New Netherland S Founding

The settlers of New Netherland were obligated to uphold religious toleration as a legal right by the Dutch Republic's founding document, the 1579 Union of Utrecht, which stated that "everyone shall remain free in religion and that no one may be persecuted or investigated because of religion." For early American historians this statement, unique in the world at its time, lies at the root of American pluralism. New Netherland and the Dutch Origins of American Religious Liberty offers a new reading of the way tolerance operated in colonial America. Using sources in several languages and looking at laws and ideas as well as their enforcement and resistance, Evan Haefeli shows that, although tolerance as a general principle was respected in the colony, there was a pronounced struggle against it in practice. Crucial to the fate of New Netherland were the changing religious and political dynamics within the English empire. In the end, Haefeli argues, the most crucial factor in laying the groundwork for religious tolerance in colonial America was less what the Dutch did than their loss of the region to the English at a moment when the English were unusually open to religious tolerance. This legacy, often overlooked, turns out to be critical to the history of American religious diversity. By setting Dutch America within its broader imperial context, New Netherland and the Dutch Origins of American Religious Liberty offers a comprehensive and nuanced history of a conflict integral to the histories of the Dutch republic, early America, and religious tolerance.

This pioneering history of the Dutch Empire provides a new comprehensive overview of Dutch colonial expansion from a comparative and global perspective. It also offers a fascinating window into the early modern societies of Asia, Africa and the Americas through their interactions.

The Archaeology of New Netherland illuminates the influence of the Dutch empire in North America, assembling evidence from seventeenth-century settlements located in present-day New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, and Delaware. Archaeological data from this important early colony has often been overlooked because it lies underneath major urban and industrial regions, and this collection makes a wealth of information widely available for the first time. Contributors to this volume begin by discussing the global context of Dutch colonization and reviewing typical Dutch material culture of the time as seen in ceramics from Amsterdam households. Next, they focus on communities and activities at colonial sites such as forts, trading stations, drinking houses, and farms. The essays examine the agency and impact of Indigenous people and enslaved Africans, particularly women, in the society of New Netherland, and they trace interactions between Dutch settlers and Europeans from other colonies including New Sweden. The volume also features landmark studies of cooking pots, marbles, tobacco pipes, and other artifacts. The research in this volume offers an invitation to investigate New Netherland with the same sustained rigor that archaeologists and historians have shown for English colonialism. The many topics outlined here will serve as starting points for further work on early Dutch expansion in America. Contributors: Craig Lukezic | John P. McCarthy | Charles Gehring | Marijn Stolk | Ian Burrow | Adam Luscier | Matthew Kirk | Michael T. Lucas | Kristina S. Traudt | Marie-Lorraine Pipes | Anne-Marie Cantwell | Diana diZerega Wall | Lu Ann De Cunzo | Wade P. Catts | William B. Liebeknecht | Marshall Joseph Becker | Meta F. Janowitz | Richard G. Schaefer | Paul R. Huey | David A. Furlow

"The Dutch colony of New Netherland in the seventeenth century enjoyed a greater diversity of religious beliefs than any of the English colonies in America at the time, except possibly Rhode Island. George L. Procter-Smith has investigated the background and reasons for this religious diversity and toleration despite the legal establishment of the Dutch Reformed Church. All colonies have to be understood in terms of their mother country; but, Procter-Smith insists, the European background is especially important in the study of New Netherland. He devotes about half the book to the religious situation in the Netherlands and the de facto toleration that existed despite the state church. "The Dutch colony in America was founded for trade, not for religious reasons which were so prominent in the neighboring English colonies. As the Dutch directors of the West India Company, the colony's proprietor, tried to recruit settlers, they realized that intolerance and religious persecution would keep many prospective settlers away. Consequently, they paid lip service to the Dutch Reformed establishment but in practice allowed dissenters to practice their religion in private. Procter-Smith has written a clear, persuasive account of religion and politics, as shaped by the Dutch trading interests, in both Europe and New Netherland."—Review for Religious: A Journal of Catholic Spirituality

This edition of A Description of New Netherland provides the first complete and accurate English-language translation of an essential first-hand account of the lives and world of Dutch colonists and northeastern Native communities in the seventeenth century. Adriaen van der Donck, a graduate of Leiden University in the 1640s, became the law enforcement officer for the Dutch patroonship of Rensselaerswijck, located along the upper Hudson River. His position enabled him to interact extensively with Dutch colonists and the local Algonquians and Iroquoians. An astute observer, detailed recorder, and accessible writer, Van der Donck was ideally situated to write about his experiences and the natural and cultural worlds around him. Van der Donck s Beschryvinge van Nieuw-Nederlant was first published in 1655 and then expanded in 1656. An inaccurate and abbreviated English translation appeared in 1841 and was reprinted in 1968. This new volume features an accurate, polished translation by Diederik Willem Goedhuys and includes all the material from the original 1655 and 1656 editions. The result is an indispensable first-hand account with enduring value to historians, ethnohistorians, and anthropologists.

The Dutch involvement in North America started after Henry Hudson, sailing under a Dutch flag in 1609, traveled up the river that would later bear his name. The Dutch control of the region was short-lived, but had profound effects on the Hudson Valley region. In The Colony of New Netherland, Jaap Jacobs offers a comprehensive history of the Dutch colony on the Hudson from the first trading voyages in the 1610s to 1674, when the Dutch ceded the colony to the English. As Jacobs shows, New Netherland offers a distinctive example of economic colonization and in its social and religious profile represents a noteworthy divergence from the English colonization in North America. Centered around New Amsterdam on the island of Manhattan, the colony extended north to present-day Schenectady, New York, east to central Connecticut, and south to the border shared by Delaware, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, leaving an indelible imprint on the culture, political geography, and language of the early modern mid-Atlantic region. Dutch colonists' vivid accounts of the land and people of the area shaped European perceptions of this bountiful land; their own activities had a lasting effect on land use and the flora and fauna of New York State, in particular, as well as on relations with the Native people with whom they traded. Sure to become readers' first reference to this crucial phase of American early colonial history, The Colony of New Netherland is a multifaceted and detailed depiction of life in the colony, from exploration and settlement through governance, trade, and agriculture. Jacobs gives a keen sense of the built environment and social relations of the Dutch colonists and closely examines the influence of the church and the social system adapted from that of the Dutch Republic. Although Jacobs focuses his narrative on the realities of quotidian existence in the colony, he considers that way of life in the broader context of the Dutch Atlantic and in comparison to other European settlements in North America.

Drawing on the latest research, leading scholars shed new light on the culture, society, and legacy of the New Netherland colony.

When a young bride opens a Manhattan tavern in 1626, her razor-sharp tongue and premium beer spur the tiny settlement of New Amsterdam toward a collision with the tyrannical Dutchmen who rule it.