New Amsterdam
View of NYC from Ellis Island.
Table of Contents
New Amsterdam
The Eighty Years’ War (a.k.a The Dutch War of Independence)
Through the 1560’s, the Protestant Reformation swept across the seven Dutch-speaking provinces clustered near the North Sea and controlled by mighty Hapsburg Spain.
The Reformation would trigger a rebellion against Spain, leading these Dutch-speaking provinces to form the United Provinces.
This new Dutch republic would be led by the States General, a governing body in which each of the seven Dutch provinces had one vote.
The war for Dutch independence would last, on and off, until 1648 in what would come to be known as the Eighty Years’ War (1568-1648).
(The war was punctuated by the Twelve Years’ Truce (1609-1621) in which Spain agreed to treat the United Provinces as if they were independent for the duration of the truce.)
This eight decade-long Dutch independence campaign would serve as one of the motivations for the founding of a mega-corporation that would establish the precursor settlement to today’s New York City.
The Dutch East India Company
In 1602, the States General charted the United East India Company – better known as the Dutch East India Company (DEIC) – to manage the United Provinces’ spice trade with Asia and aid the Dutch independence effort against Spain.
This state-chartered mega-company was granted a monopoly on Dutch trade with the Far East.
And in order to establish commercial supremacy in the Asia, the company maintained its own private armed forces and was granted the autonomy to make war and agree treaties as it saw fit.
Moreover, it could acquire and hold territory and act as the de facto government of these company territories.
The DEIC would deploy its private military to establish company trading posts throughout Asia, including at Madagascar, Malacca, Chinsura (Bengal), Colombo, and Canton (China).
Headquartered in Amsterdam, the burgeoning Dutch financial center, the Dutch East India Company’s shares were publicly traded on the Amsterdam Stock Exchange.
And with the company’s military and commercial success came massive profits for its shareholders: annual return on investment often exceeded 30%.
But the DEIC was frustrated by the same geographical impediments that motivated so much exploration during this period of human history.
Engaging in trade (or commercial imperialism in the case of the DEIC) between Asia and Europe meant circumnavigating the southern tip of Africa, a time-consuming and costly voyage.
So in 1609, the DEIC commissioned a vessel to try and find an Arctic shortcut that would reduce travel time between Europe and Asia.
Henry Hudson and the Halve Maen
In March of 1609, a Dutch vessel called Halve Maen (Half Moon) – commissioned by the Dutch East India Company – departed the Old Continent in search of an Arctic shortcut to the Indies.
The hope was to find an alternative to the arduous voyage around the southern tip of Africa that company vessels had to endure to reach southern Asia.
But when the extreme Arctic conditions became unbearable for the crew, the ship changed course and sailed west across the Atlantic.
By September the Halve Maen had arrived at the river that divides Manhattan from present-day New Jersey.
The trek would end with the vessel sailing north near the site of present-day Albany before turning back to Europe, having never found a shortcut to the Indies.
But the failed voyage was not a total loss for the vessel’s skipper, Englishman Henry Hudson.
Today that river separating Manhattan from New Jersey bears his name: the Hudson River.
A View of the Hudson River and Manhattan from Weehawken, New Jersey.
Importantly, while anchored off the coast of what would eventually become New York City, the Halve Maen engaged in trade with the local Lenape.
Specifically, the crew traded their European wares for furs, a highly sought-after commodity back on the Old Continent.
French traders were already engaging in a vigorous fur trade with natives along the St. Lawrence River at the site of present-day Quebec.
Now Henry Hudson’s voyage to the New World had opened up the prospect of a profitable Dutch rival in the industry, based at what would become the greater New York City area.
The prospect of a lucrative fur trade in the Americas was too enticing to be ignored.
The Dutch West India Company
So in 1614, the States-General established the United New Netherland Company and granted it exclusive rights to trade in American furs.
The company would soon establish a trading post near the site of present-day Albany.
However, the company’s charter expired un-renewed by the States-General in 1617.
Then in 1621, shortly after the end of the 12-year truce between Spain and the Dutch, the States-General established the Dutch West India Company (DWIC) and granted it monopoly rights to trade with the Americas.
Like the Dutch East India Company, the West India Company maintained its own private armed forces and was granted the autonomy to make war and agree treaties as it saw fit.
Moreover, like its eastern counterpart, the West India Company could acquire and hold territory, acting as the de facto government of these company territories.
The company also had a second purpose: to make war on Spain and, by doing so, aid the United Provinces’ independence efforts.
In full-filling this purpose, the company’s private military would eventually launch assaults on Hapsburg vessels and the Spanish colony of Puerto Rico.
And in 1624, the company began establishing settlements along the Atlantic seaboard of present-day America.
New Amsterdam is Established
From 1624, the Dutch West India Company (DWIC) began establishing settlements in parts of present-day New York, Connecticut, and New Jersey that would collectively be known as New Netherland.
To oversee this colony, located a vast ocean away from the Company’s headquarters in Europe, the DWIC appointed Cornelius May as New Netherland’s first director.
May’s directorship would be short-lived however: he was soon to be replaced by Willem Verhulst.
In 1625, the newly appointed Director Verhulst ordered the construction of a fort on the southern tip of Manhattan.
The fort, which would serve as the capital of New Netherland, took its name from the official capital of the colony’s motherland: Amsterdam.
Fort Amsterdam would become the heart of the burgeoning city of New Amsterdam which, unbeknownst to its founders, was to be the predecessor to one of the most important cities in human history.
In 1626, the Dutch West India Company replaced Verhulst as director with Peter Minuit, whose reign as director would last considerably longer than those of his predecessors.
The newly established DWIC outpost at New Amsterdam was to engage in trade with the native peoples, exchanging European goods for local furs which could be sold back home at a profit.
But, as the tendency to independently adopt mediums of exchange the world over attests to, such exchanges were easier if a currency could be established to facilitate the transactions.
And, as it turned out, though social relations within native tribes had not been based around market exchange prior to the arrival of Europeans, native cultures did value a particular ware enough that it could serve as a de facto currency in the colony’s economic dealings with the locals.
Wampum Becomes Official Currency in New Netherland
Prior to the establishment of New Netherland, native societies made extensive use of an article, the significance of which would dawn on European explorers, traders, and settlers in short order.
Indigenous nations based along the northeast of North America used wampum - collections of purple and white beads derived from shells strung together into intricate belts - for diplomatic, ritualistic, decorative, and gift-giving purposes.
Observing the importance native societies along the St. Lawrence River assigned to wampum, French explorer Jacques Cartier wrote that wampum was:
the most valuable article they possess in this world; for they attach more value to it than gold or silver.
(Note: English settlers in North America used the term wampum, while Dutch settlers called the article sewan, and the French referred to it as porcelaine.)
Recognizing the value natives placed on wampum, traders of the Dutch West India Company would soon begin using wampum as something like a medium of exchange for the acquisition of local furs that could be sold in Europe for a profit.
First, they would exchange European goods for wampum manufactured by coastal Algonkians.
The Company traders would then engage in exchanges with Mahicans near the site of present-day Albany, trading the wampum for furs that would be sold in Europe.
Wampum was light and easy to transport wherever a Dutch trader wished to engage in exchange.
Moreover, it could be used in an exchange for a broad range of goods produced by the natives.
Wampum could thus satisfy the medium of exchange function of a currency (that is, it reduced the need for barter trade).
Moreover, because wampum was difficult to produce – reducing the risk of overproduction stoking inflation – and durable, it could be used as a store of value (i.e. it was an asset one could use to hold onto their wealth without worrying that its value would erode).
And wampum could also serve as a unit of account. That is, the price of goods could be denominated in wampum and the relative prices of goods could be compared by comparing their cost in wampum.
Wampum therefore met the three basic criteria for something to satisfactorily serve as money.
These characteristics of wampum, its growing use in transactions with native peoples, and a scarcity of coinage led New Netherland to deem it official legal tender shortly after the colony was established.
(New England, the rival English colony to the north of New Netherland, also deemed wampum legal tender.)
The conversion of wampum into a currency is illustrative of the dramatic changes in the political economy of northeastern North America following the arrival of European colonists.
Wampum, an article that for native nations had previously been produced and used for diplomatic and cultural purposes, had been transformed into a currency by the European importation of concepts like market exchange and money.
The transformation of wampum in money was part of a broader metamorphosis of Manahatta – as the local Lenape once referred to the island where they subsisted by fishing, hunting, and farming – into present-day Manhattan, home to the New York Stock Exchange, the New York Federal Reserve, universal banks, and hedge funds.
New York Stock Exchange.
Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
War with Spain Goes On
As these developments unfolded in New Netherland, the Dutch war for independence from Spain continued.
In 1628, as part of the Dutch West India Company’s efforts to aid the Dutch independence bid – and bolster its own profits – Admiral Piet Heyn led 31 DWIC vessels in the ransacking of a Spanish fleet off the coast of Cuba.
Heyn and his crew made off with 135 pounds of gold and 200,000 pounds of silver.
This naval confrontation is known as the Battle of Matanzas Bay (1628).
The pilfered treasure from this battle would largely finance the Company’s 1634 campaign that resulted in the seizing of Curacao from Spain.
In 1633 the Company ousted New Netherland Director Minuit, whom the organization’s leadership blamed for the trading outpost’s lack of profitability, in favor of Wouter van Twiller.
But Twiller was a heavy drinker who, it turned out, was more interested in expanding his personal claims to land in New Netherland than ensuring the colony turned a profit.
Meanwhile, back at corporate headquarters in Amsterdam, perhaps the oddest financial crisis in human history was around the corner - and its ripple effects would threaten the Company’s hold on New Netherland.
New Sweden
Until the 1630’s, establishing colonies along the eastern seaboard of North America had been the purview of England, Spain, France, and the Netherlands.
But by the end of the decade, a new entrant to the imperial arena would challenge the ambitions of these established powers in the region.
And this rival power’s fledgling campaign would be led by a familiar face - a Dutchman recently slighted by the administrators of the Dutch West India Company.
After being ousted as director of New Netherland in 1633, a recalled Peter Minuit returned to Europe.
There Minuit – who knew the east coast of North America well – and a Dutch merchant named Samuel Blommaert devised a plan for forming a new company that would establish a colony along the Delaware River, carving out a territory between the English possessions of Maryland and Virginia to the south and New Netherland to the north.
The company, it was believed, could engage in a profitable trade in North American furs, ripping market share away from New Netherland.
To put their plan into action, the duo would lean on Blommaert’s connections to Swedish Chancellor Axel Oxenstierna.
Blommaert had established a relationship with Oxenstierna when the two men convened in 1635 to discuss possibilities for opening up new markets in the Americas to Swedish copper exports.
So in 1637, Minuit and Blommaert would persuade Chancellor Oxenstierna to authorize the establishment of the New Sweden Company which, under the protection of the Swedish flag, would erect the two Dutchmen’s envisaged colony along the Delaware.
In the spring of 1638, Minuit and a group of settlers arrived at North America.
Upon making landfall, Minuit would negotiate the purchase of land along the Delaware River from local tribes and begin erecting Fort Christina, named after the Swedish Queen.
From there, the colony would grow to include parts of what today constitute Delaware, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey.
By establishing a post along the Delaware, Sweden had entered the European race to establish imperial possessions in North America.
But the Swedish experiment with colonization of the Delaware would be short-lived: in the autumn of 1655, Peter Stuyvesant - who had assumed the directorship of New Netherland in 1647 - deployed battleships and several hundred soldiers to capture New Sweden, ending the Swedish foray into North American imperialism less than two decades after it began.
Today, the area that comprised Fort Christina is part of Wilmington, Delaware and vestiges of the short-lived Swedish colony in North America remain standing in both Delaware and Pennsylvania.
Director Stuyvesant
Following Director Kieft’s disastrous war, the Dutch West India Company appointed Petrus Stuyvesant to replace Kieft as the head of the battered New Netherland colony.
Stuyvesant had previously been the governor of the Company’s Caribbean islands of Aruba, Bonaire, and Curacao (collectively known as the “ABC Islands”).
Endearing him to Company leadership in Amsterdam was his ultimately failed 1644 assault – on behalf of the Company – on the Spanish controlled island of Saint Martin.
During the failed weeks-long siege, Stuyvesant’s right leg was crushed by a Spanish cannonball and had to be amputated and replaced with a wooden leg.
The Company viewed his lost limb as a symbol of Stuyvesant’s loyalty to the organization and rewarded his fealty with the directorship.
Stuyvesant would set foot in New Netherland in August of 1647.
The Peace of Munster
In January of 1648, just a few months after Stuyvesant arrived in New Amsterdam, the States-General and the Spanish Crown agreed the Treaty of Munster, which finally ended the Eighty Years’ War and recognized Dutch independence:
[T]he aforesaid Lord King [Phillip IV] declares and recognizes that the aforesaid Lords States General of the United Netherlands and the respective provinces thereof …. are free and sovereign states [and] provinces …. [T]he Lord King, does not now make any claim, and he himself and his successors descendants will in the future never make any claim; and therefore is satisfied to negotiate with these Lords States …. a perpetual peace.
The Treaty also contained a provision whereby Spain recognized the charters for the Dutch West and East India Companies and granted their employees the right to travel freely in Spanish-held territory without fear of retribution for acts of hostility committed during the war:
Shipping and trade to the East and West Indies shall be maintained in conformity with the charters already granted or to be granted, the security of which shall be given …. And the administrators of the East and West India Companies of the United Provinces, as well as the ministers, officers of high and low rank, soldiers and sailors in the present service, of one or the other of the aforesaid two companies, or formerly in such service, as well as those who shall continue in or hereafter come into their respective services upon the European mainland as well as in the district of the aforementioned companies, shall be as free and unmolested in all the lands under the obedience of the King of Spain in Europe, and shall be permitted to travel, trade, and journey in the same way as all other inhabitants of the lands of the aforenamed Lords States.
The Peace of Munster comprised part of the broader Peace of Westphalia which ushered in the era of the nation-state.
For war-weary Europe, the peace was a reprieve from decades of bloodshed.
But for the Dutch West India Company, whose profits had depended on its authorization to loot Spanish treasure in aid of the Dutch independence bid, it was a financial disaster.
In 1649, shares in the Dutch West India Company were trading at an all-time low on the Amsterdam Stock Exchange.
And as the company’s war-related income dried up so too did its capacity to defend its outpost in Brazil: in 1654, its South American territory would fall to the Portuguese.
With its outlook dimming, the company made a fateful decision that would result in the brutal subjection of innumerable Africans: it would shift its business model from one of profiting off war to one of profiting off the sale of human beings.
The Duke of York
In 1660, Charles II assumed the English crown, restoring House Stuart to the throne.
Central to the formation of English commercial policy during Charles II’s rule would be the King’s younger brother James, who held the title of Duke of York.
Mercantilism was the dominate economic theory of the day and James, along with a collection of naval officers and City of London merchants, formed several firms that – as the Dutch West India Company had done for the Dutch in their conflict with Spain – would lead an English offensive on Dutch commerce.
Among the companies this collective founded was the Company of Royal Adventurers Trading to Africa, which was established in 1660 and would be headed by James. (At the time, “adventurers” was a word used to describe investors.)
The firm’s mission was to use force to break the Dutch West India Company’s domination of the trans-Atlantic slave trade and establish English primacy in the nefarious enterprise.
In 1663, the company was reorganized as the Company of Royal Adventurers, dropping the “Trading to Africa” portion of its name.
That year, the Company of Royal Adventurers, using vessels borrowed from the Royal Navy, seized almost every Dutch West India Company trading outpost on the western African coast, a devastating blow to the DWIC’s slave trading empire.
That the company carried out its plans for achieving commercial supremacy on official state naval vessels is indicative of the nexus between corporate and state power during this era of European mercantile competition: the company was an extension of the English state, and it was official state policy to establish commercial supremacy in the trade of slaves and New World colonial products.
In 1672, the Company of Royal Adventurers would once more be reorganized as the Royal African Company.
The royally-sponsored company counted English philosopher John Locke among its contingent of notable investors.
This third incarnation of the company would establish England as the dominant power in the trafficking of captive Africans: by 1683, England would hold a 74% share of the trans-Atlantic slave trade after having held just a 33% share only ten years earlier.
From its formation in 1672 to the early 1720s, the Royal African Company would traffic nearly 149,000 unwilling Africans to the Americas.
Meanwhile, back in the Americas, an expanding New England was creeping up against New Netherland.
English settlers were pouring into New Netherland and English towns were appearing on Long Island.
Simultaneously, England maintained a growing southern colony along the Chesapeake, comprised of Maryland which was ruled by the Barons of Baltimore and Virginia, which was settled by the Virginia Company of London in 1607.
The capture of New Netherland would join England’s northern and southern colonies and allow it to dominate the eastern seaboard of what would one day become America.
Moreover, James, like Stuyvesant before him, saw the potential for New Amsterdam to serve as an Americas slave trading hub, funneling captive Africans to the labor-starved plantations of the Caribbean.
And James stood to personally profit off of customs duties charged on goods imported into the territory, should it be seized.
The expanding English colonies to the north and south, the potential for New Amsterdam to serve as a slave trading hub, and the opportunity for James to personally profit off of capturing New Netherland meant that it was only a matter of time before England sought to conquer the Dutch colony.
Playlist: The Best Views of NYC. New York City takes its name after James, the Duke of York who captured the city from the Dutch.
In March of 1664, James convinced his brother, King Charles II, to appoint him proprietor of all the territory comprising New Netherland.
Once the King decreed that – should the territory be captured – James would hold the title of its proprietor, the Duke of York sent four frigates and almost two thousand troops to capture his new dominion.
On August 26, the Duke’s forces arrived at a New Netherland short on soldiers and weapons and with the centerpiece of its defenses, Fort Amsterdam, unfit for purpose.
Outgunned and with his colonists wishing to accept an English offer guaranteeing their safety in exchange for a peaceful hand over of the territory, Stuyvesant surrendered the Dutch colony on September 8, 1664.
And so, without a shot being fired, the Dutch colony that had been established in the 1620s was to take the name it holds today: New York.
Seeking to wash away any vestiges of the colony’s origins as a Dutch possession, Fort Amsterdam would be renamed Fort James and Fort Orange would be renamed Albany.
The following year, the Second Anglo-Dutch War (1665 - 1667) would break out, in part because of the English seizure of New Amsterdam.
The war would conclude on July 31, 1667 with the Treaty of Breda (named for the Dutch city of Breda where it was negotiated).
As part of the treaty, the States-General agreed to let England keep New York in exchange for Suriname, whose sugar plantations the Dutch West India Company coveted, and the tiny island of Run in the Banda Sea.
However, the Peace of Breda would be short-lived.
New Orange
In 1672, hostilities resumed with the start of the Third Anglo-Dutch War which pitted England and France against the Dutch.
Across the Atlantic, New York’s Governor Francis Lovelace was confident of an English victory.
Lovelace was so confident that he, seeking to flee the summer time heat of Manhattan, absconded north to Connecticut in 1973 for holiday with a contingent of the soldiers that protected the former Dutch colony’s capital.
His folly left the city, captured by England only 9 years earlier, vulnerable to a Dutch incursion.
On August 9, 1673, a Dutch fleet led by Admiral Cornelis Evertsen Jr. sacked Fort James and recaptured New York, to the delight of many of the city’s inhabitants, the vast majority of whom were Dutch and still held loyalties to their former state.
When Francis Lovelace returned to the city, by now renamed New Orange after Dutch Prince William of Orange, Evertsen deported him to London where he would have to answer to James.
The war concluded with the Treaty of Westminster in February of 1674 which specified that New Orange would be returned to the English.
The hand-over occurred on November 10, 1674 and the Dutch would never again control New York.
Despite regaining control of his namesake territory, the Duke of York, unhappy with the governor’s failure to defend the colony that bore his name, imprisoned Lovelace in the infamous Tower of London in January of 1675.
There Lovelace would become so sick that he was released from the notorious prison in April and before the year was out, he was deceased.
Written By: Aiden Singh Published: April 7, 2021 Sources