The Island at the Center of the World (46 page)

“The people here”: Ibid., 446.

“Whatever you have done”: Ibid., 444.

“pulled the wool”: Ibid., 458.

“in order that so”: Ibid., 464–65.

“in order to silence”: Gehring,
Correspondence, 1647–1653,
149.

To Petrus Stuyvesant: Docs. Rel., 1:472.

“They make light”: Adriaen van der Donck,
Description of New Netherland,
trans. Diederik Willem Goedhuys, 108.

resolution granting him: Docs. Rel., 1:470.

It would be modeled: M. E. H. N. Mout, “Limits and Debates: A Comparative View of Dutch Toleration in the Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries,” 40–41.

Act of Abjuration: Stephen E. Lucas, “The
Plakkaat van Verlatinge:
A Neglected Model for the American Declaration of Independence,” 192.

He hired several: Rockefeller Archives, Amsterdam Notarial Records Related to New Netherland, No. 2279 V, page 24. Notary Jacob de Winter. 1652 May 15.

“to hold peaceably”: Docs. Rel., 1:473.

Oliver Cromwell: My main sources on Cromwell are Christopher Hill,
God's Englishman;
Maurice Ashley,
The Greatness of Oliver Cromwell;
and Antonia Fraser,
Cromwell, the Lord Protector.

“Oh, I have”: Fraser,
Cromwell, the Lord Protector,
38.

“no effeminate”: Christopher Hill,
God's Englishman: Oliver Cromwell and the English Revolution,
39.

seeded the American idea: Anders Stephanson,
Manifest Destiny: American Expansion and the Empire of Right,
chapter 1.

Accounts of what happened: My account of the action off Dover is based on the pamphlets “A Declaration of the Parliament of the Commonwealth of England, Relating to the Affairs and Proceedings . . .” and “Nootwendige Observatien op het Antwoort van de Republiicke van Engelant op drie schriften overgelevert by d'Ambassadeurs vande H. Staten Generael . . . ,” 41–43; Roger Hainsworth and Christine Churches,
The Anglo-Dutch Naval Wars,
chapter 1; and David Howarth,
The Men-of-War,
48–67.

suspicions of Pauw and de Witt: Rowen,
John de Witt, Grand Pensionary,
65, and the pamphlet “De Rechte Beschryvingh van alle het gene den Heer Adriaen Paau Ambassadeur Extraordinary.” Pauw's state of mind is also apparent in his speech before Parliament, June 11, 1652, bound with “A Declaration of the Parliament of the Commonwealth of England . . .”

Milton in the Anglo-Dutch War: Leo Miller,
John Milton's Writings in the Anglo-Dutch Negotiations, 1651–1654,
3–13.

“The English are about”: Hainsworth and Churches,
Anglo-Dutch Naval Wars,
17.

“their masts and tackles”: Howarth,
The Men-of-War,
60.

word had gone out: Docs. Rel., 1:476.

“going fast to ruin”: Ibid., 477.

At the end of the book: Van der Donck,
Description,
trans. Goedhuys, 156–62.

“The undersigned”: Gehring,
Correspondence, 1647–1653,
203.

Notarial records: Rockefeller Archives, Amsterdam Notarial Records Related to New Netherland, No. 2280, pages 18–65. Notary Jacob de Winter.

CHAPTER
13

“Thou hast received”: Berthold Fernow, trans. and ed.,
The Records of New Amsterdam 1653–1674.
Hereafter cited as
RNA
.

“herewith [to] inform”: Ibid., 49.

Roman-Dutch law: J. W. Wessels,
History of the Roman-Dutch Law,
22–25, 124–29.

“to this growing”: Jerrold Seymann,
Colonial Charters, Patents and Grants to the Communities Comprising the City of New York,
14–19.

cuckold case:
RNA,
1:51, 53, 58, 59–61.

“blue caps”: Charles Gehring,
Correspondence, 1647–1653,
232.

to begin gearing up: Ibid., 226.

“5 or 6 ordinary”: Docs. Rel., 1:484.

“certainly informed that”: Ibid., 487.

the wall and Wall Street:
RNA,
1:65–67, 69, 72–74, 90.

bourse: Simon Schama,
The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age,
348.

second Amboyna: “The Second Part of the Tragedy of Amboyna, or a True Relation . . .”

who had just assumed: Antonia Fraser,
Cromwell: The Lord Protector,
450–58.

“utmost assistance”: John Thurloe,
A Collection of the State Papers . . . ,
1:721–22.

“Meester Adriaen”: Gehring,
Correspondence, 1647–1653,
220–21.

His mother moved: William Hoffman, “Van der Donck-Van Bergen,” 233.

a member of the gang:
RNA,
1:51, 61, 65.

The most recent: Charles Gehring,
Council Minutes, 1652–1654,
91–93.

The episode has: As an example of this standard dismissing of the Dutch colony, the distinguished historian Dixon Ryan Fox, writing in 1940, recycled the accepted wisdom that “In New Netherland we do not see Dutch groups insisting on communal privileges, as in New England . . .” and that “. . . local self-government came and developed in New Netherland by reason of New England Puritan invasion.” That historians could ignore the long series of petitions crafted by the Dutch colonists, climaxing with Van der Donck's elaborate and impassioned mission to the Hague on behalf of self-government, can only be explained as Anglocentric blindness. (Dixon Ryan Fox,
Yankees and Yorkers,
71–75.)

John Brodhead: John Romeyn Brodhead,
The
History of the State of New York, 1609–1691,
2:571.

Another early: Mariana van Rensselaer,
History of the City of New York in the Seventeenth Century,
1:349.

was a direct result: My thanks to Dr. Willem Frijhoff for helping me to formulate my argument that Van der Donck played a role in the December 1653 remonstrance.

Doughty in Flushing: Brodhead,
History of the State of New York,
1:411, 555, 615.

“We do not know”: Gehring,
Correspondence, 1654–1658,
11.

“made up of various”: Ibid., 92.

“natural law”: The way it is stated in the supporting petition of the New Amsterdam magistrates is: “. . . because the laws of nature give to all men the right to assemble for the welfare and protection of their freedom and property . . .” (Ibid., 100); Stuyvesant, in his reply, rejects “‘that natural law gives to all men' such rights.” (Ibid., 102.)

The invasion squadron: Thurloe,
State Papers,
2:418–19.

Manhattan became Manhattan: I am particularly indebted to Dennis Maika, whose 1995 doctoral dissertation, “Commerce and Community: Manhattan Merchants in the Seventeenth Century,” helped change the way historians look at Manhattan under the Dutch. By shifting attention from the West India Company to the new breed of merchant-entrepreneurs that came into being on Manhattan, Maika showed that the crucial date for its rise was not 1664, the year of the takeover, but 1653, the year of the municipal charter.

These alliances: I owe this insight to Simon Middleton of the University of East Anglia, who outlined it in his talk, “Artisans and Trade Privileges in New Amsterdam,” at the 2001 Rensselaerswijck Seminar in New York City.

red and black: Van Rensselaer,
History of the City of New York,
2:138; I. N. P. Stokes, ed.,
Iconography of Manhattan Island, 1498–1909,
4:129.

old thatch ones: Gehring,
Council Minutes, 1655–56,
186.

An order went out: Stokes,
Iconography,
4:129, quoting Van Rensselaer.

Mills, brickyards: Janny Venema, “Beverwijck: A Dutch Village on the American Frontier, 1652–1664,” 75–81.

a thousand: Martha Shattuck, “A Civil Society: Court and Community in Beverwijck, New Netherland, 1652–1664,” 9–11.

They are boarders: Charles Gehring, ed. and trans.,
Fort Orange Court Minutes, 1652–1660,
354.

One shows up: Ibid., 355.

Once, in 1659: Ibid., 463–64.

their walls hung: Schama,
The Embarrassment of Riches,
313, 320–21.

The new products: Maika, “Commerce and Community,” 128–29; Gehring,
Council Minutes, 1652–1654,
162.

a new, two-tiered:
RNA,
7:150.

Nearly every resident: Ibid., 150–53.

burgher system: Ibid., 149–54. Also, my brief overview of the “burgherright” system of New Amsterdam relies on Maika, “Commerce and Community,” especially chapter 3.

a looser relationship: Venema, “Beverwijck,” 304.

“to bake any”:
RNA,
3:391.

koeckjes:
Peter Rose,
The Sensible Cook: Dutch Foodways in the Old and New World,
34–35.

Koolsla:
Ibid., Pehr Kalm,
The America of 1750: Peter Kalm's Travels in North America; the English Version of 1770,
28. The sample New Amsterdam dishes (pike, meatballs) come from
The Sensible Cook.

“Saint Nicholas”: Paul Zumthor,
Daily Life in Rembrandt's Holland,
185.

“There's more legal”: Personal interview, Albany, New York, June 18, 2002.

If they couldn't:
RNA,
7:200; Maika, “Commerce and Community,” 224.

The initial bloc: James Riker,
Revised History of Harlem: Its Origin and Early Annals,
183.

In all, a quarter: Joyce Goodfriend,
Before the Melting Pot: Society and Culture in Colonial New York City, 1664–1730,
17
.

intermarriage in New Amsterdam: Samuel Purple, ed.,
Collections of the New-York Genealogical and Biographical Society,
vol. 1,
Marriages from 1639–1801 in the Reformed Dutch Church, New York.

“thievish, lazy”: Stokes,
Iconography,
4:74.

“laziness and unwillingness”: Gehring,
Council Minutes, 1655–1656,
267–68.

But there are also: Peter Christoph, “The Freedmen of New Amsterdam,”
de Halve Maen,
161.

“true and free”: Charles Gehring, unpublished translation of New Netherland document no. 10(3).332.

In its first decades: Robert Swan, “The Black Presence in Seventeenth-Century Brooklyn,”
de Halve Maen,
1. Some historians have claimed that Stuyvesant himself owned forty slaves, but I think this figure is too high. It is based on a 1660 account from a minister who reports that “there are forty negroes” at the “the Bouwery.” But by that time “the Bouwery” had become a village, and we know that several families of freed blacks owned property there, along what is now Fourth Avenue. So the figure of “forty negroes” surely included both slaves and free blacks.

by the time: Goodfriend,
Before the Melting Pot,
13.

“724 pine planks”: Charles Gehring and J. A. Schiltkamp, eds.,
Curaçao Papers,
1640–1665,
175.

One such: On these events of 1651 I am relying on Jonathan Israel, “The Intellectual Debate”; Jonathan Israel,
The Dutch Republic,
706–709; and James Williams, “‘Abominable Religion' and Dutch (In) tolerance: The Jews and Petrus Stuyvesant.”

“would pave the way”: Stokes,
Iconography,
142.

twenty-three Jews: Leo Hershkowitz, “New Amsterdam's Twenty-Three Jews—Myth or Reality?”

“for important reasons”: Gehring,
Council Minutes, 1655–1656,
166.

“the aversion and”: Ibid., 81.

“consent is hereby”: Ibid., 128.

The Jewish community: Ibid., 261–62; Gehring,
Correspondence, 1654–1658,
83.

“love peace and libertie”: Docs. Rel., 14:402–403.

But here, too: On the historical importance of the Flushing Remonstrance, I am relying on Haynes Trebor, “The Flushing Remonstrance” and David Voorhees, “The 1657 Flushing Remonstrance . . .”

“Singing Quakers”: Docs. Rel., 3:415.

Here he deployed: Details from this scene come from Charles Gehring,
Delaware Papers,
1: 37–47, and from Charles Gehring,
“Hodie Mihi, Cras Tibi:
Swedish-Dutch Relations in the Delaware Valley.”

“forest Finns”: My sources on the forest Finns are Terry Jordan and Matti Kaups,
The American Backwoods Frontier: An Ethnic and Ecological Interpretation;
Terry Jordan, “The Material Cultural Legacy of New Sweden on the American Frontier”; Per Martin Tvengsberg, “Finns in Seventeenth-Century Sweden and Their Contributions to the New Sweden Colony”; and Juha Pentikainen, “The Forest Finns as Transmitters of Finnish Culture from Savo Via Central Scandinavia to Delaware.”

“restitution of our”: Charles Gehring,
Delaware Papers,
1648–1664,
39.

“Hodi mihi”:
Ibid., 39.

He decided to invite them: Ibid., 46, 54.

“Maquas, Mahikanders”: Ibid., 35.

Such a multicultural: I am indebted to Cynthia J. van Zandt of the University of New Hampshire for this insight, which she outlined in a paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Historical Association in 1998 entitled “‘. . . our river savages . . . betook themselves (unknown to us) and went to Manhattan City, in New Holland, to exact revenge on our behalf': Cross-Cultural and Multi-Ethnic Alliances in the 17th-Century Mid-Atlantic.”

“had been a good friend”: Gehring,
Council Minutes, 1655–1656,
204.

Van der Donck's wife: William Hoffman, “Van der Donck-Van Bergen,” 340–41.

Croats and Prussians: These nationalities come from marriage records of the colony post 1656.

“So, reader”: My thanks to Elisabeth Paling Funk for translating this poem.

Three hundred settlers: Docs. Rel., 2: 4; list of supplies Docs. Rel., 1: 643–44.

“I have been full”: Docs. Rel., 2: 17.

CHAPTER
14

Meanwhile, outside: Samuel Eliot Morison,
The Founding of Harvard College,
257–58; F. O. Vaille and H. A. Clarke, eds.,
The Harvard Book . . . ,
25–32.

a “perfidious rogue”: John Beresford,
Godfather of Downing Street,
150.

and blamed his faulty: Ibid., 29.

literally leaving the man: John Romeyn Brodhead,
The
History of the State of New York,
1: 695; Robert Black,
Younger John Winthrop,
209–10.