Another European power to establish a presence in North America was the Netherlands. In 1624, the Dutch established a fur trading post on what is today the Island of Manhattan in New York City. In fact, Woodard (2011: 65) reminds us, the character of New York City is due very much to the cultural imprint of the first Dutch settlers of New York. Of course, it was not called New York back then but New Amsterdam.
Unlike the Puritans who would come five years later, the Dutch had no interest in creating a model society. Nor were they interested in establishing democratic government. During the first few decades of its existence, New Amsterdam was formally governed by the Dutch West India Company, one of the first global corporations. The Dutch were interested in North America primarily for commercial purposes.
To understand how the Dutch influenced New York, it is important to understand the culture and social history of the Netherlands. By the end of the 1500’s, the Dutch had waged a successful war of independence against a huge monarchical empire (the kingdom of Spain). They had asserted the inborn human right to rebel against an oppressive government, and they had established a kingless republic nearly two centuries before the American Revolution, which established American independence from the British Empire.
“In the early 1600s, the Netherlands was the most modern and sophisticated country on Earth,” says Woodard (2011: 66-67). They were committed to free inquiry. Their universities were among the best in the world. Scientists and intellectuals from countries where free inquiry was suppressed flocked to the Netherlands and produced revolutionary scientific and philosophical texts. Dutch acceptance of freedom of the press resulted in the wide distribution of texts that were banned elsewhere in Europe. The Dutch asserted the right of freedom from persecution for the free exercise of religion. They produced magnificent works of art and established laws and business practices that set the standard for the Western world. They invented modern banking, establishing the first clearinghouse at the Bank of Amsterdam for the exchange of the world’s currencies.
The Dutch had also virtually invented the global corporation with the establishment of the Dutch East India Company in 1602. With 10,000 ships of advanced design, shareholders from all social classes, thousands of workers, and global operations, the Netherlands dominated shipping in northern Europe in the early 1600s.
By the time the Dutch West India Company founded New Amsterdam, the Netherlands had assumed a role in the world economy equivalent to that of the United States in the late 20th century, setting the standards for international business, finance, and law. (Woodard, 2011: 67)
The Dutch effectively transplanted all of these cultural achievements to New Amsterdam. Dutch openness and tolerance consequently attracted a remarkable diversity of people. The ethnic, linguistic, and religious diversity, says Woodard, shocked early visitors. The streets of New Amsterdam teamed with people from everywhere, just as New York does today.
By the mid 1600’s, there were “French-speaking Walloons; Lutherans from Poland, Finland; and Sweden; Catholics from Ireland and Portugal; and Anglicans, Puritans, and Quakers from New England. . . [D]ozens of Ashkenazim [eastern European Jews] and Spanish-speaking Sephardim [Jews from Spain] settled in New Amsterdam in the 1650s, forming the nucleus of what would eventually become the largest Jewish community in the world. Indians roamed the streets, and Africans—slave, free and half-free—already formed a fifth of the population. A Muslim from Morocco had been farming outside the city walls for three decades. (Woodard, 2011: 66)
When the Duke of York, future King James II of England, arrived with a naval fleet in 1664, the Dutch were forced to cede political control of New Amsterdam to England. New Amsterdam became New York. However, the Dutch managed to negotiate terms, which enabled them to maintain a presence and preserve Dutch norms and values. Thus, diversity, tolerance, upward mobility, and the emphasis on private enterprise, characteristics historically associated with the United States in general and New York in particular, began in New Amsterdam and represent the Dutch legacy in America.
New Amsterdam, centered in the eventual Lower Manhattan, in 1664, the year England took control and renamed it “New York”.
