Dutch jurisdiction.

Few Dutch settlers to New Netherland made their home at Fort Goede Hoop on the Fresh River. As early as 1637, English settlers from the Massachusetts Bay Colony began to settle along its banks and on Lange Eylandt, some with permission from the colonial government and others with complete disregard for it. The English colonies grew more rapidly than New Netherland as they were motivated by a desire to establish communities with religious roots, rather than for trade purposes. The wal or rampart was originally built at Wall Street due to fear of an invasion by the English.

Initially, there was limited contact between New Englanders and New Netherlanders, but the two provinces engaged in direct diplomatic relations with a swelling English population and territorial disputes. The New England Confederation was formed in 1643 as a political and military alliance of the English colonies of Massachusetts, Plymouth, Connecticut, and New Haven.[62] Connecticut and New Haven were actually on land claimed by the United Provinces, but the Dutch were unable to populate or militarily defend their territorial claim and therefore could do nothing but protest the growing flood of English settlers. With the 1650 Treaty of Hartford, Stuyvesant provisionally ceded the Connecticut River region to New England, drawing New Netherland's eastern border 50 Dutch miles (approximately 250 km) west of the Connecticut's mouth on the mainland and just west of Oyster Bay on Long Island. The Dutch West India Company refused to recognize the treaty, but it failed to reach any other agreement with the English, so the Hartford Treaty set the de facto border. Connecticut mostly assimilated into New England.

The concept of tolerance was the mainstay of the province's Dutch mother country. The Dutch Republic was a haven for many religious and intellectual refugees fleeing oppression, as well as home to the world's major ports in the newly developing global economy. Concepts of religious freedom and free-trade (including a stock market) were Netherlands imports. In 1682, visiting Virginian William Byrd commented about New Amsterdam that "they have as many sects of religion there as at Amsterdam".

The Dutch Republic was one of the first nation-states of Europe where citizenship and civil liberties were extended to large segments of the population. The framers of the U.S. Constitution were influenced by the Constitution of the Republic of the United Provinces, though that influence was more as an example of things to avoid than of things to imitate.[74] In addition, the Act of Abjuration, essentially the declaration of independence of the United Provinces from the Spanish throne, is strikingly similar to the later American Declaration of Independence,[75] though there is no concrete evidence that one influenced the other. John Adams went so far as to say that "the origins of the two Republics are so much alike that the history of one seems but a transcript from that of the other."[76] The Articles of Capitulation (outlining the terms of transfer to the English) in 1664[66] provided for the right to worship as one wished, and were incorporated into subsequent city, state, and national constitutions in the United States, and are the legal and cultural code that lies at the root of the New York Tri-State traditions.[77]

Many prominent U.S. citizens are Dutch American directly descended from the Dutch families of New Netherland.[78] The Roosevelt family produced two Presidents and are descended from Claes van Roosevelt, who emigrated around 1650.[79] The Van Buren family of President Martin Van Buren, who even spoke Dutch as his first language, also originated in New Netherland.[9] The Bush family descendants from Flora Sheldon are descendants from the Schuyler family.

The Prinsenvlag or "Prince's Flag", featuring the blue, white, and orange of some flags in the region

The blue, white, and orange on the flags of New York City, Albany and Jersey City are those of the Prinsenvlag ("Prince's Flag"), introduced in the 17th century as the Statenvlag ("States Flag"), the naval flag of the States General of the Netherlands. The flag and seal of Nassau County depicting the arms of the House of Nassau in the middle. The seven arrows in the lion's claw in the Dutch Republic's coat of arms was a precedent for the thirteen arrows in the eagle's claw in the Great Seal of the United States.[80]

Washington Irving's satirical A History of New York and its famous fictional author Diedrich Knickerbocker had a large impact on the popular view of New Netherland's legacy. Irving's romantic vision of a Dutch yeomanry dominated the popular imagination about the colony since its publication in 1809.[81] The tradition of Santa Claus is thought to have developed from a gift-giving celebration of the feast of Saint Nicholas on December 5 each year by the settlers of New Netherland.[24][82] The Dutch Sinterklaas was changed to "Santa Claus", a name first used in the American press in 1773,[83] when Nicholas was used as a symbol of New York's non-British past.[84] However, many of the "traditions" of Santa Claus may have simply been invented by Irving in his 1809 Knickerbocker's History of New York from The Beginning of the World To the End of The Dutch Dynasty.[82]

The Noort Rivier was one of the three main rivers in New Netherland.

Dutch continued to be spoken in the region for some time. President Martin Van Buren grew up in Kinderhook, New York speaking only Dutch, becoming the only president not to have spoken English as a first language.[85] A dialect known as Jersey Dutch was spoken in and around rural Bergen and Passaic counties in New Jersey until the early 20th century.[86] Mohawk Dutch was spoken around Albany.[87]

Early settlers and their descendants gave many place names that are still in use throughout the region of New Netherland.[9] They adapted Indian names for locations such as Manhattan, Hackensack, Sing-Sing, and Canarsie. Peekskill, Catskill, and Cresskill all refer to the streams, or kils, around which they grew. Among those that use hoek, meaning corner,[88] are Constable Hook, Kinderhook, Paulus Hook, Red Hook, and Sandy Hook.

• Narratives of New Netherland, 1609–1664 (1909), edited by J.F. Jameson, at the Project Gutenberg
  • online edition Narratives of New Netherland, 1609–1664 from Google Books
• Van Der Donck, Adriaen. A Description of New Netherland (1655; new ed. 2008) 208 pp. ISBN 978-0-8032-1088-2.
  • online edition of A Description of New Netherland
• Still, Bayrd, ed. Mirror for Gotham: New York as Seen by Contemporaries from Dutch Days to the Present (1956) online pp 3–14.
• Several primary sources (both translated and in the original Dutch) can be found in Online Publications at the website of the New Netherland Institute. Also included on the NNI site is a comprehensive list of scholarly, nonfiction publications broadly related to the seventeenth-century Dutch colony and its legacy in America.

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