Volume 1, Chapter 42, The Fall and Breakup of New Netherland
New Amsterdam functioned as the major center of an illegal but free trade for the English colonies in America,
for the purchase of European manufacturers and for the sale of enumerated commodities, especially tobacco.
Following the restoration of Charles II and the elaboration of the Navigation Act structure,
England began to find New Netherland to be a major irritant, a major loophole in its
attempt to mold and restrict colonial trade.
The English Council of Trade, established in the autumn of 1660, complained regularly
to the government that New Netherland was the center of free trade in America in violation
of the acts of trade.
Furthermore, English ire was drawn toward New Netherland because the latter vigorously
competed with the English colonies for settlement by Englishmen.
The colonial concern of the English government was reflected in its continuation of the protectorate
project for settlement and development of the island of Jamaica.
The colonial government there would be completely dominated by the English government and was
was to be the standard form imposed on the colonies.
Since an elected assembly such as Virginia's would be attractive to settlers, this form
of government was pressed on Jamaica.
And the fear that Dutch toleration would attract English settlers to Long Island instead of
to Jamaica caused the English government to exempt the English colonies from the principal
Religious Act of the Restoration, the Act of Uniformity of May 1662.
In February 1662, the Dutch West India Company had invited all those of tender conscience
in England or elsewhere oppressed to settle on Long Island, where the major English settlements
in New Netherland were located. Since this threatened to attract dissenters from England,
Where repression of the Puritans was increasing, and especially dissenters from New England,
the 1662 Act of Uniformity did not apply to the colonies, which had been included in
the 1559 Act.
Thus, Dutch colonial competition provided the New England colonies with religious benefits
as well as economic and political ones.
The Dutch West India Company furthermore was a point of special animosity to the English
imperialist as it was a major competitor of the principal instrument of English speculation
and expansion, the Company of Royal Adventures into Africa, which had raided the Dutch slave
ports in West Africa.
When the Spanish government sold the slave trade contract, or asiento de negros, to
a Genoese company, which subcontracted the asiento to the Dutch West India Company and
the Company of Royal Adventures into Africa, the English Company was granted a new charter,
January 1663, and the monopoly of trade in slaves from West Africa to the English colonies,
as well as the exclusive right to occupy ports in West Africa.
In 1650, New Netherland and the New England Confederation had come to an agreement by
which the English towns of eastern Long Island came under Connecticut or New Haven government
and the western quarter of the island remained Dutch. Connecticut, emboldened by its new
New Royal Charter now also pressed its presumptuous claims to Dutch territory, specifically to
Westchester County and to the towns of western Long Island, where Englishmen had continued
to settle. Peter Stuyvesant realized that in any conflict, New Netherland would be hopelessly
beaten by the English colonies alone. Its population of 5,000, contrasted with one of
Stuyvesant had displayed his caution in relations with the English when the New Englander Thomas
Pell purchased and settled the Westchester land of Pelham Manor, formerly Anne's Hook,
where Anne Hutchinson had been murdered.
Stuyvesant ordered Pell to leave, bag in baggage, but did nothing when Pell failed to comply.
And now, in late 1663, the English towns of Long Island rebelled and proclaimed King Charles
as their sovereign. They formed themselves into a league consisting of Hempstead, Gravesend,
Flushing, Oyster Bay, Middleburg and Jamaica, and chose the veteran adventurer John Scott
of Hempstead as their president. The rebels thereupon called upon England for action to
crush the colony of New Netherland. Stuyvesant again pursued the course of prudence and agreed
to Connecticut demands to give up Westchester and the Long Island towns. When inter-ethnic
riots ensued on Long Island, however, Stuyvesant sent an armed force to protect the Dutch Long
Island Towns of Brooklyn and Flatbush.
Amid this growing crisis, a long talk met in New Amsterdam in April 1664, but could
only bow reluctantly to force majeure and agree to yield to Connecticut's terms.
But in the meanwhile, a special committee of the Privy Council found a solution in January
1664 to the problem of the English settlers in New Netherland and the threat of free trade
to England that New Netherland's existence posed. It would end New Netherland's existence
by conquest. Consequently, in February a grant and on March 12 a patent were issued to the
Duke of York, giving him the territories along the Hudson and Delaware rivers where the Dutch
had settled, plus a governmental appropriation of money to cover the expenses of seizing
them as well as the Dutch ports of West Africa. The seizure was to be accomplished by the
English Navy, of which the Duke of York was commander. Of the three-man special committee
that had submitted this recommendation to the Privy Council, it should be noted that
All were officials of the Admiralty under the Duke of York, and two of them, Lord Berkeley
and Sir George Cotterett, were promptly rewarded, June 1664, by the grateful Duke with a sub-grant
of the territory between the Hudson and the Delaware Rivers.
In April 1664, the Duke of York appointed Colonel Richard Nichols to head a commission
The Commissioners, as we have seen, were instructed to arrange for the aid of New England in the conquest of New Netherland, to gain the enforcement of the Navigation Acts and to settle the disputes in New England. Colonel Nichols promptly launched an armed expedition to seize New Netherland.
To meet the English force of 1,000 men that arrived at the end of August, Stuyvesant had only 150 soldiers and 250 citizens capable of bearing arms.
Not only were the Dutch outnumbered, but disaffection had been strong for years, and the burgomasters were strongly inclined to submission.
This inclination was greatly intensified by Nichols' generous terms to the Dutch, offering liberty of conscience, the retention of property rights, and freedom of trade and immigration.
Furthermore, the Dutch citizens were promised freedom from conscription and guaranteed against any billeting of soldiers in their homes.
It was not lost on the realistic Dutch people that they would be enjoying far more liberty under English rule than they ever had under the despotic company government.
The burgomasters and even the magistrates now clamored for submission.
In a tantrum at surrendering his power, Stuyvesant tore the English message to bits, but the people demanded to hear it,
and Nicholas Baird, one of the leaders of the Dutch community, pieced it together and read it to the crowd, which now called exuberantly for submission.
The people were intelligent enough to regard their lives and liberties more highly than they did a remote and artificial patriotism.
As the historian John Fisk pointed out, there were many in the town who did not regard a surrender to England as the worst of misfortunes.
They were weary of Stuyvesant's arbitrary ways, and in this mood they lent a willing ear to the offer of English liberties.
Was it not better to surrender on favorable terms than to lose their lives in behalf of, what, their homes and families?
No, indeed, but in behalf of a remote government which had done little or nothing for them,
if they were lost to Holland, it was Holland's loss, not theirs.
Yet Stuyvesant, a hard-liner to the last, desperately tried to rouse the rapidly defecting
Dutch to resistance to the death.
Even his closest supporters turned against him.
His counselor, Macacius de Sille, warned that resistance is not soldiership, it is sheer
madness. The rigorous Calvinist minister, Reverend Mr. Megaphalensis, urged that it
is wrong to shed blood to no purpose. Even Stuyvesant's own son, Balthazar, affixed
his name to a remonstrance, signed by nearly a hundred leading citizens that pled for surrender.
Finally, left alone in his colony, Peter Stuyvesant gave in, and on September 7, surrendered to the English.
Colonel George Cartwright, a fellow royal commissioner of Nicholson's, obtained the peaceful surrender of Fort Orange on September 20.
The English promptly assumed and continued the understanding the Dutch had with the Iroquois. New Netherland had disappeared.
The English had one last military task, the conquest of the separate colony of New Amstel.
Nichols sent another royal commissioner, Sir Robert Carr, to the Delaware.
Once again the sensible Dutch burghers of New Amstel were eager to surrender,
but the autocratic governor, Dino Ioso, insisted on hopeless resistance.
The English finally stormed and captured Fort Casimir on October 10,
It is an ironic footnote on Peter Stuyvesant's frenzy at the idea of surrender that he passed his last days in the late 1660s and early 1670s in peaceful contentment on his farm in Manhattan.
and not only unmolested but in friendship with Governor Nichols.
Shorn of power, Peter Stuyvesant was a happier and perhaps a wiser man.
The first step of the new governor, Colonel Nichols, was to change important names from
Dutch to English and so New Amsterdam became the city of New York.
New Netherland became New York Province and Fort Orange was renamed Albany after one of
The Duke of York's Titles West of the Delaware, New Anstal was changed
to Newcastle and Altina to Wilmington.
Trouble in Delaware began immediately as Sir Robert Carr plundered the Dutch settlements
unmercifully, confiscating property for the use of his family and friends, plundering
houses and selling Dutch soldiers into servitude in Virginia.
Nichols rushed down to Delaware, removed Carr, and placed his son, Captain John Carr, in
command of the district and at the head of a council of seven.
Boundary and jurisdiction offered a longer range problem in the Delaware district, for
Lord Baltimore claimed all of the West Bank of the Delaware on behalf of Maryland under
Maryland's charter from Charles I.
But the Duke of York refused to remove his troops, and the Delaware region remained as
part of New York province. Another boundary dispute requiring settlement was the conflict
with Connecticut. According to the Duke of York's charter, New York could have claimed
all of Connecticut up to the Connecticut River, thus almost obliterating the colony. But Nichols
Amicably settled for Westchester County and Connecticut obtained the land to the east.
This territory included the town of Stamford, which had tried to proclaim itself an independent
republic. On the other hand, New York, according to the clear-cut terms of the charter, obtained
jurisdiction over all of Long Island. In imitation of Yorkshire and England, Nichols promptly
organized Long Island, Staten Island and Westchester with their preponderant English
population into one district called Yorkshire. The new district contained three sub-districts
or ridings, the East, now Suffolk County and most of Nassau County, the West, including
what is now Kings County and Staten Island, and the North, including what is now Westchester,
of the Bronx and Queens Counties.
As a result of the King's Grant to the Duke of York, New York now included Delaware, the
County of Cornwall, all of Maine East of the Kennebec, and such islands off Massachusetts
as Nantucket and Mothet's Vineyard.
But one break-up of the old New Netherland territory was a bitter blow to Nichols' hopes
of power.
In June 1664, before New Netherland had even been won, the Duke of York had granted the
territory between the Hudson and Delaware rivers, bounded at 41 degrees on the north,
to the proprietorship of two of his court favorites, John Lord Berkeley and Sir George
Cotterett. This new province of New Jersey now lay outside New York jurisdiction. As
The proprietors of New Jersey, Berkley and Cataract, were anxious to promote rapid colonization, hence in February 1665 they promulgated the liberal concessions and agreements, which granted religious freedom to the inhabitants and which offered 150 acres of land for each indentured servant brought over, subject to quick rents of one-half pence per acre to the proprietors.
Each servant upon completing his term was to receive seventy-five acres of land. Furthermore,
the concessions granted the right of freeholders to form their own representative assembly.
The governor and council were to be appointed by the proprietary, but no taxes could be
levied without the approval of the assembly. These particular provisions were virtually
identical with the abortive concessions and agreements promulgated by the Carolina proprietary
Six weeks earlier, appointed as first governor of New Jersey was Philip Catterett, a distant
relative of the proprietor. Catterett set up his capital at the new settlement of Elizabethtown.
Attracted by the guarantee of religious liberty and by the open land, New Englanders soon
poured into New Jersey, adding such settlements as Piscataway, Woodbridge, Middletown and
and Shrewsbury to the older Dutch town of Bergen, which included Pavonia and Hoboken.
In particular, many citizens of New Haven, disgruntled at the seizure by Connecticut, came to New Jersey.
The Reverend Abraham Pearson, the Arch-Calvinist minister of Brantford, led his flock, as we have seen, to found New Ark,
Attempting to duplicate the theocracy of New Haven, they provided in the town constitution that only Puritan Church members could vote.
Meanwhile, after temporarily leaving the Dutch officials in office, Governor Nichols of New York drew up, for the largely English speaking district of Yorkshire, a set of fundamental laws known as the Duke's Laws.
The Duke's laws did not grant anything like the degree of representative government achieved
in the other English colonies. There was no elected assembly. Instead, the legislative
power was exercised by a court of assesies, a body of judges appointed by and subject
to the veto of the governor. On the other hand, trial by jury was introduced into a
The Anglican Church was now established, with the Church supported in each town, but freedom of conscience was granted to all of the sects. Neither were there any town meetings of the old New England model, but the towns were allowed to elect a ruling constable and a board of eight overseers, who were, however, accountable to the Governor. The Patroons were confirmed to be the first to be elected.
In general, we may say that the Duke's laws were more liberal than the old despotic Dutch rule, but far inferior to New England's.
For the Long Island towns, used to a considerable amount of self-government, the Duke's laws were a decidedly backward step.
In March 1665, a convention was held in New England.
In March 1665, a convention of 34 delegates from 17 Yorkshire towns of Westchester and Long Island, 13 English and 4 Dutch, was called to approve the Duke's laws.
The Long Islanders, who had been promised by Nichols their original New England town autonomy and a popular self-governing assembly,
were understandably bitter at this about-face.
However, to their great regret, the Convention finally gave its approval to the laws.
But the Long Island townsmen continued to balk and to object bitterly
to what they believed to be a betrayal by their own deputies.
John Underhill attacked the new laws as arbitrary power.
They also objected vehemently to Nichols's decree forcing all settlers and landowners
in the province to pay a fee to the government to have their land titles reconfirmed.
The object of the government was not only to obtain the fine, but to force the lands
to enter the roles to become subject to payment of quit rents.
So strong were the protests that the new court of Assisi's decreed that anyone criticizing
the Hempstead deputies would be punished for slander. Three protesters from Flushing in
Jamaica were duly fined and placed into the stocks. The townsmen even practiced a form
of nonviolent resistance, refusing to accept the governor's appointments as town constables.
The governor finally imposed a fine of five pounds to force the appointees to accept their post.
Flushing was in such a rebellious state in 1667 that Nichols finally disbanded its militia
and disarmed all of its citizens. And so bitter were the Long Island towns about reconfirming their
land titles for a fee and for subjection to quit rents that they did not confirm the titles
for the entire first decade of English rule. These New Englanders had always been able
to own their land in full without having to pay feudal quit-rents. Another deep economic
grievance of the Long Islanders was Nichols's attempt to enforce the payment of customs
taxes on direct trade with Long Island, a threat that was countered by extensive smuggling.
Douglas's attempt included the hated appointment of a deputy collector of customs for Long
Island to supplement the collector at New York City.
In New York City, a similar but even less democratic system was imposed. All the municipal
officials were appointed annually by the governor. The English offices of mayor, alderman and
sheriff replaced such Dutch post as the Koopman and the Scout Fiscal. The Dutch population
of the City protested this arbitrary rule at length and asked at least for the right
of the Judicial and Legislative New York City Council to present two lists from which the
governor would have to choose the next council.
This concession was finally granted in 1669.
In 1668 the Duke's laws were extended to Delaware and to the remainder of New York, excluding
During the Second Anglo-Dutch War of 1664-67, in which the French took the side of the Dutch, Nicholls, as the King's spokesman in America, called repeatedly for joint New York-New England action against Dutch and English-Dutch relations.
and French America. But New England, and especially Massachusetts, pursued a wise course of peace
and neutrality. In February 1666, England, joined by Nichols, instructed the New England
colonies to organize an expedition for the purpose of seizing Canada from the French.
But the New Englanders stalled, and the project came to nothing, much to the annoyance of
The Dutch citizens suffered considerable grievances from the English troops, especially during the war. Nichols imposed heavier taxes upon them to maintain these troops and billeted the troops in the homes of the unwilling Dutch burghers. Tax delinquency rose sharply during the war period.
period, and when Nichols requested aid in fortifying New York City, the Dutch balked
so long as their own arms were not returned to them, certainly a telling point. Even Governor
Nichols recognized that the English soldiers tended to treat the Dutch citizens very badly.
One important incident occurred at the Dutch town of Isopos, now Kingston, in 1667. Here
Earlier the English captain Broadhead ruled the citizenry in high-handed and dictatorial
fashion. One time Broadhead denounced a man for celebrating Christmas in the Dutch rather
than in the Anglican manner. Finally Broadhead refused to obey the wish of the civil authorities
of the town to set a certain prisoner free. When the Kingstonians protested, Captain Broadhead
The threat was enough to cause a riot, and finally an attack on Broadhead. A Dutchman was killed in the melee by one of Broadhead's troop. The governor then stepped in to suspend Broadhead and also punish the leading Dutch resistors.
The Dutch citizens of New York City also had an important economic grievance, and good reason to deem themselves economically betrayed by the new regime.
In the surrender treaty of New Netherland, the English had made various promises that trade with Holland and in Dutch ships would continue freely.
But this was in direct conflict with the English Navigation Acts. What was to be done?
Nichols at first allowed a few selected New York merchants to trade with Holland.
After the war was over, agitation for permission to trade with Holland was renewed.
To avoid a decline in the Indian fur trade, the Indians preferred Dutch goods, and wholesale emigration by the Dutch citizens,
Nichols persuaded the Duke of York in 1667 to permit Dutch trade with New York.
And yet, in late 1668, this right was abruptly cancelled.
Despite strong protest from the Dutch officials of the city government as contradictory to
basic English imperial policy.