A brief outline of the History of New Netherland was published on U-S-history.com.
The colony of the Dutch Republic that is now the United States was called New Netherland.The territories from the Delmarva Peninsula to southwestern Cape Cod are now part of New York, New Jersey, Delaware, and Connecticut, with small outposts in Pennsylvania and Rhode Island.
The Dutch West India Company conceived the colony in 1621 to take advantage of the North American fur trade.It took a long time because of policy mismanagement and conflicts with Native Americans.The eastern border of New Sweden was redrawn to accommodate the expansion of the New England confederation.
During the 1650s, the colony became a major port for trade in the north Atlantic Ocean.Fort Amsterdam was surrendered to England in 1664 as part of the Second Anglo-Dutch War.The Third Anglo-Dutch War ended in 1974 after the Dutch relinquished the area.
Europeans, Native Americans, and Africans were brought to New Netherland as slave laborers.At the time of transfer to England in 1674, the colonial population was 1,500 to 2,000, but many of them were not of Dutch descent.[5][6]
The Dutch Golden Age in the Netherlands occurred during the 17th century and was characterized by expansive social, cultural, and economic growth.Nations vied for dominance of lucrative trade routes.Military battles throughout the European continent were caused by philosophical and theological conflicts.Many intellectuals, international businessmen, and religious refugees lived in the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands.The English had a settlement at Virginia, the French had small settlements at Port Royal and Quebec, and the Spanish had colonies in the Americas.[8]
Henry Hudson was hired by the Dutch East India Company to find a Northeast Passage to Asia in 1609.He sailed west to seek a Northwest Passage after being turned back in his second attempt.The Flyboat Halve Maen was used to explore the waters off the east coast of America.His first and second landfalls were at Newfoundland and Cape Cod.
Hudson believed that the passage to the Pacific Ocean was between the St. Lawrence River and the Bay.He began to sail up the river looking for the passage.The Halve Maen continued north.Hudson and his crew entered the Upper New York Bay after passing Sandy Hook.The modern bridge over the Narrows is named after Giovanni da Verrazzano, the explorer who documented them.Hudson sailed up the major river that now bears his name because he believed he had found the continental water route.The site of Troy, New York was too shallow for him to go to.[2]
Hudson reported that he had found a fertile land and people willing to engage his crew in small-scale bartering of furs, trinkets, clothes, and small manufactured goods.Emanuel Van Meteren, the Dutch Consul at London, published his report in 1611.The catalyst for Dutch merchant-traders to fund more expeditions was stimulated by this.Merchants sent follow-up voyages to exploit the discovery as early as July 1610.[9]
In 1611–12, the Admiralty of Amsterdam sent two covert expeditions to find a passage to China with the yacht Craen and Vos.Between 1611 and 1614, Adriaen Block, Hendrick Christiaensen, and Cornelius Jacobsen Mey explored and mapped the area between Maryland and Massachusetts.Block's map used the name New Netherland for the first time, and it was also called Nova Belgica on maps.There was some trading with the Indian population.
Juan Rodriguez was born in Santo Domingo to Portuguese and African parents.During the winter of 1613–14, he arrived in Manhattan, trapping and trading with the Indians as a representative of the Dutch.He was the first non-native to live in New York City.There are 13 and 14 days.
There were disputes in Amsterdam because of the intense competition among Dutch trading companies.On March 17, 1614, the States General proclaimed that it would grant an exclusive patent for trade between the 40th and 45th parallels.All four voyages had to be done within three years of the award.The New Netherland Company used Adrian Block's map to win a patent that expired on January 1, 1618.[16]
In 1616, the New Netherland Company ordered a survey of the Delaware Valley, and the Monnickendam man explored the Zuyd Rivier from its bay to its northernmost reaches.His observations were preserved in a map.The IJseren Vercken is a vessel built in America.The company was unable to get an exclusive patent from the States General for the area between the 38th and 40th parallels.[17]
In 1614, the States General issued patents for the development of New Netherland as a private, commercial venture.Fort Nassau was built in the area of Albany up the Hudson's river.The fort was built to protect river traffic and conduct fur trading with the Indians.Due to repeated flooding of the island in the summers, the fort was abandoned when the patent expired.
On June 3, 1621, the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands granted a charter to the Dutch West India Company, giving it the exclusive right to operate in West Africa.[19]
The idea that the company should establish colonies in the New World was promoted by one of the founding fathers.The States General rejected Usselincx's vision as a primary goal in 1620.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 didn't focus on colonization in America until 1654 when it was forced to surrender Dutch Brazil and the richest sugar-production area in the world.
The first trading partners of the New Netherlanders were the Algonquins.The Dutch depended on the Indians to capture, skin, and deliver their goods.Fort Nassau, the first garrisoned trading station, was established in 1614 due to Hudson's peaceful contact with the Mahicans.The Mahicans retreated to Connecticut in 1628 after being conquered by the Mohawks.The Mohawks controlled the upstate Adirondacks and Mohawk Valley through the center of New York in the fur trade with the Dutch.[21]
Around New York Bay and along the lower Hudson River, there were seasonal migrational people.The River Indians were referred to by the Dutch as the Wecquaes Geek, Canarsee, and Tappans.The New Netherlanders had frequent contact with these groups.The Munsee lived in the Highlands, Hudson Valley, and northern New Jersey, while the Susquehannocks lived west of the Delaware River.
The land was required 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.The Indians referred to the Dutch colonists as Swannekins, or salt water people, and they had vastly different conceptions of ownership and use of land.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.According to their migration patterns, the Indians did not leave the property often.The Indians were willing to share the land with the colonists, but they didn't want to leave or give up access.There were differences that led to violent conflict later.The beginnings of a multicultural society were marked by the differences.[23]
The Dutch were interested in the fur trade.To obtain greater access to key central regions from which the skins came, they cultivated contingent relations with the Five Nations of the Iroquois.
The Charter of Freedoms and Exemptions was a system of feudal aristocracy that the Dutch encouraged to attract settlers to the region of the Hudson River.Three years later, a Swedish trading company with ties to the Dutch tried to establish a settlement along the Delaware River.New Sweden was 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", a Dutch ship that caught fire while sailing on the Hudson.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.
The Dutch built a fort at the confluence of the Hudson and Mohawk Rivers.The Dutch Republic lowered the northern border of North America to 42 degrees latitude in acknowledgment of the claim by the English north of Cape Cod.The Zuyd Rivier is one of the three main rivers in the province.Maintaining a territorial claim required discovery, charting, and permanent settlement.The WIC landed 30 families at Fort Orange and Noten Eylant at the mouth of the North River.They disembarked from the New Netherland under the command of the first Director.He was replaced by another person.
In June 1625, 45 additional colonists disembarked on Noten Eylant from three ships named Horse, Cow, and Sheep, which delivered 103 horses, steers, cows, pigs and sheep.Most of the settlers were dispersed to the various garrisons built across the territory.Many of the settlers were not Dutch but Walloons, French Huguenots or Africans, and some later gained "half-free" status.[28][29]
The new colony was greatly affected by Peter Minuit's decision to become Director of the New Netherland.The capital of the province was supposed to be located on the South River, but it was discovered that the area was prone to mosquito problems in the summer and winter.At that time, the North River was called the island of Manhattan.
In one of the most legendary real estate deals ever made, 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, which became The Manhattoes, the heart of the province.[32]
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.Sanctioned privateering contributed to its growth.The isle of Manhattan was included in the Commonality of New Amsterdam when it was given its municipal charter in 1653.[35]
The Dutch West India Company established the Charter of Freedoms and Exemptions in 1629 in order to encourage immigration.The title of patroonships gave powerful manorial rights and privileges, such as the creation of civil and criminal courts and the appointment of local officials.In return, a patroon was required by the Company to establish a settlement of at least 50 families within four years who would live as tenant farmers.Of the original five patents given, the largest and only truly successful endeavor was at the highest point on the North River, 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 the south of the patroonship in Esopus country.
The Director of New Netherland from 1638 to 1647 was Willem Kieft.The colony grew to 8,000 people in 1635.Kieft was under pressure to cut costs.Due to widespread warfare among the tribes to the north, Indian tribes which had signed mutual defense treaties with the Dutch were gathering near the colony.The Tappan and Wecquaesgeek ignored his demands when he suggested collecting tribute from the Indians.The Indians refused to turn over the person who killed the colonist in order to avenge some killings that had taken place years earlier.They should be taught a lesson by ransacking their villages.The citizens commission was created to gain public support.
The Council did not rubber-stamp his ideas, as he had expected, but they did mention the company's mismanagement and unresponsiveness to their suggestions.Kieft 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 enemies.130 people were killed in the massacre.The surrounding tribes rampaged the countryside and forced settlers to escape to Fort Amsterdam.After Kieft's War ended in 1645, a series of raids and reprisals took place across the province.[21]
The colonists submitted the Remonstrance of New Netherland to the States General because they were dissatisfied with Kieft, his knowledge of indigenous peoples, and the unresponsiveness of the WIC to their rights and requests.The document was written by a New Netherland lawyer, Adriaen van der Donck, condemning the WIC for mismanagement and demanding full rights as citizens of the Netherlands.[23]
The only governor of the colony to be called Director-General was Peter Stuyvesant.Many New Netherlanders considered themselves entrepreneurs in a free market when land ownership policy was liberalized a few years ago.500 people were on Manhattan Island.[23]
The province experienced rapid growth during his time as governor.The West India Company, the States General, and the New Netherlanders made demands on Stuyvesant.The English and Swedes were encroaching on Dutch territory, while the Esopus were trying to contain the Dutch expansion.Adriaen van der Donck was sent back to the United Provinces due to unhappiness in New Amsterdam.The Dutch Government granted the colony a measure of self-government after nearly three years of legal and political wrangling.The First Anglo-Dutch War happened a month later.Military battles were taking place in the Caribbean and along the South Atlantic coast.The loss of New Holland in Brazil to Portugal in 1654 made the North American colonies more appealing to investors.The Esopus Wars were named after the branch of Lenape that lived around Kingston, which was the Dutch settlement on the west bank of the Hudson River.Conflicts over the settlement of land in the New Netherland were seen by the natives as an unwanted incursion into their territory.The River Indians and the Mohawks had less contact with the Esopus, a clan of the Munsee Lenape.Eleanor Bruchey is a historian.
New Netherland was not always a Dutch society.Peter Minuit was a Walloon born in Germany who spoke English and worked for a Dutch company.The term New Netherland Dutch refers to all the Europeans who came to live there, but may also refer to Africans, South Americans, and even the Indians who were part of the society.Dutch was the official language of the province and other languages were also spoken.Walloons and Huguenots tended to speak French, while the other countries brought their own tongues.The Africans on Manhattan probably spoke their mother tongues but were taught Dutch.The arrival of refugees from New Holland in Brazil may have brought speakers of Portuguese, Spanish, and Ladino.Commercial activity in the harbor could have been done in any of the tongues.[47]
The Dutch West India Company imported 11 black slaves in 1625 to work as farmers, fur traders, and builders.Families were usually kept intact and they had a few basic rights.They were admitted to the Dutch Reformed Church and married by its ministers.Slaves could bring civil actions against whites.Some people were allowed to work after hours.The company freed the slaves after the colony fell.48
The founding document of the Dutch Republic, the Union of Utrecht, states that "everyone shall remain free in religion and that no one may be investigated because of religion".The official religious institution of New Netherland was established by the Dutch West India Company.The Reformed Church in America is its successor church.The colonists had to attract the Indians and other non-believers to God's word, but not to persecute someone by reason of his religion, and to leave everyone the freedom of their conscience.The official granting of full residency for Ashkenazi and Sephardi Jews in New Amsterdam in 1655 was one of the two test cases that the rule prevailed in.It was 49 and 50.
Settlement along the Zuyd Rivier was limited, apart from the second Fort Nassau and the small community that supported it.The local population destroyed the attempt by the patroons of Zwaanendael, Samuel Blommaert and Samuel Godijn in 1631.
Peter Minuit knew that the Dutch would not be able to defend the southern flank of their North American territory because they had not signed treaties with or purchased land from the Minquas.In 1638, he established a colony on the southern banks of the Delaware Bay, calling it Fort Christina, New Sweden, after gaining support from the Queen of Sweden.The government at New Amsterdam protested.As colony grew, other settlements sprang up, mostly populated by Swedes, Finns, Germans, and Dutch.Fort Nassau was dismantled and relocated in 1651 in order to disrupt trade and regain control.Fort Beversreede was built in the same year.In 1655, Stuyvesant led a military expedition and regained control of the region.The Peach Tree War occurred when some villages and plantations at the Manhattans were attacked.These raids are sometimes considered to be revenge for the murder of an Indian girl who was trying to pick a peach.Just before the British takeover in 1674 a new experimental settlement was begun.A utopian society that included equal education of all classes, joint ownership of property, and a democratically elected government was drawn up by Franciscus van den Enden.There was a settlement near the site of Zwaanendael that expired under English rule.[52]
Fort Goede Hoop was the home of few Dutch settlers to New Netherland.As early as 1637, English settlers from the Massachusetts Bay Colony began to settle along its banks and on Lange Eylandt, some with the permission of the colonial government and others with complete disregard for it.The English colonies were more interested in establishing communities with religious roots than New Netherland was.The rampart was built at Wall Street because of fear of an English invasion.
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, Connecticut, and New Haven.Connecticut and New Haven were actually on land claimed by the United Provinces, but the Dutch were unable to defend their territorial claim due to the growing flood of English settlers.The Connecticut River region was ceded to New England by the 1650 Treaty of Hartford, drawing the New Netherland's eastern border west of Oyster Bay on Long Island.The Dutch West India Company refused to recognize the treaty because they didn't have an agreement with the English.Connecticut mostly moved to New England.
In March 1664, Charles II of England, Scotland, and Ireland decided to annex New Netherland and bring all his Kingdoms under one form of government.The directors of the Dutch West India Company concluded that the religious freedom that they offered in New Netherland would discourage the English from working towards their removal.They wrote to Peter Stuyvesant.
The English at the north would prefer to live free under us at peace with their consciences than to risk getting rid of us.[55]
On August 27, 1664, four English warships sailed into New Amsterdam's harbor and demanded the surrender of the New Netherland.They met no resistance to the capture of New Amsterdam because numerous citizens' requests had gone unheeded for protection by a Dutch garrison.The West India Company was indifferent to previous pleas for reinforcement of men and ships against "the continual troubles, threats, encroachments and invasions of the English neighbors".Stuyvesant was able to get good terms from his enemies.The principle of religious tolerance was secured by the council in the Articles of Surrender of New Netherland.The Articles were mostly observed in New Amsterdam and the Hudson River Valley, but were violated in another part of the conquest of New Netherland along the Delaware River, where Colonel Sir Robert Carr expropriated property for his own use and sold Dutch prisoners of war into slavery.Carr was forced to return some of the expropriated property.The settlement led by Plockhoy was destroyed.The status quo was maintained after the Treaty of Breda ended the Second Anglo-Dutch War, as the Dutch did not press their claims on New Netherland.
The nations were at war again within six years.The Dutch captured New Netherland in August 1673 with a fleet of 21 ships, the largest ever seen in America.They chose Anthony Colve as governor and renamed the city New Orange after William of Orange, who became King William III of England in 1689.The Dutch Republic was bankrupt after the conclusion of the Third Anglo-Dutch War, in which the French attacked the republic simultaneously with the English and the Prince-Bishop of Mnster.The States of Holland did not take on the responsibility for the New Netherland province.New Netherland was ceded to the English in November 1674.[62]
New Netherland left an enduring legacy on American cultural and political life because of its secular broadmindedness and mercantile pragmatism.It was during the early British colonial period that the New Netherlanders developed the land and society that had an enduring impact on the Capital District, the Hudson Valley, North Jersey, western Long Island, New York City, and ultimately the United States.[15]
The Dutch mother country of the province had a concept of tolerance.The Dutch Republic was home to many religious and intellectual refugees fleeing oppression, as well as the world's major ports in the newly developing global economy.The Netherlands imports religious freedom and free-trade."New Amsterdam has as many sects of religion as at Amsterdam", said William Byrd, a visiting Virginian in 1682.
citizenship and civil liberties were extended to large segments of the population in the Dutch Republic.The United States Constitution was influenced by the Republic of the United Provinces, but it was more of an example of avoiding things to imitate.There is no evidence that the Act of Abjuration influenced the American Declaration of Independence.The history of one Republic seems to be a transcript from the other, according to John Adams.The right to worship as one wished was provided for in the Articles of Capitulation, which were incorporated into subsequent city, state, and national constitutions of the United States.[68]
Many prominent U.S. citizens are descended from the Dutch families of New Netherland.The Roosevelt family is descended from Claes van Roosevelt, who emigrated around 1650.The Van Buren family is from New Netherland.Descendants of the Bush family are descended from the Schuyler family.
External problems were severe for the colony of New Netherland.The population was too small and the company didn't provide much military support.Stuyvesant was usually the loser.The economic rivalry with England was the most serious.There were small scale military conflicts with neighboring Indian tribes, involving fights between mobile bands on one hand, and scattered small Dutch outposts on the other.Defense was a challenge with a large area and limited population.Stuyvesant defeated and annexed the Swedish colonies in 1655.There were disagreements over the ownership of land in the Connecticut valley and eastern Long island.Stuyvesant gave up claims to the Connecticut Valley in exchange for gaining a small portion of Long island in the treaty of Hartford of 1650.Connecticut settlers poured into the Hudson Valley in defiance of the treaty.England took over New Netherland in 1664.The dilemma of domestic dissatisfaction, small size, and overwhelming external pressures with inadequate military support from the Company that was fixated on profits was demonstrated by the Dutch colonists' refusal to fight.71
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