Page 78 - American Stories, A History of the United States

The directors of the Dutch West India Com-
pany sponsored two small outposts, Fort Orange 2.1
(Albany), located well up the Hudson River, and N E W F R A N C E
Abenaki
New Amsterdam (New York City) on Manhat- Lake
tan Island. The first Dutch settlers were salaried Champlain 2.2
employees, not colonists, and their superiors in
Europe expected them to spend most of their time NEW Connecticut R.
gathering furs. They did not receive land for their Lake Ontario YORK N.H. 2.3
troubles. Needless to say, this arrangement attracted Mahican
few Dutch immigrants. Iroquois Confederation Albany
The colony’s European population may have MASS. 2.4
been small—only 270 in 1628—but its ethnic mix Lake Erie Susquehanna R.
was extraordinary. One visitor to New Amsterdam Hudson R. CONN.
in 1644 maintained he had heard “eighteen differ- Delaware R.
ent languages” spoken there. Even if this report was PENNSYLVANIA
exaggerated, there is no doubt the Dutch colony Delaware New York
drew English, Finns, Germans, and Swedes. By the (Lenni-Lenape) EAST JERSEY
1640s, a sizable community of free blacks (prob- Germantown
Philadelphia
ably former slaves who had gained their freedom Susquehannock WEST ATLANTIC
through self-purchase) had developed in New MD. JERSEY OCEAN
Amsterdam, adding African tongues to the cacoph-
ony of languages. New England Puritans who left VA. THREE COUNTIES
OF DELAWARE
Massachusetts and Connecticut to stake out farms 0 50 100 miles
on eastern Long Island further fragmented the col- 0 50 100 kilometers
ony’s culture.
New Netherland lacked capable leadership. map 2.3 middLE CoLoniES, 1685 New York and Philadelphia became
The company sent a number of director-generals to colonial America’s most important commercial ports.
oversee judicial and political affairs. Without excep-
tion, these men were temperamentally unsuited to govern an American colony. They
adopted autocratic procedures, lined their own pockets, and, in one case, blundered
into a war that killed scores of Indians and settlers. The company made no provision
for an elected assembly. As much as they could, the scattered inhabitants living along
the Hudson River ignored company directives. They felt no loyalty to the trading
company that had treated them so shabbily. Long Island Puritans complained bitterly
about the absence of representative institutions. The Dutch system has been described
as “unstable pluralism.”
In August 1664, the Dutch lost their tenuous hold on New Netherland. The
English crown, eager to score an easy victory over a commercial rival, dispatched a
fleet of warships to New Amsterdam. The commander of this force, Colonel Richard
Nicolls, ordered the colonists to surrender. The last director-general, a colorful
character named Peter Stuyvesant, rushed wildly about the city urging the set-
tlers to resist the English. But no one obeyed. Even the Dutch remained deaf to his
appeals. Instead, they accepted the Articles of Capitulation, a generous agreement
that allowed Dutch nationals to remain in the province and retain their property
under English rule.
Charles II had already granted his brother James, the Duke of York, a charter
for the newly captured territory and much else besides. The duke became absolute
proprietor over Maine, Martha’s Vineyard, Nantucket, Long Island, and the rest
of New York all the way south to Delaware Bay. The king perhaps wanted to encircle
New England’s potentially disloyal Puritan population, but he also created a bureau-
cratic nightmare.
The Duke of York had acquired a thorough aversion to representative government.
He had no intention of letting such a participatory system take root in New York.
“I cannot but suspect,” he announced, that an assembly “would be of dangerous con-
sequence.” The Long Islanders felt betrayed. In part to appease these outspoken critics,

45