New Amsterdam

New Amsterdam (Dutch: Nieuw-Amsterdam) was a 17th-century Dutch settlement estab

lished at the southern tip of Manhattan Island, which served as the seat of the
colonial government in New Netherland. The factorij became a settlement outside
of Fort Amsterdam. Situated on the strategic, fortifiable southern tip of the is
land of Manhattan, the fort was meant to defend the Dutch West India Company's f
ur trade operations in the North River (Hudson River). It became a provincial ex
tension of the Dutch Republic as of 1624 and was designated the capital of the p
rovince in 1625.
New Amsterdam was renamed New York on September 8, 1664, in honor of the then Du
ke of York (later James II of England), in whose name the English had captured i
t. In 1667 the Dutch gave up their claim to the town and the rest of the colony,
in exchange for control of the Spice Islands.
History
The Rigging House on 120 William Street, the last remaining Dutch building of Ne
w Amsterdam. Built in the 17th century, it became a Methodist church in the 1760
s and became a secular building again before its destruction in the mid-19th cen
tury.
In 1524, nearly a century before the arrival of the Dutch, the site that later b
ecame New Amsterdam was named New Angoulme by the Italian explorer Giovanni da Ve
rrazzano, to commemorate his patron King Francis I of France, former Count of An
goulme.[1] The first recorded exploration by the Dutch of the area around what is
now called New York Bay was in 1609 with the voyage of the ship Halve Maen (Eng
lish: "Half Moon"), captained by Henry Hudson[2] in the service of the Dutch Rep
ublic, as the emissary of Maurice of Nassau, Prince of Orange, Holland's stadhol
der. Hudson named the river the Mauritius River. He was covertly attempting to f
ind the Northwest Passage for the Dutch East India Company. Instead, he brought
back news about the possibility of exploitation of beaver pelts in the area, lea
ding to private commercial interest by the Dutch who sent commercial, private mi
ssions to the area the following years.
At the time, beaver pelts were highly prized in Europe, because the fur could be
felted to make waterproof hats. A by-product of the trade in beaver pelts was c
astoreum the secretion of the animals' anal glands which was used for its medicinal
properties and for perfumes. The expeditions by Adriaen Block and Hendrick Chris
tiansz in 1611, 1612, 1613 and 1614 resulted in the surveying and charting of th
e region from the 38th parallel to the 45th parallel. On their 1614 map, which g
ave them a four-year trade monopoly under a patent of the States General, they n
amed the newly discovered and mapped territory New Netherland for the first time
. It also showed the first year-round trading presence in New Netherland, Fort N
assau, which would be replaced in 1624 by Fort Orange, which eventually grew int
o the town of Beverwyck, now Albany.
Dominican trader Juan Rodriguez (rendered in Dutch as Jan Rodrigues), born in Sa
nto Domingo of Portuguese and African descent, arrived in Manhattan during the w
inter of 1613 1614, trapping for pelts and trading with the local population as a
representative of the Dutch. He was the first recorded non-Native American inhab
itant of what would eventually become New York City.[3][4]
The territory of New Netherland, containing the Northeast's largest rivers with
access to the beaver trade, was originally a private, profit-making commercial e
nterprise focusing on cementing alliances and conducting trade with the diverse
Indian tribes. Surveying and exploration of the region was conducted as a prelud
e to an anticipated official settlement by the Dutch Republic, which occurred in
1624.

Pilgrims' attempt to settle in the Hudson River area

A painting depicting a ship partly encrusted in snow and ice at anchor in a calm
harbor. A small boat full of men is moving away from the ship. The sky is cloud
y.
An 1882 depiction of the Mayflower in Plymouth Harbor
In 1620 the Pilgrims attempted to sail to the Hudson River from England. However
, the Mayflower reached Cape Cod (now part of Massachusetts) on November 9, 1620
, after a voyage of 64 days.[5] For a variety of reasons, primarily a shortage o
f supplies, the Mayflower could not proceed to the Hudson River and the colonist
s decided to settle somewhere on or near Cape Cod.[5]
The Dutch return
The mouth of the Hudson River was selected as the ideal place for initial settle
ment as it had easy access to the ocean while also securing an ice-free lifeline
to the beaver trading post near present-day Albany, settled in 1614. Here Ameri
can Indian hunters supplied them with pelts in exchange for European-made trade
goods and wampum, which was soon being made by the Dutch on Long Island. In 1621
the Dutch West India Company was founded. Between 1621 and 1623, orders were gi
ven to the private, commercial traders to vacate the territory, thus opening up
the territory to Dutch settlers and company traders. It also allowed the laws an
d ordinances of the states of Holland to apply. Previously, during the private,
commercial period, only the law of the ship had applied.
In 1624 the first group of families arrived on Noten Eylant (Nut Island, now Gov
ernors Island) to take possession of the New Netherland territory and to operate
various trading posts. They were spread out to Fort Wilhelmus on Verhulsten Isl
and (Burlington Island) in the South River (now the Delaware River), to Kievitsh
oek (now Old Saybrook, Connecticut) at the mouth of the Verse River (now the Con
necticut River) and further north at Fort Nassau on the Mauritius or North River
(now the Hudson River), near what is now Albany.
Upon first settlement on Noten Eylant in 1624, a fort and sawmill were built. Th
e latter was constructed by Franchoys Fezard.
Fort Amsterdam (1625)
The threat of attack from other European colonial powers prompted the directors
of the Dutch West India Company to formulate a plan to protect the entrance to t
he Hudson River. In 1625 many settlers were moved from Noten Eylant to Manhattan
Island, where a citadel to contain Fort Amsterdam was being laid out by Cryn Fr
ederickz van Lobbrecht at the direction of Willem Verhulst. By the end of 1625,
the site had been staked out directly south of Bowling Green on the site of the
present U.S. Custom House. The Mohawk-Mahican War in the Hudson Valley led the c
ompany to relocate even more settlers to the vicinity of the new Fort Amsterdam.
In the end, colonizing was a prohibitively expensive undertaking, only partly s
ubsidized by the fur trade. This led to a scaling back of the original plans. By
1628, a smaller fort was constructed with walls containing a mixture of clay an
d sand.
Willem Verhulst, who, with his council, was responsible for the selection of Man
hattan as a permanent place of settlement and for situating Fort Amsterdam, was
replaced as the company director-general of New Amsterdam by Peter Minuit in 162
6.
To legally safeguard the settlers' investments, possessions and farms on Manhatt
an island, Minuit negotiated the "purchase" of Manhattan from a Manahatta band o
f Lenape for 60 guilders worth of trade goods. According to the writer Nathaniel
Benchley, Minuit conducted the transaction with the Lenape chief Seyseys, who w
as only too happy to accept valuable merchandise in exchange for an island that
was actually mostly controlled by the Weckquaesgeeks.[6] The deed itself has not
survived, so the specific details are unknown. A textual reference to the deed

became the foundation for the legend that Minuit had purchased Manhattan from th
e Native Americans for 24 dollars' worth of trinkets and beads, the guilder rate
at the time being about two and a half to a Spanish dollar. In modern money, th
e price of 60 Dutch guilders in 1626 amounts to around $1,100 in 2012 dollars.[7
] Further complicating the calculation is that the value of goods in the area wo
uld have been different than the value of those same goods in the developed mark
et of the Netherlands.
In 1639 the colony's Sawmill stood at what was later the corner of East 74th Str
eet and Second Avenue, at which African laborers cut lumber.[8][9]
The New Amsterdam settlement had a population of approximately 270 people, inclu
ding infants. In 1642 the new director-general Willem Kieft decided to build a s
tone church within the fort. The work was carried out by recent English immigran
ts, the brothers John and Richard Ogden. The church was finished in 1645 and sto
od until destroyed in the Slave Insurrection of 1741.
A pen-and-ink view of New Amsterdam,[10][11] drawn on-the-spot and discovered in
the map collection of the Austrian National Library in Vienna in 1991, provides
a unique view of New Amsterdam as it appeared from Capske (small Cape) Rock in
1648. Capske Rock was situated in the water close to Manhattan between Manhattan
and Noten Eylant, and signified the start of the East River roadstead.
New Amsterdam received municipal rights on February 2, 1653, thus becoming a cit
y (Albany, then named Beverwyck, received its city rights in 1652.) Nieuw Haarle
m (now known as Harlem) was formally recognized in 1658.
The first Jews known to have lived in New Amsterdam arrived in 1654. First to ar
rive were Solomon Pietersen and Jacob Barsimson, who sailed in the summer of 165
4 directly from Holland, with passports that gave them permission to trade in th
e colony.[12] Then in early September, 23 Jewish refugees arrived from the forme
rly Dutch city of Recife, which had been conquered by the Portuguese in January
of that year.[13] The director of New Amsterdam, Peter Stuyvesant, sought to tur
n them away but was ultimately overruled by the directors of the Dutch West Indi
a Company in Amsterdam.[14] Asser Levy, an Ashkenazi Jew who was one of the 23 r
efugees, eventually prospered and in 1661 became the first Jew to own a house in
New Amsterdam, which also made him the first Jew known to have owned a house an
ywhere in North America.[15]
English capture
The Fall of New Amsterdam, by Jean Leon Gerome Ferris. Peter Stuyvesant (left of
center, with wooden leg) stands on shore among residents of New Amsterdam who p
lead with him not to fire on the English warships.
On August 27, 1664, while England and the Dutch Republic were at peace, four Eng
lish frigates sailed into New Amsterdam's harbor and demanded New Netherland's s
urrender, whereupon New Netherland was provisionally ceded by director-general P
eter Stuyvesant. On September 6 Stuyvesant sent lawyer Johannes De Decker and fi
ve other delegates to sign the official Articles of Capitulation. This was swift
ly followed by the Second Anglo-Dutch War, between England and the Dutch Republi
c. In June 1665, New Amsterdam was reincorporated under English law as New York
City, named after the Duke of York (later King James II). He was the brother of
the English King Charles II, who had been granted the lands.[16]
That same year Jan van Bonnel built a saw mill on East 74th Street and the East
River, where a 13,710-meter long creek or stream that began in the north of toda
y's Central Park, which became known as the Saw Kill or Saw Kill Creek, emptied
into the river.[17][18] Later owners of the property George Elphinstone and Abra
ham Shotwell replaced the saw mill with a leather mill in 1677.[17][19]

In 1667 the Treaty of Breda ended the conflict. The Dutch did not press their cl
aims on New Netherland. In return, they were granted the tiny Island of Run in N
orth Maluku, rich in nutmegs, and a guarantee for their de facto possession of S
uriname, captured by them that year.
English colonial Governor Richard Nicolls made 74th Street, beginning at the Eas
t River, the southern border patent line (which was called the "Harlem Line") of
the village of New Harlem (later, the village of Harlem); the British renamed t
he village "Lancaster".[20]
In July 1673, during the Third Anglo-Dutch War, the Dutch briefly occupied New Y
ork City and renamed it New Orange.[citation needed] Anthony Colve was installed
as the first Governor. Previously there had only been West India Company Direct
ors. After the signing of the Treaty of Westminster in November 1674, the city w
as relinquished to the English and the name reverted to "New York". Suriname bec
ame an official Dutch possession in return.