A Brief History of New Amsterdam / New York City
The Dutch East India Company, with the Englishman Henry Hudson in their employment, first settled in what is now regarded as New York City in 1609. “Staten Island” is believed to be the first place that Henry Hudson first stepped foot on North American land. At the time of the Dutch crew’s arrival, there were several thousands of Native Lenape Americans living in the region. With the indigenous people, the Dutch East India Company traded steel weaponry and beads in exchange of the Natives’ food, such as bread, corn, and oysters.
Once the Dutch East India Company caught wind of the Natives’ bounty of fur…thoughts of potential profits grew, dynamics changed, and the word spread, but mass colonization of the land did not take place right away.
The Dutch West India Company of the Dutch Republic eventually made their way to the region. Staking claim to the region, and growing their own fur trade, they officially established the settlement of New Amsterdam (the now southern tip of Manhattan) in 1624, after colonizing a grand axis (in areas of: RI, CT, DE,MA,NJ, NY, PA, & RI) beginning in 1621. This cluster of “claimed” land was regarded as New Netherland. The Dutch acquired New Amsterdam from the Lenape by trading items such as axes, iron, and valuable metal weaponry that the natives could not produce. However, the Lenape Natives were under the impression they were renting their land, not giving it away…
New Amsterdam quickly came to have a diverse population, in direct comparison to other English colonies in N. America. In addition to the Natives: Africans (both free and slave), English, French Huguenots, Germans, Scandinavians, Scots, and those of Christian, Muslims Jewish, and Native faiths co-existed.
The Dutch were the English’s primary commercial rivals, globally. Within North America, the Dutch were far out numbered by the English. As a power play, the King of England awarded his English brother (The Duke of York), the colony of New Amsterdam in March 1664, followed by sending some English ships, ready for a battle, to the shores of New Amsterdam. The Dutch governor Peter Stuyvesant made the call to back down. He surrendered the land to the English on Sept. 8, 1664. That’s the day New York was born. After the Treaty of Breda (1667) the Dutch gave up their “claim” to the colony of New Netherland too, though some Dutch settlers still remained behind.
