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The city that became New York was formed as New Amsterdam, and remained a Dutch settlement for forty years, before being captured by the English in 1664. By the time the English arrived New Amsterdam was a thriving trading post, and that was a major part of the appeal to the English when they decided to seize the Dutch colony in the 1660s.
The structure of the book is interesting. We move between chapters looking at New Amsterdam and the events of 1664, chapters looking at background of the two main players in the events of that year, and the recent history of England and the Dutch Republic, and how they played into the events at New Amsterdam.
On the Dutch side the main player was Peter Stuyvesant, the Director-General of New Amsterdam for the Dutch West Indies Company. He had been in post for nearly twenty years when the English arrived, and by that point clearly associated more with the colony than with the Netherlands, as he decided to stay in Manhattan after the English takeover. On the English side the key figure was Richard Nicolls, a member of the gentry who was close to James, Duke of York (the future James II). The author makes a good case for saying that Nicolls’ experiences during the English Civil War and his time in exile made him tend towards moderation, and the deal he offered to Stuyvesant was certainly that, giving the existing inhabitants of the town all of the rights they already enjoyed.
There are some flaws in the author’s accounts of English history. He states that Henry VIII died without a male heir and was succeeded by Elizabeth I, when in fact Henry was succeeded by his son Edward VI, then his older daughter Mary I. His account of the outbreak of the first English Civil War leaps from the outbreak of the First Bishop’s War against Scotland to the battle of Edgehill, making it look as if events moved directly from the raising of armies in England and Scotland to Edgehill. One extra paragraph would have been enough to clarify this.
These are pretty minor quibbles though. The majority of the text is well written and compelling, and the sections on Restoration England and the contemporary Dutch Republic are well researched. The darker sides of the story aren’t ignored – the slave trade was coming to New Amsterdam before the English arrived, and New York became a major slave trading city. The native American tribes who inhabited the area were largely wiped out by disease, greatly limiting their ability to stand up to the increasingly aggressive Europeans. In the period when this book was set that process was underway, but had yet to have the dramatic impact it would soon have, so the Dutch and English had to deal with powerful and often assertive pre-existing local populations. The role of the Dutch East Indies Company in creating the wealth of the Dutch Golden Age is covered, explaining why the Dutch Republic was rather wealthier than restoration England. The background also explains why two powers that had often been allies had become bitter rivals, leading to a series of Anglo-Dutch Wars. However the events discussed here actually took place during a time of official peace between the two,
This is an enthralling account of how and why New Amsterdam became old New York.
Author: Russell Shorto
Edition: Hardcover
Pages: 416
Publisher: Swift Press
Year: 2025