The Dutch West India Company was a Dutch chartered company founded in 1621 and went defunct in 1792. Among its founders were Reynier Pauw, Willem Usselincx (1567–1647), and Jessé de Forest (1576–1624). On 3 June 1621, it was granted a charter for a trade monopoly in the Dutch West Indies by the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands and given jurisdiction over Dutch participation in the Atlantic slave trade, Brazil, the Caribbean, and North America.
New Amsterdam was a 17th-century Dutch settlement established at the southern tip of Manhattan Island that served as the seat of the colonial government in New Netherland. The initial trading factory gave rise to the settlement around Fort Amsterdam. The fort was situated on the strategic southern tip of the island of Manhattan and was meant to defend the fur trade operations of the Dutch West India Company in the North River. In 1624, it became a provincial extension of the Dutch Republic and was designated as the capital of the province in 1625. New Amsterdam became a city when it received municipal rights on February 2, 1653.
New Netherland was a 17th-century colonial province of the Dutch Republic located on the East Coast of what is now the United States of America. The claimed territories extended from the Delmarva Peninsula to Cape Cod. Settlements were established in what became the states of New York, New Jersey, Delaware, and Connecticut, with small outposts in Pennsylvania and Rhode Island.
Peter Minuit was a Walloon merchant born in Wesel, in present-day northwestern Germany. He was the 3rd Director of the Dutch North American colony of New Netherland from 1626 until 1631, and 3rd Governor of New Netherland. He founded the Swedish colony of New Sweden on the Delaware Peninsula in 1638.
The Netherlands began its colonization of the Americas with the establishment of trading posts and plantations, which preceded the much wider known colonization activities of the Dutch in Asia. While the first Dutch fort in Asia was built in 1600 in present-day Indonesia, the first forts and settlements along the Essequibo River in Guyana date from the 1590s. Actual colonization, with the Dutch settling in the new lands, was not as common as by other European nations.
Jan Pieterszoon Coen was a Dutch naval officer of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) in the early 17th century, holding two terms as governor-general of the Dutch East Indies. He was the founder of Batavia, capital of the Dutch East Indies. Renowned for providing the impulse that set the VOC on the path to dominance in the Dutch East Indies, he was long considered a national hero in the Netherlands. Since the 19th century, his legacy has become controversial due to the brutal violence he employed in order to secure a trade monopoly on nutmeg, mace and clove. He led the final Dutch conquest of the Banda Islands in 1621, which culminated in the Banda massacre, which saw 2,800 Bandanese killed and 1,700 enslaved by the Dutch. This is regarded as an act of genocide and earned him the nickname of 'Butcher of Banda'.
Adriaen Courtsen Block was a Dutch private trader, privateer, and ship's captain who is best known for exploring the coastal and river valley areas between present-day New Jersey and Massachusetts during four voyages from 1611 to 1614, following the 1609 expedition by Henry Hudson. He is noted for possibly having named Block Island, Rhode Island, and establishing early trade with the Native Americans, and for the 1614 map of his last voyage on which many features of the mid-Atlantic region appear for the first time, and on which the term New Netherland is first applied to the region. He is credited with being the first European to enter Long Island Sound and the Connecticut River, and to determine that Manhattan and Long Island are islands.
Kiliaen van Rensselaer was a Dutch diamond and pearl merchant from Amsterdam who was one of the founders and directors of the Dutch West India Company, being instrumental in the establishment of New Netherland.
Halve Maen was a Dutch East India Company jacht that sailed into what is now New York Harbor in September 1609. She had a length of 21 metres and was commissioned by the VOC Chamber of Amsterdam in the Dutch Republic to covertly find a northern passage to Asia. The ship was captained by Henry Hudson, an Englishman in the service of the Dutch Republic.
Cornelis Jacobsen Mey, often spelled Cornelius Jacobsz May in Dutch, was a 17th-century Dutch explorer, captain, and fur trader. Mey was the first director of New Netherland and was stationed at Fort Amsterdam. Mey was the captain of the ship Nieu Nederlandt, which delivered the first boatload of colonists to New Netherland in north-east America.
Hendrick de Keyser was a Dutch sculptor, merchant in Belgium bluestone, and architect who was instrumental in establishing a late Renaissance form of Mannerism changing into Baroque. Most of his works appeared in Amsterdam, some elsewhere in the Dutch Republic. He was the father of Pieter and Thomas de Keyser and Willem, and the uncle of Huybert de Keyser, who became his apprentices and all involved in building, decoration and architecture.
Rensselaerswyck was a Dutch colonial patroonship and later an English manor owned by the van Rensselaer family located in the present-day Capital District of New York in the United States.
Adriaen Cornelissen van der Donck was a lawyer and landowner in New Netherland after whose honorific Jonkheer the city of Yonkers, New York, is named. Although he was not, as sometimes claimed, the first lawyer in the Dutch colony, Van der Donck was a leader in the political life of New Amsterdam, and an activist for Dutch-style republican government in the Dutch West India Company-run trading post.
A chartered company is an association with investors or shareholders that is incorporated and granted rights by royal charter for the purpose of trade, exploration, or colonization, or a combination of these.
Pavonia was the first European settlement on the west bank of the North River that was part of the seventeenth-century province of New Netherland in what would become the present Hudson County, New Jersey.
New Netherlanders, also known as the Holland Dutch, were residents of New Netherland, the seventeenth-century colonial outpost of the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands on the northeastern coast of North America, centered on the Hudson River and New York Bay, and in the Delaware Valley.
New Netherland, or Nieuw-Nederland in Dutch, was the 17th century colony of the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands on the northeastern coast of North America. The claimed territory included southern Cape Cod to parts of the Delmarva Peninsula. Settled areas are now part of the Mid-Atlantic states of New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Delaware and Pennsylvania. Its capital, New Amsterdam, was located at the southern tip of the island of Manhattan on Upper New York Bay.
Isaac Le Maire was a Dutch entrepreneur, investor, and a sizeable shareholder of the Dutch East India Company (VOC). He is best known for his constant strife with the VOC, which ultimately led to the discovery of Cape Horn.
The Charter of Freedoms and Exemptions, sometimes referred to as the Charter of Privileges and Exemptions, is a document written by the Dutch West India Company in an effort to settle its colony of New Netherland in North America through the establishment of feudal patroonships purchased and supplied by members of the West India Company. Its 31 articles establish ground rules and expectations of the patroons and inhabitants of the new colonies. It was ratified by the Dutch States-General on June 7, 1629.
