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17th-century Dutch colony on the East Coast of North America
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New Netherland (Dutch: Nieuw Nederland) was a colony of the Dutch Republic located on the East Coast of what is now the United States. The claimed territories extended from the Delmarva Peninsula to Cape Cod. Settlements were established in what became the states of New York, New Jersey, Delaware, and Connecticut, with small outposts in Pennsylvania and Rhode Island.
The colony was originally conceived by the Dutch West India Company in 1621 to capitalize on the North American fur trade. Settlement initially stalled because of policy mismanagement by the company and conflicts with Native Americans. The settlement of New Sweden by the Swedish South Company encroached on its southern flank, while its eastern border was redrawn to accommodate the English colonies of an expanding New England Confederation.
The colony experienced dramatic growth during the 1650s and became a major center for trade across the North Atlantic. The Dutch conquered New Sweden in 1655, but during the Second Anglo-Dutch War, the Dutch surrendered New Netherland to England following the capture of New Amsterdam in 1664. In 1673, the Dutch retook the colony but relinquished it under the Treaty of Westminster (1674) that ended the Third Anglo-Dutch War.
The inhabitants of New Netherland (New Netherlanders) were European colonists, Native Americans, and Africans imported as slave laborers. Not including Native Americans, the colonial population, many of whom were not of Dutch descent, was 4,301 in 1650 and 8,000 to 9,000 at the time of transfer to England in 1674.
In the 17th century, Europe was undergoing expansive social, cultural, and economic growth, known as the Dutch Golden Age in the Netherlands. Nations vied for domination of lucrative trade routes around the globe, particularly those to Asia. Simultaneously, philosophical and theological conflicts were manifested in military battles throughout the European continent. The Dutch Republic had become a home to many intellectuals, international businessmen, and religious refugees. In the Americas, the English had a settlement at Jamestown, Virginia, the French had small settlements at Port Royal and Quebec, and the Spanish were developing colonies in South America and the Caribbean.
In 1609, English sea captain and explorer Henry Hudson was hired by the Dutch East India Company (VOC, from Dutch Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie) to find a Northeast Passage to Asia, sailing around Scandinavia and Russia. The ice of the Arctic turned him back in his second attempt, so he sailed west to seek a Northwest Passage rather than return home. He ended up exploring the waters off the northeast coast of North America aboard the flyboat Halve Maen. His first landfall was at Newfoundland , and the second at Cape Cod.
Hudson believed that the passage to the Pacific Ocean was between the St. Lawrence River and Chesapeake Bay, so he sailed south to the Bay, then turned northward, traveling close along the shore. From Delaware Bay, he began to sail upriver looking for the passage. This effort was foiled by Sandy Shoals, and the Halve Maen continued north along the coast. After passing Sandy Hook, Hudson and his crew entered the Narrows into the Upper New York Bay. Hudson believed that he had found the continental water route, so he sailed up the major river that now bears his name. He found the water too shallow to proceed several days later at the site of Troy, New York.
Upon returning to the Netherlands, Hudson reported that he had found fertile land and amicable people willing to engage his crew in small-scale bartering of furs, trinkets, clothes, and small manufactured goods. His report was first published in 1611 by Emanuel van Meteren, the Dutch Consul at London. This stimulated interest in exploiting this new trade resource, and it was the catalyst for Dutch merchant-traders to fund more expeditions. Merchants such as Arnout Vogels sent the first follow-up voyages to exploit this discovery as early as July 1610.
In 1611–1612, the Admiralty of Amsterdam sent two covert expeditions to find a passage to China with the yachts Craen and Vos, captained by Jan Cornelisz Mey and Symon Willemsz Cat, respectively. Adriaen Block, Hendrick Christiaensen, and Cornelius Jacobsen May explored, surveyed, and mapped the area between Maryland and Massachusetts in four voyages made between 1611 and 1614. These surveys and charts were consolidated in Block's map, which used the name New Netherland for the first time; it was also called Nova Belgica on maps. During this period, there was some trading with the Native American population.
Fur trader Juan Rodriguez was born in Santo Domingo of Portuguese and African descent. He arrived in Manhattan during the winter of 1613–1614, trapping for pelts and trading with the Indians as a representative of the Dutch. He was the first recorded non-native inhabitant of what would, in the future, be New York City.
The immediate and intense competition among Dutch trading companies in the newly charted areas led to disputes in Amsterdam and calls for regulation. The States General was the governing body of the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands, and it proclaimed on 17 March 1614, that it would grant an exclusive patent for trade between the 40th and 45th parallels. This monopoly would be valid for four voyages, and all four voyages had to be undertaken within three years of the award. The New Netherland Company was an alliance of trading companies, and they used Adrian Block's map to win a patent that expired on 1 January 1618.
The New Netherland Company also ordered a survey of the Delaware Valley, and Cornelis Hendricksz of Monnickendam explored the Zuyd Rivier (South River) in 1616 from its bay to its northernmost navigable reaches. His observations were preserved in a map drawn in 1616. Hendricksz made his voyages aboard the IJseren Vercken (Iron Hog), a vessel built in America. Despite the survey, the company was unable to secure an exclusive patent from the States General for the area between the 38th and 40th parallels.
The States General issued patents in 1614 for the development of New Netherland as a private, commercial venture. Soon after, traders built Fort Nassau on Castle Island in the area of Albany up Hudson's River. The fort was to defend river traffic against interlopers and to conduct fur trading operations with the Indians. The location of the fort proved to be impractical, however, due to repeated flooding of the island in the summers, and it was abandoned in 1618 when the patent expired.
The Republic of the Seven United Netherlands granted a charter to the Dutch West India Company (GWC, from Dutch Geoctroyeerde Westindische Compagnie) on 3 June 1621, which gave the company the exclusive right to operate in West Africa (between the Tropic of Cancer and the Cape of Good Hope) and the Americas.
Willem Usselincx was one of the founders of the GWC, and he promoted the concept that the company's main goal should be to establish colonies in the New World. In 1620, Usselincx made a last appeal to the States General, which rejected his principal vision as a primary goal. The legislators preferred the formula of trading posts with small populations and a military presence to protect them, which was working in the East Indies, versus encouraging mass immigration and establishing large colonies. The company did not focus on colonization in North America until 1654, when it was forced to surrender Dutch Brazil and forfeit the richest sugar-producing area in the world.
The first trading partners of the New Netherlanders were the Algonquins who lived in the area. The Dutch depended on the native nations to capture, skin, and deliver pelts to them, especially beaver. It is likely that Hudson's peaceful contact with the Mohicans encouraged them to establish Fort Nassau in 1614, the first of many garrisoned trading stations. In 1628, the Mohawks, members of the Iroquois Confederacy, conquered the Mahicans, who retreated to Connecticut. The Mohawks gained a near-monopoly in the fur trade with the Dutch, as they controlled the upstate Adirondacks and Mohawk Valley through the center of New York.
The Algonquin Lenape population around New York Bay and along the lower Hudson River were seasonally migrational people. The Dutch called the numerous band collectively the River Indians, known the exonyms associated with place names as the Wecquaesgeek, Hackensacks, Raritans, Canarsee, and Tappans. These groups had the most frequent contact with the New Netherlanders. The Munsee inhabited the Highlands, Hudson Valley, and northern New Jersey, while the Susquehannocks lived west of the Delaware River along the Susquehanna River, which the Dutch regarded as their boundary with Virginia.
Company policy required land to be purchased from the Indians. The Dutch West India Company would offer a land patent, and the recipient would be responsible for negotiating a deal with representatives of the local tribes, usually the sachem, or high chief. The Indians referred to the Dutch colonists as Swannekins (lit. 'salt water people'); they had vastly different conceptions of ownership and use of land than the colonists did, and difficulties sometimes arose concerning the expectations on both sides.
The colonists thought that their proffer of gifts in the form of sewant or manufactured goods was a trade agreement and defense alliance, which gave them exclusive rights to farming, hunting, and fishing. Often, the Indians did not vacate the property or reappeared seasonally according to their migration patterns. They were willing to share the land with the colonists, but the Indians did not intend to leave or give up access. This misunderstanding and other differences led to violent conflict later. At the same time, such differences marked the beginnings of a multicultural society.
Like the French in the north, the Dutch focused their interest on the fur trade. To that end, they cultivated contingent relations with the Five Nations of the Iroquois to procure greater access to key central regions from which the skins came.
The Dutch encouraged a kind of feudal aristocracy over time to attract settlers to the region of the Hudson River in what became known as the system of the Charter of Freedoms and Exemptions. Further south, a Swedish trading company that had ties with the Dutch tried to establish its first settlement along the Delaware River three years later. Without resources to consolidate its position, New Sweden was gradually absorbed by New Holland and later by Pennsylvania and Delaware.
In 1613 a temporary camp comprising a number of small huts was built by the crew of the "Tijger" (Tiger), a Dutch ship under the command of Captain Adriaen Block, which had caught fire while sailing on the Hudson. Soon after, the first of two Fort Nassau was built at the confluence of the Hudson (North River) and Mohawk rivers, and small factorijen or trading posts went up, where commerce could be conducted with the Algonquian and Iroquois population, possibly at Schenectady, Esopus, Quinnipiac, Communipaw, and elsewhere.
In 1624, New Netherland became a province of the Dutch Republic, which had lowered the northern border of its North American dominion to 42° latitude in acknowledgment of the claim by the English north of Cape Cod. The Dutch named the three main rivers of the province the Zuyd Rivier (South River), the Noort Rivier (North River), and the Versche Rivier (Fresh River). Discovery, charting, and permanent settlement were needed to maintain a territorial claim. To this end, in May 1624, the GWC landed 30 families at Fort Orange and Noten Eylant (today's Governors Island) at the mouth of the North River. They disembarked from the ship Nieu Nederlandt, under the command of Cornelius Jacobsen May, the first director of New Netherland. He was replaced the following year by Willem Verhulst.
In June 1625, 45 additional colonists disembarked on Noten Eylant from three ships named Horse, Cow, and Sheep, which also delivered 103 horses, steers, cows, pigs, and sheep. Most settlers were dispersed to the various garrisons built across the territory: upstream to Fort Orange, to Kievits Hoek on the Fresh River, and Fort Wilhelmus on the South River. Many of the settlers were not Dutch but Walloons, French Huguenots, or Africans (most as enslaved labor, some later gaining "half-free" status).
Peter Minuit became director of New Netherland in 1626, arrived in 4 May, and later made a decision that greatly affected the new colony. Originally, the capital of the province was to be located on the South River, but it was soon realized that the location was susceptible to mosquito infestation in the summer and the freezing of its waterways in the winter. He chose instead the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the river explored by Hudson, at that time called the North River.
Text from the Wikipedia article “New Netherland”, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.