The population of New Netherland was not all ethnically Dutch,[1] but had a variety of ethnic and linguistic backgrounds, including: other European ethnic groups (Germans, Scandinavians, French, Scots, English, Irish, Italians, and Croats); indigenous Amerindian tribes such as Algonquians and Iroquoians; Sephardic Jews (Jews of Spanish and Portuguese backgrounds) both from the Netherlands itself and the then-recently lost colony of Dutch Brazil; and West Africans, the last mostly having been brought as slaves.[2]
Though the colony officially existed only between 1609 and 1674, the descendants of the original settlers played a prominent role in colonial America. New Netherland culture characterized the region (today's Capital District, Hudson Valley, New York City, western Long Island, northern New Jersey and the Delaware Valley) for two centuries. The concepts of civil liberties and pluralism introduced in the province would later become a mainstay of American political and social life.
Background
In 1621, the Dutch West India Company was founded for the purpose of trade. The WIC was chartered by the States-General and given the authority to make contracts and alliances with princes and natives, build forts, administer justice, appoint and discharge governors, soldiers, and public officers, and promote trade in New Netherland.[3] The colonial administration was relatively autonomous and the Company preferred to rule through agreements with local leaders.
On the Atlantic coast were their bases for the slave trade and smuggling. In the Caribbean and partly in Brazil and Suriname, plantations were worked by native Indians and African slaves.[4] There were around 1,000 whites there, joined by Brazilian Jews, attracted by religious freedom which was granted to all the settlers.
History
The Dutch set up two forts, Fort Nassau in 1614 and Fort Orange in 1624, both named for the Dutch noble House of Orange-Nassau. New Amsterdam was founded in 1624. The ship Nieu Nederlandt departed with the first settlers, consisting of thirty Flemish Walloon families. The families were spread out over the entire territory claimed by the company. To the north a few families were left at the mouth of the Connecticut River, while to the south some families were settled at Burlington Island on the Delaware River. Others were left on Nut Island at the mouth of the Hudson River, while the remaining families were taken up the Hudson to Fort Orange. Later in 1624 and through 1625 six additional ships sailed for New Netherland with colonists, livestock and supplies.
The southern outpost on the Delaware Bay was discontinued to focus the Company's resources on the area around New Amsterdam. The Dutch finally established a garrison at Bergen, which allowed settlement west of the Hudson within the province of New Netherland. Due to a war between the Mohawk and Mahican tribes in 1625, the women and children upriver at Fort Orange were re-located. In the spring of 1626, Minuit arrived to succeed Willem Verhulst, who had authorized the construction of a fort at the tip of Manhattan Island. Fort Amsterdam was designed by Cryn Fredericksz. Construction started in 1625.
In 1630, the managers of the West India Company, in order to tempt the ambition of capitalists, offered certain exclusive privileges to the members of the company. The realization that greater inducements had to be offered to increase the development of the colony led the West India Company to the creation of the so-called "patroon system". In 1629, the West India Company issued its charter of "Freedoms and Exemptions" by which it was declared that any member of the Company who could bring to and settle 50 persons over the age of 15 in New Netherland, should receive a liberal grant of land to hold as patroon, or lord, with the exception, per Article III, of the island of Manhattan. This land could have a frontage of 16 miles (26km) if on one side of a river, or 8 miles (13km) if situated on both sides. The patroon would be chief magistrate on his land, but disputes of more than 50 guilders could be appealed to the Director and his Council in New Amsterdam. The first of this vast estate or colony was established in 1630, on the banks of the Hudson River. Over a period of four years was entitled to a plot with 25 miles of front to the river, with exclusive rights to hunting and fishing, and civil jurisdiction and criminal on earth. In turn, the patroon brought livestock, implements and buildings. Tenants pay rent to the agent and gave him first option on surplus crops. The only restriction was that the colony had to be outside the island of Manhattan.[3] A pattern of these colonies was the Manor of Rensselaerswyck.
Though the region became a British colony in 1674, it retained its "Dutch" character for many years[8] as early settlers and their descendants developed the land and economy.
Population
Because of the dangers and hardships of life in the colony some colonists decided to return to the homeland in 1628. By 1630 the total population of New Netherland was about 300, many being French-speaking Walloons. It is estimated about 270 lived in the area surrounding Fort Amsterdam, primarily working as farmers, while about 30 were at Fort Orange, the center of the Hudson valley fur trade with the Mohawks.
Sephardi Jews arrived after the loss of Dutch Brazil.[19] King Manuel I of Portugal populated the São Tomé and Príncipe islands, in the slave trade route, with about 2,000 entrepreneur Sephardic Jews refugees after their expulsion from Spain. The first group of Spanish and Portuguese Jews arrived in New York (New Amsterdam) in September 1654.
Sarah Rapelje[20] was the first female child of European parentage born in the colony of New Netherland.[21][22]
An early settler from Africa was a wealthy Muslim, and land owner, Anthony Janszoon van Salee a religious refugee from Spain. From 1340 Portugal colonized islands in the Atlantic. Colonization was a success and provided a growing population for other Atlantic colonies. The route from Europe passed through the Azores islands. By 1490 were 2,000 Flemings living in the islands of Terceira, Pico, Faial, São Jorge and Flores. Because there was such a large Flemish settlement, the Azores became known as the Flemish Islands or the Isles of Flanders. Prince Henry the Navigator was responsible for this settlement. His sister, Isabel, was married to Duke Philip of Burgundy who ruled Flanders. There were also Portuguese and Basque fishermen and sailors.
Pietro Cesare Alberti, from Venice, is regarded as the first Italian settler in what is now New York State, having arrived in New Amsterdam in 1635.
Language
Though Dutch was the official language, and likely the lingua franca of the province, it was but one of many spoken there,[23] as many as eighteen by the 1630s.[24] The Algonquin language had many dialects. Walloons and Huguenots tended to speak French. Scandinavians brought their tongues, as did the Germans. Africans may have spoken their mother tongues as well.[25] English was on the rise to become the vehicular language in world trade, and settlement by individuals or groups of English-speakers started early. The arrival of refugees from New Holland in Brazil may have brought more Portuguese, Spanish, and Judaeo-Spanish speakers. Commercial activity in the harbor, which included pirateering, could have been transacted simultaneously in any of a number of tongues. In some cases people Batavianized their names[26][27] to conform with the Dutch vernacular and official language, which also greatly influenced place naming.
English language speakers mostly arrived from New England and Long Island. In mid-seventeenth century, for political and religious unrest in England, emigrated to the Atlantic coast of North America, numerous Protestant Puritans, who settled in New Amsterdam. Among the early English settlers were two religious leaders, AnabaptistLady Deborah Moody in 1645 and Anne Hutchinson, who took refuge in the province, as well as Elizabeth Hallet (née Fones), niece of Massachusetts Governor John Winthrop, who sought refuge from religious persecution.
Religion
Although the Dutch West India Company had established the Reformed Church as the official religious institution of New Netherland,[28] the early Dutch settlers planted the concept of tolerance as a legal right in North America as per explicit orders in 1624. They had to attract, "through attitude and by example", the natives and nonbelievers to God's word "without, on the other hand, to persecute someone by reason of his religion, and to leave everyone the freedom of his conscience."
Relations with the Lenape
The arrival of the immigrants did not necessarily mean the departure of the indigenous people. There were fundamental differences in conceptions of property rights between the Europeans and the Lenape. The concept of ownership as understood by the Swannekins, or salt water people, was foreign to the Wilden, or natives.[29] The exchange of gifts in the form of sewant or manufactured goods was perceived as trade agreement and defense alliance which included farming, hunting, and fishing rights. Often, the Indians did not vacate the property or reappeared as their migrational patterns dictated.[26] The River Indians, such as the Wecquaesgeek, Hackensack, and Canarsee, within whose territories many European settlements were established, had regular and frequent contact with the New Netherlanders.
After the Dutch arrival in the 1620s, the Lenape were successful in restricting Dutch settlement until the 1660s to Pavonia in present-day Jersey City along the Hudson. The Lenape's quick adoption of trade goods, and their need to trap furs to meet high European demand, resulted in their disastrous over-harvesting of the beaver population in the lower Hudson Valley. With the fur resources exhausted, the Dutch shifted their operations to present-day upstate New York. While the Lenape produced wampum in the vicinity of Manhattan Island, temporarily forestalling the negative effects of this decline in trade,[30]
Dutch settlers founded a colony at present-day Lewes, Delaware, on June 3, 1631, and named it Zwaanendael (Swan Valley).[31] The colony had a short existence, as in 1632 a local band of Lenape Indians killed the 32 Dutch settlers after a misunderstanding escalated over Lenape defacement of the insignia of the Dutch West India Company.[32] In 1634, the Iroquoian-speaking Susquehannock went to war with the Lenape over access to trade with the Dutch at New Amsterdam. They defeated the Lenape, and some scholars believe that the Lenape may have become tributaries to the Susquehannock.[33] Lenape population fell, due mostly to epidemics of infectious diseases carried by Europeans, such as measles and smallpox, to which they had no natural immunity.
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 Netherland was a 17th-century colonial province of the Dutch Republic located on the east coast of what is now the United States. The claimed territories extended from the Delmarva Peninsula to southwestern Cape Cod, while limited settlements were in parts of the U.S. states of New York, New Jersey, Delaware, and Connecticut, with small outposts in Pennsylvania and Rhode Island.
Peter Minuit was a Walloon merchant from Tournai, in present-day Belgium. 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, 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.
Fort Amsterdam was a fortification on the southern tip of Manhattan Island at the confluence of the Hudson and East rivers. The fort and the island were the center of trade and the administrative headquarters for the Dutch and then British/Colonial rule of the colony, of New Netherland and thereafter the Province of New York. The fort was the nucleus of the settlement on the island which was named New Amsterdam and eventually renamed New York by the English, and was central to much of New York's early history.
Willem Verhulst or Willem van Hulst was an employee of the Dutch West India Company and the second (provisional) Director of the New Netherland colony in 1625–26. Nothing can be verified about his life before and after this period. Verhulst may have consummated the purchase of Manhattan Island on behalf of the Dutch West India Company, although there is still considerable debate over the evidence that also supports the purchase by Peter Minuit.
The Peach Tree War, also known as the Peach War, was a large-scale attack on September 15, 1655 by the Susquehannock Indians and allied tribes on several New Netherland settlements along the North River.
The history of New York City has been influenced by the prehistoric geological formation during the last glacial period of the territory that is today New York City. The area was long inhabited by the Lenape; after initial European exploration in the 16th century, the Dutch established New Amsterdam in 1626. In 1664, the British conquered the area and renamed it New York.
Cornelis Jacobsen Mey, often spelled Cornelius Jacobsz May in Dutch, was a 17th century 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 New Netherland which delivered the first boat load of colonists to New Netherland in north-east America.
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.
Kieft's War (1643–1645), also known as the Wappinger War, was a conflict between the colonial province of New Netherland and the Wappinger and Lenape Indians in what is now New York and New Jersey. It is named for Director-General of New Netherland Willem Kieft, who had ordered an attack without the approval of his advisory council and against the wishes of the colonists. Dutch colonists attacked Lenape camps and massacred the inhabitants, which encouraged unification among the regional Algonquian tribes against the Dutch and precipitated waves of attacks on both sides. This was one of the earliest conflicts between settlers and Indians in the region. The Dutch West India Company was displeased with Kieft and recalled him, but he died in a shipwreck while returning to the Netherlands; Peter Stuyvesant succeeded him in New Netherland. Numerous Dutch settlers returned to the Netherlands because of the continuing threat from the Algonquians, and growth slowed in the colony.
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.
David Pieterszoon de Vries was a Dutch navigator from Hoorn.
Vriessendael was a patroonship on the west bank of the Hudson River in New Netherland, the seventeenth century North American colonial province of the Dutch Empire. The homestead or plantation was located on a tract of about 500 acres (2.0 km2) about an hour's walk north of Communipaw at today's Edgewater. It has also been known as Tappan, which referred to the wider region of the New Jersey Palisades, rising above the river on both sides of the New York/New Jersey state line, and to the indigenous people who lived there and were part of wider group known as Lenape. It was established in 1640 by David Pietersen de Vries, a Dutch sea captain, explorer, and trader who had also established settlements at the Zwaanendael Colony and on Staten Island. The name can roughly be translated as De Vries' Valley. De Vries also owned flatlands along the Hackensack River, in the area named by the Dutch settlers Achter Col. Parts of Vriessendael were destroyed in 1643 in reprisal for the slaughter of Tappan and Wecquaesgeek Native Americans who had taken refuge at Pavonia and Corlears Hook. The patroon's relatively good relations with the Lenape prevented the murder of the plantation's residents, who were able to seek sanctuary in the main house, and later flee to New Amsterdam. The incident was one of the first of many to take place during Kieft's War, a series of often bloody conflicts with bands of Lenape, who had united in face of attacks ordered by the Director of New Netherland.
Bergen was a part of the 17th century province of New Netherland, in the area in northeastern New Jersey along the Hudson and Hackensack Rivers that would become contemporary Hudson and Bergen Counties. Though it only officially existed as an independent municipality from 1661, with the founding of a village at Bergen Square, Bergen began as a factory at Communipaw circa 1615 and was first settled in 1630 as Pavonia. These early settlements were along the banks of the North River across from New Amsterdam, under whose jurisdiction they fell.
Fort Nassau was a factorij in New Netherland between 1627–1651 located at the mouth of Big Timber Creek at its confluence with the Delaware River. It was the first known permanent European-built structure in what would become the state of New Jersey. The creek name is a derived from the Dutch language Timmer Kill as recorded by David Pietersen de Vries in his memoirs of his journey of 1630–1633. The Delaware Valley and its bay was called the "South River" ; the "North River" of the colony was the Hudson River. The factorij was established for the fur trade, mostly in beaver pelts, with the indigenous populations of Susquehannock, who spoke an Iroquoian language, and the Lenape, whose language was of the Algonquian family. They also wanted to retain a physical claim to the territory.
Fort Wilhelmus was a factorij in the 17th-century colonial province of New Netherland, located on what had been named Hooghe Eyland on the Zuyd Rivier, now Burlington Island in the Delaware River in New Jersey. More a trading post than a military installation, it was built in 1625 by colonists from the Netherlands in the employ of the Dutch West India Company, with the intention of establishing a physical claim to the new territory and to engage in the fur trade with the indigenous population of Lenape and Minqua. The Walloon families had originally arrived at Noten Island across from New Amsterdam in the Upper New York Bay, They had been sent south in order to begin the population of the province of New Netherland. They were later recalled to Fort Amsterdam since the Dutch West India Company had decided to concentrate their settlement efforts along the North River, or Hudson River.
New Netherland was the 17th century colonial province of the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands on the northeastern coast of North America. The claimed territory was the land from the Delmarva Peninsula to southern Cape Cod. The settled areas are now part of the Mid-Atlantic states of New York, New Jersey, and Delaware, with small outposts in Connecticut and Pennsylvania. Its capital of New Amsterdam was located at the southern tip of the island of Manhattan on the Upper New York Bay.
Cornelis Melyn was an early Dutch settler in New Netherland and Patroon of Staten Island. He was the chairman of the council of eight men, which was a part of early steps toward representative democracy in the Dutch colony.
Joris Jansen Rapelje was a member of the Council of Twelve Men in the Dutch West India Company colony of New Netherland. He and his wife Catalina (Catalyntje) Trico (1605–1689) were among the earliest settlers in New Netherland.
↑ Paumgarten, Nick (September 2009). "Useless Beauty - What is to be done with Governors Island?". The New Yorker (LXXXV, No 26ed.). p.56. ISSN0028-792X.
↑ Black History. Innerexplorations.com. Retrieved on 2013-07-23.
↑ Hodges, Russel Graham (1999). Root and Branch: African Americans in New York and East Jersey, 1613-1863. Chapel Hill, North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press.
↑ A Fiske, John, The Dutch and Quaker Colonies in America, Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1902, Chapter XVII
↑ Bergen, Teunis G. (1876). "The Bergen Family - or the descendants of Hans Hansen Bergen". J. Munsell, Albany, New York.
↑ Shorto, Russell (2004). The Island at the Center of the World, The Epic Story of Dutch Manhattan and the Forgotten Colony That Shaped America. Doubleday. New York.
1 2 Shorto, Russell (2004). The Island at the Center of the World: The Epic Story of Dutch Manhattan and the Forgotten Colony that Shaped America. Random House. ISBN1-4000-7867-9.
↑ The American historian Charles W. Baird, in his book History of the Huguenot Emigration to America, qualified this type of abuse as "Batavian disguise".
↑ Wentz. A Basic History of Lutheranism in America. p.6.
↑ Ruttenber, E.M.,Indian Tribes of Hudson's River, ISBN0-910746-98-2 (Hope Farm Press, 3rd ed, 2001)
↑ Otto, Paul, 91 The Dutch-Munsee Encounter in America: The Struggle for Sovereignty in the Hudson Valley. New York: Berghahn Press, 2006.
↑ Munroe, John A.: Colonial Delaware: A History: Millwood, New York: KTO Press; 1978; pp. 9-12
↑ Cook, Albert Myers. Narratives of Early Pennsylvania, West New Jersey and Delaware 1630-1707. Charles Scribner's Sons, 1912, p. 9
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