Conflict and Commerce: The Founding of New Netherland
Books:
For more background on Hudson's voyages and the young republic that sponsored him, read:
Israel, Jonathan Irvine. The Dutch Republic: Its Rise, Greatness, and Fall, 1477-1806. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.
Johnson, Donald S. Charting the Sea of Darkness: The Four Voyages of Henry Hudson. Camden, ME : International Marine, 1992.
These book-length studies provide good background for further study of the Dutch province and for New York’s colonial history in general:
Jacobs, Jaap. New Netherland: A Dutch Colony in Seventeenth-Century America. Boston: Brill, 2005 (an English translation of a work by a Dutch scholar).
Kammen, Michael G. Colonial New York: A History. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996 (An Excellent survey).
Rink, Oliver A. Holland on the Hudson: An Economic and Social History of Dutch New York. Ithaca, NY: Cornell, 1986.
Shorto, Russell. The Island at the Center of the World: The Epic Story of Dutch Manhattan and the Forgotten Colony that Shaped America. New York: Doubleday, 2004 (Extremely readable and based on the most up-to-date research).
Shorto’s work was made possible by the thirty-year-old research and publications program of the New Netherland Project (http://www.nnp.org/) at the New York State Library in Albany. Charles Gehring, the director of the project, leads a team that has published several volumes of records of the Dutch settlements in modern-day New York (all in good English translations with fine explanatory notes), and their two volumes of Correspondence are of special interest to classroom teachers and students. The volumes are all published by Syracuse University Press.
If you enjoyed Simon Middleton’s essay on New Netherland, you’ll also want to read his book:
From Privileges to Rights: Work and Politics in Colonial New York City. Philadelphia: U. Penn Press, 2006.
In this collection of scholarly essays, the authors address the history of broader Dutch trade and exploration in the seventeenth century:
Postma, Johannes, and Victor Enthoven, eds. Riches from Atlantic Commerce: Dutch Transatlantic Trade and Shipping, 1585-1817. Boston, MA: Brill, 2003
The Dutch left their mark on the history of race relations in North America both as slaveowners and slave traders. See these books:
Foote, Thelma Wills. Black and White Manhattan: The History Of Racial Formation in Colonial New York City. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.
Postma, Johannes. The Dutch in the Atlantic Slave Trade, 1600-1815. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990.
If you or your students are interested in New Netherland’s frontier, try these books on Albany and the fur trade:
Bachman, Van Cleaf. Peltries or Plantations: The Economic Policies of the Dutch West India Company in New Netherland, 1623-1639. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1970.
Merwick, Donna. Possessing Albany, 1630-1710: The Dutch and English Experiences. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990.
Oddly enough, we don’t have an up-to-date biography of Peter Stuyvesant, the last governor of New Netherland. Jaap Jacobs, author of the recent New Netherland: a Dutch colony in seventeenth-century America, is presently working on a new study of Stuyvesant’s life. Until that is ready for publication, this is the most recent you can find:
Kessler, Henry Howard, and Eugene Rachlis. Peter Stuyvesant and his New York. New York: Random House, 1959.
For the end of Dutch rule along the Hudson and the transition to English government, see:
Archdeacon, Thomas J. New York City, 1664-1710: Conquest and Change. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1976
Goodfriend, Joyce D. Before the Melting Pot: Society and Culture in Colonial New York City, 1664-1730. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992.
Websites:
Wikipedia articles on New Netherland are uneven, but
the article on the Dutch West India Company is good:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_West_India_Company
The Library of Congress is at work on a Website representing a collaboration between major American, the National Library of the Netherlands and other major Dutch libraries called "The Atlantic World: America and the Netherlands." To date, the only portion that’s close to complete is is The Dutch in America, 1609-1664, but that’s the segment relevant to this essay, so we shouldn’t complain:
http://international.loc.gov/intldl/awkbhtml/kb-1/kb-1.html#track1
For Henry Hudson, go straight to Canadian Ian Chadwick’s
Henry Hudson website. Everything you could want:
http://http://www.ianchadwick.com/hudson/hudson_03.htm
George Welling’s “The United States of America and the Netherlands” at the University of Groningen’s website provides basic facts:
http://odur.let.rug.nl/~usa/E/newnetherlands/nlxx.htm
Let’s turn to websites maintained by institutions located
in what was once New Netherland. Our friends at the
State Library in Albany provide a great selection of
online materials. To begin with, the New Netherland
Project provides a great page of links – those for “History” will probably be the most useful for you:
http://www.nnp.org/Related%20Sites/index.php#his
The same site offers a Virtual Tour of New Netherland:
http://www.nnp.org/vtour/index.php
The New Netherland Institute in Albany has published
two books of lesson plans, one for 4th and the other
for 7th grade. A sample is available online at:
http://www.halfmoon.mus.ny.us/curriculum.htm
The Albany Times Union Website includes a virtual
tour of the modern reconstruction of Hudson’s Half
Moon:
http://www.timesunion.com/halfmoon/
And the State Education Department provides an excellent
short history of Rensselaerwyck with solid links as
part of their broader “People of Colonial Albany” website:
http://www.nysm.nysed.gov/albany/na/rensselaerswyck.html
Moving further down river to Kingston, the Hudson River
Maritime Museum website offers materials from a variety
of sources – some old publications now in public domain;
others, new and scholarly. Scroll to the bottom of the
page for especially useful materials on Native Americans
of Lower Hudson Valley and Dutch experience:
http://www.hrmm.org/halfmoon/halfmoon.htm
Marist College in Poughkeepsie maintains a first-rate
website on Lenape Indians:
http://www.ulster.net/~hrmm/halfmoon/lenape/indexm.htm
Other universities around the country offer New Netherland
material as well. Cornell’s Library of New York State
Historical Literature includes an English translation
of Verrazzano’s letter recounting his 1524 voyage:
http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/cul.nys/docviewer?did=nys158&seq=3&frames=0&view=50
And from Notre Dame, a good outline history of the Dutch
in New Netherland:
http://www.coins.nd.edu/ColCoin/ColCoinIntros/NNHistory.html
And, of course, our friends in public television haven’t let us down. For elementary grades, you may want to see “pbskids” “Big Apple History” site has a good section on early New York history. There’s an interactive timeline you can use to find essays and graphics by period:
http://pbskids.org/bigapplehistory/early/index-flash.html
I’m partial to the segment on Peter Stuyvesant myself:
http://pbskids.org/bigapplehistory/early/topic7.html
