NYC Post #2: Dutch New Amsterdam. 1610 - 1664. A Brief History of the Big Apple. (#2 of 8).

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_{Note: the information here is all gathered from The Historical Atlas of New York City: A Visual Celebration of 400 Years of New York City's History.}

Having acquired a knowledge of the Hudson River and environs through Hudson's expeditions, the Dutch sought to use the area as a base of trade and exploration to compete with the English, French, and Swedes in North America. By the mid-1600s the English and French, in particular, were well established, and the Duth West India Company moved quickly, drawing their colonists from French-Speaking Walloons (Protestant exiles). The Nieuw Nederlandt arrived in 1624 with 30 families, who settled on the southernmost tip of Manhattan, on what they named "Fort Amstedam."

Like most colonies at this time, life expectancy was low. In addition to competition from other imperial powers, relations were stained with with the increasingly frustrated and desperate native tribes, as well the health consequences of poor sanitation and hygenic practices in areas of high popultion density. Incentives included provisions for transportation and land and the possibility to get an easy start in agriculture. Settling was, in fact, regarless of nationality, a colossal risk with the possibility of allowing settlers to rise in social rank and wealth to an extent not possible in Europe. From the outset, Fort Amsterdam in particular was in perilous straights. The population of 300 was incredibly vulnerable. Moreover, Dutch imperial ventures were failing worldwide at the time, and the only initially profitable aspect to colonization of the Hudson was an in on the fur trade.

In 1626, Peter Minuit, the first "Director-General" purchased Manhattan from the Canarsie tribe "for the value of sixty guilders,"and immediately set about fortifying the settlement. In 1633, the second Director-General, Van Twiller, imported slaves from the West Indies and used them to improve fortifications, though most were later transferred to agricultural holdings upriver.

Despite general progress, the colony's haphazard positioning among its neighbors and erratic contact with the Netherlands required improvisation for growth. In addition to the Walloons and slaves, more settlers were drawn from English-speakers, while imported Dutch-speaking merchants became a sort of local aristocracy. As a company town, the colony was also governed with an eye toward company profits, and Director-Generals tended to be autocratic and corrupt.

It was a lack diplomacy and circumspection among local leaders that led to the castropic Indian wars. Double-dealings had infuriated the Algonquian tribes upon which New Amsterdam depended for the fur-trade. Uprisings in 1640 and 1643 left the colony on the bring of ruin.

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Peter Stuyvesant, the most remembered of these early civil leaders, traded corruption for puritanism, and while he had a better developed military savvy, he destablized the community by imposing sanctions on liquor sales and persecuting the Quakers, as well as alienating immigrant Jews and Lutherans. Stuyvesant restricted actions of the governing councils, instead focuing on redeveloping the fortifications and building Fort Amsterdam on the southwest corner of what is now Battery Park, and redesignating streets in its vicinity.

In 1664, the English arrived with warships to stake a claim to New Amsterdam. A half-century of warfare and mismanagement had strained any national loyalties to the breaking point. When the English announced that property rights would remain intact, the Dutch leadership handed over the fortress without a fight. The population had grown to 1,500.

Today, there are no structures remaining from the period of Dutch rule. There, is however, a physical signature on lower Manhattan in the form of the street scape. The original street layout conformed to the physical characteristics of the island and haphazard land allotments the fanned out from the tip of the island. Thoroughfares such as the Bowery and Broadway were defined at this time, and the area including Heere Gracht, Prince Straet, and Beaver Gracht would later remain in the layout of Chinatown and the Financial District.

The Dutch are responsible for the narrow and haphazard streetscapes of lower Manhattan.

END OF POST.