| New Netherland series |
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| Exploration |
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| Settlements: |
| The Patroon System |
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| People of New Netherland |
| Flushing Remonstrance |
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New Netherlanders were residents ofNew Netherland, the seventeenth-century colonial outpost of theRepublic of the Seven United Netherlands on thenortheastern coast ofNorth America, centered aroundNew York Harbor, theHudson Valley, andNew York Bay, and in theDelaware Valley. There were short lived outposts inConnecticut andRhode Island.[1]
The population of New Netherland was not all ethnicallyDutch,[2] but had a variety of ethnic and linguistic backgrounds, including: otherEuropean ethnic groups (Germans, Scandinavians, French, Scots, English, Irish, Italians, and Croats); indigenousAmerindian tribes such asAlgonquians andIroquoians;Sephardic Jews (Jews of Spanish and Portuguese backgrounds) both from the Netherlands itself and the then-recently lost colony ofDutch Brazil; andWest Africans, the last mostly having been brought as slaves.[3][4][5]
Though the colony officially existed only between 1609 and 1674, the descendants of the original settlers played a prominent role incolonial America. New Netherland culture characterized the region (today'sCapital District,Hudson Valley,New York City,western Long Island,northern andcentralNew Jersey, and theDelaware Valley) for two centuries. The concepts of civil liberties and pluralism introduced in the colony are supposed to have later become a mainstay of American political and social life.
In 1621, theDutch West India Company was founded for the purpose of trade. The WIC was chartered by theStates-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.[6] 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 andsmuggling.In the Caribbean and partly in Brazil andSuriname, plantations were worked by native Indians and African slaves.[7] There were around 1,000 whites there, joined by Brazilian Jews, attracted by religious freedom which was granted to all the settlers.
The Dutch set up two forts,Fort Nassau in 1614 andFort Orange in 1624, both named for the Dutch nobleHouse of Orange-Nassau.New Amsterdam was founded in 1624.
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 atBergen, which allowed settlement west of the Hudson withinNew Netherland. Due to a war between the Mohawk and Mahican tribes in 1625, the women and children upriver atFort Orange were re-located. In the spring of 1626, Minuit arrived to succeedWillem Verhulst, who had authorized the construction of a fort at the tip of Manhattan Island. Fort Amsterdam was designed byCryn Fredericksz. Construction started in 1625.
The thirdDirector of New Netherland,Peter Minuit, was a German-bornHuguenot who worked for theDutch West India Company.[8] Minuit purchased the island of Manhattan from the Lenape.
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 aspatroon, or lord, with the exception, perArticle III, of the island ofManhattan. This land could have a frontage of 16 miles (26 km) if on one side of a river, or 8 miles (13 km) if situated on both sides. The patroon would be chiefmagistrate on his land, but disputes of more than 50guilders could be appealed to theDirector and his Council inNew 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, thepatroon 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 ofManhattan.[6] A pattern of these colonies was theManor of Rensselaerswyck.
Everardus Bogardus the second minister of theDutch Reformed Church,the oldest established church in present-day New York, frequently was combative with theDirector-General of the New Netherlands and their management of theDutch West India Company colony, going up against the often-drunkWouter van Twiller and famously denouncing Willem Kieft from the pulpit during the colony's disastrously bloodyKieft's War (1643–1645). He stepped up his denouncements when Kieft tried to place a tax on beer. Bogardus himself has been described as a stout and rarely sober individual. ACouncil of Twelve Men was chosen on 1641 by the residents ofNew Amsterdam to advise theDirector of New Netherland, Willem Kieft, on relations with theNative Americans due to the murder of Claes Swits.[9] the council was not permanent, The next time acouncil of eight men was created. Peter Stuyvesant arrived in New Amsterdam on May 11, 1647 to replaceWillem Kieft as Director-General of the New Netherland colony.[10]
Though the region became aBritish colony in 1674, it retained its "Dutch" character for many years[11] as early settlers and their descendants developed the land and economy.
Population estimates are for theEuropean andAfrican population and do not include theNative Americans.
Among the many settlers who sailed from theUnited Provinces of the Netherlands wereDutch,Flemish,Walloon,Huguenot,German, andScandinavian people, who are sometimes called "New Netherland Dutch".[15]
The first non-Native American to settle inManhattan wasJuan Rodriguez (Jan Rodrigues in Dutch), aDominican man ofAfrican andPortuguese descent born inSanto Domingo.[16][17][18][19]Early ships to the new colony carried mostlyWalloon passengers andAfricans brought as slaves, many of whom later becamefree.[20] The black population is dated to the importation of eleven black slaves in 1625. African slaves belonging theDutch West India Company may have been brought directly, or via theCaribbean orother European colonies. When the colony fell, the company freed all its slaves, establishing early on a nucleus offree negros.[21]
Sephardi Jews arrived after the loss ofDutch Brazil.[22] KingManuel 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 ofSpanish and Portuguese Jews arrived inNew York (New Amsterdam) in September 1654.
Sarah Rapelje[23] was the first female child of European parentage born in the colony of New Netherland.[24][25]
An early settler from Africa was a wealthy Muslim, and land owner,Anthony Janszoon van Salee areligious refugee from Spain. From 1340Portugal colonized islands in the Atlantic. Colonization was a success and provided a growing population for other Atlantic colonies. The route from Europe passed through theAzores 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. PrinceHenry the Navigator was responsible for this settlement. His sister,Isabel, was married toDuke 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.
Though Dutch was theofficial language, and likely thelingua franca of the colony, it was but one of many spoken there,[26] as many as eighteen by the 1630s.[27] TheAlgonquin language had many dialects.Walloons andHuguenots tended to speakFrench.Scandinavians brought their tongues, as did theGermans.Africans may have spoken their mother tongues as well.[28] English was on the rise to become thevehicular language in world trade, and settlement by individuals or groups of English-speakers started early. The arrival of refugees fromNew Holland inBrazil may have brought morePortuguese,Spanish, andJudaeo-Spanish speakers. Commercial activity in the harbor, which includedpirateering, could have been transacted simultaneously in any of a number of tongues. In some cases peopleBatavianized their names[29][30] to conform with the Dutchvernacular and official language, which also greatly influencedplace naming.
English language speakers mostly arrived fromNew England andLong 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 andAnne Hutchinson, who took refuge in the colony, as well asElizabeth Hallet (née Fones), niece of Massachusetts GovernorJohn Winthrop, who sought refuge from religious persecution.
Although theDutch West India Company had established theReformed Church as the official religious institution of New Netherland,[31] 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."
The arrival of the immigrants did not necessarily mean the departure of the indigenous people. There were fundamental differences in conceptions ofproperty rights between the Europeans and the Lenape. The concept of ownership as understood by theSwannekins, orsalt water people, was foreign to theWilden, ornatives.[32] The exchange of gifts in the form ofsewant 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.[29] The River Indians, such as theWecquaesgeek,Hackensack, andCanarsee, 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 toPavonia in present-dayJersey 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 lowerHudson Valley. With the fur resources exhausted, the Dutch shifted their operations to present-dayupstate New York. The Lenape produced wampum in the vicinity of Manhattan Island, temporarily forestalling the negative effects of this decline in trade.[33]
Dutch settlers founded a colony at present-dayLewes,Delaware, on June 3, 1631, and named itZwaanendael (Swan Valley).[34] 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.[35] In 1634, theIroquoian-speakingSusquehannock 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 becometributaries to the Susquehannock.[36]Lenape population fell, due mostly to epidemics ofinfectious diseases carried by Europeans, such asmeasles andsmallpox, to which they had no naturalimmunity.
Both in the way it was set up and in the extent of its rights, the council of Twelve Men, as did the two later advisory bodies...