Politics1626 – 1664

Dutch New Amsterdam

Also called: New Netherland, Nieuw Amsterdam

The Dutch West India Company founded New Amsterdam on Manhattan as the centre of its New Netherland colony. The English seized it in 1664 and renamed it New York.

Map of New Amsterdam in 1660 (the Castello Plan), showing the fort and the wall (today’s Wall Street) at the tip of Manhattan
Map of New Amsterdam in 1660 (the Castello Plan), showing the fort and the wall (today’s Wall Street) at the tip of Manhattan

Johannes Vingboons (cartographer), Jacques Cortelyou (surveyor) · Public domain · Source

Grown rich on seaborne trade, the Dutch opened the colony of New Netherland along the Hudson River to buy furs. In 1626 the director Peter Minuit is said to have bought Manhattan from the Lenape for goods worth sixty guilders, and New Amsterdam at its southern tip became a port where people of many nations gathered. When an English fleet appeared in 1664, Director Peter Stuyvesant surrendered without a fight, and the town was renamed New York after the Duke of York. It was in these years (1653) that Hendrick Hamel and the crew of a Dutch East India Company ship were wrecked on Jeju Island and held in Joseon.

The map in 1626

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States at the time
New Netherland
Dutch Republic · colonial power
England · conqueror
Places
New Amsterdam

Before and after

Themes that include this event

  • Islamic Empires and the Atlantic World1500 – 1800

    Three centuries in which the Ottomans of Suleiman I, the Mughals of Akbar and the Safavids of Abbas I flourished and then faltered, while across the Atlantic the slave trade and colonies transformed the Americas, leading to American independence