The Island at the Center of the World

Chapter 13.

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Accounts of what happened off Dover differed, but all agreed that the battle was sparked by Tromp"s failure to lower his flag in recognition of English sovereignty. From four o"clock in the afternoon until nine in the evening, forty-two Dutch vessels and twelve larger, more heavily armed English ships hauled off at one another, sometimes from point-blank range, in an encounter that surprised both sides for its savagery. In fact, decades of tensions had built to this. At least some Dutch statesmen had seen it coming. Months earlier a courier pouch had arrived at The Hague with a curious doc.u.ment. It was printed in English, but even those who couldn"t read that language could make out the word AMBOYNA AMBOYNA in large red letters across the t.i.tle page. A London publisher had reprinted the inflammatory pamphlet of twenty-eight years earlier, describing atrocities committed by the Dutch on Englishmen on the island in the East Indies. Of the two great statesmen in the Dutch government, the twenty-seven-year-old Jan de Witt preferred to believe that this bit of resuscitated jingoism represented only a random stirring among the English rabble, but as wise old Adriaen Pauw glanced over the pamphlet he knew it meant the English were whipping up the populace, preparing them for war. in large red letters across the t.i.tle page. A London publisher had reprinted the inflammatory pamphlet of twenty-eight years earlier, describing atrocities committed by the Dutch on Englishmen on the island in the East Indies. Of the two great statesmen in the Dutch government, the twenty-seven-year-old Jan de Witt preferred to believe that this bit of resuscitated jingoism represented only a random stirring among the English rabble, but as wise old Adriaen Pauw glanced over the pamphlet he knew it meant the English were whipping up the populace, preparing them for war.

Events now tumbled quickly toward war. Pauw left for London to take part in emergency talks with Cromwell"s Council of State (where, incidentally, the man he would have dealt with as Cromwell"s translator and foreign speech writer was no less a figure than the poet John Milton). In The Hague, the mood of magnanimity and optimism that had spread through the republic since the "eternal" peace of "48 had vanished. The government cycled onto a war footing. Orders went out to ships at sea and to outposts across the globe to strengthen their defenses.

The impact of all of this on Adriaen van der Donck was spectacular. The West India Company"s fortunes had fallen steadily in recent years, and Van der Donck"s a.s.sault had further crippled it. But with the first rumors of a war with England, the company, which after all had originally been conceived as a quasi-military ent.i.ty, came roaring back to life. Its once-powerful directors flushed again with influence. Under pressure from them, and fearing that this was the wrong time to inst.i.tute liberal reforms, the States General completely reversed its rulings on the Manhattan-based colony. They rescinded the recall of Stuyvesant, and ordered Van der Donck personally to hand back the letter of recall they had given him. On top of that, Van der Donck"s activism, which only weeks before had been lauded as the full flowering of Dutch legal progressivism being applied, in a test case, to the nation"s overseas province, suddenly looked positively dangerous. He was detained and refused permission to return to America. The ship bearing his family members and belongings left for Manhattan without him. Overnight, things had turned upside-down. He was no longer a patriot but a radical, someone to keep watch on.

THE D DUTCH R REPUBLIC"S declaration of war against England in July of 1652 was a kind of coming of age for both nations. Their recent histories had been so intertwined that they often seemed like siblings, shifting endlessly from argument to cooperation to vindictiveness. The gunboat salvos in the Channel signaled that in the struggle for control of the indescribably lucrative international trade in this first era of globalization each saw the other as the only real adversary. Their rivalry would dominate the century and give shape and substance to American beginnings. declaration of war against England in July of 1652 was a kind of coming of age for both nations. Their recent histories had been so intertwined that they often seemed like siblings, shifting endlessly from argument to cooperation to vindictiveness. The gunboat salvos in the Channel signaled that in the struggle for control of the indescribably lucrative international trade in this first era of globalization each saw the other as the only real adversary. Their rivalry would dominate the century and give shape and substance to American beginnings.

The First Anglo-Dutch War, as history has t.i.tled it, was a true and literal trade war. A peasant in either country could have been forgiven for feeling it lacked pungency: no homes were burned, no villages sacked. The entire thing took place at sea, with England going after the Dutch herring fleet and spice- and fur-laden merchantmen, and the Dutch forced to defend their trading empire. ("The English are about to attack a mountain of gold," Pauw wryly remarked at the outset, "we are about to attack a mountain of iron.") Which did not mean the war lacked in ferocity. The pent-up grudges on both sides came out in a series of savage exchanges that rewrote the books on naval warfare and began the buildup of tactics, rules, and technological innovations that reached a peak more than a century later in the age of Horatio Nelson. The clashes in the Channel and the North Sea that murderous summer marked the debut of "line of battle" fighting, ships of each fleet arrayed stem to stern so that their side-mounted guns could form a long deadly chain. In the culminating sea battle, the largest in world history to date, more than two hundred ships formed opposing ribbons along a sixteen-mile corridor, hulls screeching against one another and cannon unleashing inhuman mayhem (this era before the exploding sh.e.l.l featured such low-tech innovations as the broadside of chains, which sliced through rigging and scissored bodies to pieces). The ships caught up in the encounters were reduced to floating wrecks literally caked in gore, "their masts and tackles," one correspondent aboard an English vessel reported, "being moiled with brains, hair, pieces of skull."

Cromwell had caught the Dutch leaders off guard. While he had built a new generation of larger warships, the States General, after nearly coming to civil war with the Prince of Orange over their insistence on decommissioning the military, had laboriously downsized since the peace of "48. As a result, the States General and the regional chambers of the East and West India Companies were now forced to drop all other concerns as they focused on the task of defending trade routes and rigging more ships for battle.

Van der Donck, his cause shelved, himself an exile in his home country, thundered like a caged animal. For months he roamed restlessly back and forth between The Hague, Amsterdam, Leiden, and Breda. In Leiden, he returned to the university and received his Supremus in jure Supremus in jure degree, which allowed him to appear before the Dutch supreme court. In Amsterdam, he went again to the States General asking to be released, but learned that, at the instigation of the company, word had gone out to every ship captain departing for the Americas that anyone who received him on board would face punishment. In Amsterdam he organized a group of influential friends and together they entered the stately West India Company headquarters to meet with company officials. But this only gave them a chance to loose their pent-up invective over his efforts to rob them of their colony. He was a dangerous man, a "notorious ringleader," illegitimate representative of a "lawless and mutinous rabble." He reported this to the States General, and used everything he could think of to appeal to them, pleading that his farm in America was "going fast to ruin," that he was personally being subjected to "an extraordinary civil banishment," even reminding them that he was a descendant of the great patriot responsible for liberating Breda during the war for independence. It got him nowhere. The bureaucratic wall had gone up. degree, which allowed him to appear before the Dutch supreme court. In Amsterdam, he went again to the States General asking to be released, but learned that, at the instigation of the company, word had gone out to every ship captain departing for the Americas that anyone who received him on board would face punishment. In Amsterdam he organized a group of influential friends and together they entered the stately West India Company headquarters to meet with company officials. But this only gave them a chance to loose their pent-up invective over his efforts to rob them of their colony. He was a dangerous man, a "notorious ringleader," illegitimate representative of a "lawless and mutinous rabble." He reported this to the States General, and used everything he could think of to appeal to them, pleading that his farm in America was "going fast to ruin," that he was personally being subjected to "an extraordinary civil banishment," even reminding them that he was a descendant of the great patriot responsible for liberating Breda during the war for independence. It got him nowhere. The bureaucratic wall had gone up.

Then, indefatigable still, he hit upon another idea for promoting his colony. His emba.s.sy was at a standstill, his family had gone on to Manhattan. He was alone and rudderless. In this gap in his life, images gathered. Wild raw mountains, and the river with its majestically broad belly reigning over the landscape. An autumn afternoon in which, following days of rain, a sudden burst of sun ignited the world, cows in a primordial meadow lit to glowing by it, the gra.s.s iridescent. Himself, ten or twelve years younger, sitting before the fire in a Mohawk longhouse with its hundred or so inhabitants, discussing theology of all things, agreeing with the dark-eyed chiefs in their belief that G.o.d was almighty and good, but arguing against their notion that G.o.d was too preoccupied with his eternally enticing female companion deity to pay notice to the affairs of men, thus leaving the devil to hold sway over the Indians in their smoke-filled dwellings, the Europeans on their island stronghold, and people across the waters of every hue and language, all of whom, in the Indians" cosmology, wallowed in wickedness.

His mind filled with these images, Van der Donck spent the months during the height of the war closeted away with pen and paper, and emerged with the ma.n.u.script of a book, A Description of New Netherland, A Description of New Netherland, which brought a humanistic, scientific sensibility to bear on the colony he had come to love. The which brought a humanistic, scientific sensibility to bear on the colony he had come to love. The Description, Description, from which I have quoted throughout this book, was unabashedly a paean to the America that Van der Donck knew. He arranged it thematically, devoting sections to the waters, woodlands, wild vines, minerals, winds, seasons, and of course the Indians, each of which received the doting attention of one who had been too long absent. from which I have quoted throughout this book, was unabashedly a paean to the America that Van der Donck knew. He arranged it thematically, devoting sections to the waters, woodlands, wild vines, minerals, winds, seasons, and of course the Indians, each of which received the doting attention of one who had been too long absent.

At the end of the book, in order to make a direct appeal to his audience, he broke out of his anatomical dissection of the colony in favor of a much-used convention of the times, the dialogue. In this case, it was a "Dutch patriot" and a New Netherlander, the former, having read all that came before, standing in for the reader and posing questions. Van der Donck doesn"t much trouble to disguise himself in the cloak of the anonymous New Netherlander, but launches into opinions that, as before, in the Remonstrance Remonstrance and elsewhere, show an almost eerie foresight. Manhattan and its surrounding region will grow exponentially, he a.s.sures his listener, and not so much because the Dutch people themselves will leave their homes for it but because the Netherlands has had a long tradition of welcoming refugees from elsewhere in Europe. It is these ma.s.ses-"from eastern Europe, Germany, Westphalia, Scandinavia, Wallonia, etc."-who, having steeped themselves in the Dutch tradition of tolerance, will populate the colony, increasing its multiethnic flavor and its strength and vigor. and elsewhere, show an almost eerie foresight. Manhattan and its surrounding region will grow exponentially, he a.s.sures his listener, and not so much because the Dutch people themselves will leave their homes for it but because the Netherlands has had a long tradition of welcoming refugees from elsewhere in Europe. It is these ma.s.ses-"from eastern Europe, Germany, Westphalia, Scandinavia, Wallonia, etc."-who, having steeped themselves in the Dutch tradition of tolerance, will populate the colony, increasing its multiethnic flavor and its strength and vigor.

In this reverie of his, Van der Donck seems practically to summon the vast sweep of the coming centuries" migrations, the huddled arrivals being processed at Ellis Island, the barrios and ghettos coming into being. Aiding this future ma.s.s migration, making it happen and making it stick, he sees a unique cultural glue: "the Dutch have compa.s.sionate natures and regard foreigners virtually as native citizens," with the result that whoever is "prepared to adapt" can make a go of it in their system. This freakish burst of historic clairvoyance is tempered somewhat by his a.s.sured statement that the colony would remain Dutch, that would-be emigrants had no need to fear an English takeover anytime "in the next fifty years."

Van der Donck won a license to publish his work, but publication was withheld because, with the war raging, the government didn"t want to draw attention to the colony, which it now feared the English might invade.

At last, late in 1653, four years after his arrival, Van der Donck received permission to leave for Manhattan. But it came at a price. The forces that had branded him a danger had not let go. The heads of the Amsterdam chamber took particular delight in a.s.suring him that his cause was shattered. Finally he understood what he had been up against all these years-that the power he had been attempting to thwart was rooted in the vastness of the Dutch empire. He had been too far ahead of his time, and now he understood it. For the first time in his life, he described himself as "wholly disheartened and cast down." He penned yet another pet.i.tion, different in tone from anything he had ever written: The undersigned, van der Donck, humbly requests consent and pa.s.sport of the Board to go to New Netherland, offering to resign the commission previously given him as President of the community, or otherwise as its deputy, and promising upon arrival in New Netherland and taking up residence there, to accept no office whatever it may be, but rather to live in private peacefully and quietly as a common inhabitant, submitting to the orders and commands of the Company or those enacted by its director.

His request was granted. He was forbidden from engaging in public life and forbidden to practice law in the colony, on the remarkable grounds that there was no other lawyer in the colony, and thus no one with the knowledge to stand up to him in court. (Actually, Lubbert van d.i.n.klagen, Stuyvesant"s former vice-director who was also a trained lawyer, was still in the colony, but he had likewise been silenced by Stuyvesant following his backing of Van der Donck"s mission, and had gone into retirement on Staten Island.) Over a period of several weeks prior to his voyage, Van der Donck turned up repeatedly at the office of an Amsterdam notary public named Jacob de Winter, each time with one or more men and women. Together they sat while the notary carefully inscribed the terms and conditions of a contract, and then each signed or made his or her mark on the paper: June 4, 1653. Adriaen van der Donck, patroon of his colony in New Netherland, takes Hendrik Cornelisz Broeck into his service as carpenter for a period of three years. He will sail to New Netherland with his own tools. The pa.s.sage will be paid by Van der Donck . . .June 13, 1653. Adriaen van der Donck, patroon of his colony in New Netherland, takes Jan Mewesz. and Evert Jansz., both from Steenwijk, into his service as carpenters . . .June 16, 1653. Adriaen van der Donck . . . engages Helena Wand for a period of six years . . . Helena Wand is obliged to do the household and such as a maid-servant and to a.s.sist his family. She will receive as annual wages f36 besides board and lodging.July 26, 1653. Adriaen van der Donck, living in New Netherland, engages for his colony Henrik Claasz., pottery-maker from Rotterdam . . .July 28, 1653. Adriaen van der Donck, free man in New Netherland, engages as gardener for a period of three years: Gommaart Paulusz., from Antwerp. . . . Paulusz. shall be obliged to keep the garden of Van der Donck, to set, to plant, to clip and do similar jobs . . .

Van der Donck had apparently succ.u.mbed: he would give up his political pretentions. But he hadn"t abandoned his home, or the idea of America. And even in defeat he left evidence for the persistence of his vision: records that foreshadow the course of the coming centuries, momentarily shining the light of history onto a handful of individuals who became caught up in the idea of a land of opportunity across the ocean, and followed him there.

PART III.

THE INHERITANCE

Chapter 13.

BOOMING.

On a Thursday morning in the thick of winter, 1653, seven men left their narrow, low-ceilinged homes and the warmth of their Delft-tiled hearths, stamped through the streets of lower Manhattan, and entered the gates of the fort. a.s.sembled in the council room there, they swore an oath of service to the States General, then bowed their heads as a minister intoned a prayer-". . . Thou hast received us in Christ . . . make us fit through Thy grace, that we may do the duties imposed upon us . . ."-that signals, among other things, that we are well before the era of the separation of church and state.

Adriaen van der Donck was still in the Netherlands, struggling against the political fatwa that was preventing him from returning to America, when their honors, the magistrates of the newly incorporated city of New Amsterdam, transacted their first, brief piece of business, putting their signatures to a statement "herewith [to] inform everybody that they shall hold their regular meetings in the house hitherto called the City Tavern, henceforth the City Hall, on Monday mornings from 9 o"clock, to hear there all questions of difference between litigants and decide them as best they can." Two and a half weeks later, in a physical break from the government of Peter Stuyvesant and the West India Company that was visible to all, they convened at the three-story building on the waterfront that had long been the center of the town"s activities. In case anyone missed the significance, the bell in the courtyard out front sounded the change of government.

It was very modest. But it meant something to those involved. For years the settlers of Manhattan Island had insisted that their community was more than a military or trading outpost, that they were not serfs forced to toil for a distant master, but citizens of a modern republic ent.i.tled to protection under its laws. As of February 2, 1653, with the signing of a munic.i.p.al charter, New Amsterdam was a city. The magistrates were quite aware of the heritage of the political offices and legal traditions they took on. The government they formed had a structure-there were two co-mayors and a panel of judges, which, when combined, formed the legislative body-copied from Amsterdam and based on Roman-Dutch law, the Roman part of which had come to Holland by way of the Holy Roman Empire, which in turn traced itself all the way back to the caesars and the Code of Justinian. When, in February of 2003, the speaker of New York"s city council cut into a birthday cake and gave a champagne toast in honor of the three hundred fiftieth anniversary of the city"s charter, it was to these gatherings in the former tavern that he paid homage.*31 The city dates its political foundation not to the English takeover, when it was named New York, but to this moment. The city dates its political foundation not to the English takeover, when it was named New York, but to this moment.

Then again, so what? Aside from the bit of arcana that New York is perhaps unique in the United States in that its legal roots go back to ancient Rome, does it mean anything? The political founding of a city may be interesting to a narrow clique of historians but of justifiable indifference to the rest of the world. For that matter, it"s also worth noting that Stuyvesant blunted the power of the city government by initially refusing to allow popular election: he himself appointed its first officers.

What matters is what the founding of city government on Manhattan led to. The idea posed at the beginning of this book was that New York City is different in its origins from Boston, Hartford, and other early East Coast cities. It was different because a sulky but dogged English explorer named Hudson happened to chart the area for the Dutch. But it would only matter in the long term-its difference would only stick-once it had a real structure. Munic.i.p.al incorporation provided that structure, one born of long experience containing and maintaining peace among a dozen cultures. The proclamation that Stuyvesant"s superiors forced on him as a result of Van der Donck"s efforts granted "to this growing town of New Amsterdam" a government "to be framed, as far as possible and as the situation of the country permits, after the laudable customs of the city of Amsterdam, which gave her name to this first commenced town . . ." Thus the achievement of Adriaen van der Donck. This was the foundation that New York City was built on, and, spreading in every direction, it would color and mold the American continent and the American character.

The two matters that occupied the new government in its first weeks form a diptych of the settlement"s concerns, which always seemed to veer between the historic and the ridiculous. Into the newly outfitted council chamber, on its first full day in business, burst a raucous knot of locals who were near to blows. Joost G.o.deris was a harried man; he was married to a woman with a wayward eye; the fact was well known in the town, and he was fed up. He"d recently been out oystering on Oyster (i.e., Ellis) Island, and as he canoed back to Manhattan he encountered his supposed friend Gulyam d"Wys loitering on sh.o.r.e with a gang of young toughs. D"Wys wanted to give the boys something to laugh at, and so he told G.o.deris (as the court recorded it) "that Joost should give him, deft., a better opportunity to have s.e.xual connection with his, pltf"s., wife." When G.o.deris tried to maintain his dignity by feigning confusion, d"Wys helpfully explained that "Allard Anthony has had your wife down on her back." The boys with him laughed and called the man a cuckold who "ought to wear horns, like the cattle in the woods." G.o.deris hoped the new munic.i.p.al board was the sort of body to help a man in emotional distress, and gravely brought the matter before the magistrates.

At the same time, and on a darker front, the magistrates were grappling with daily reports of fallout from the war between England and the Dutch Republic. Stuyvesant-who had fought against the forming of a town government, but who for now seemed to welcome the opportunity to share the burden-regularly stumped over from the fort with three-month-old news from Holland. As in all wars, the reports contained a mix of paranoia, rumor, and inscrutible behavior. "The government in England is at present very odd," one letter informed Stuyvesant; according to informed sources, the English were demanding "that all apprentices shall again wear blue caps." While the Dutch leaders pondered that one, it had also become apparent that the American colonies of both countries were in play in the conflict. The West India Company was to begin gearing up once again for privateering work, as it had against Spain. The company proposed that "5 or 6 ordinary, but well manned, frigates" should use Manhattan as a base for attacking English colonies. At the same time, the States General was afraid of a surprise attack, and reported that it was "certainly informed that New Netherland is in great danger and imminently exposed to invasion," and ordered Stuyvesant and the city magistrates to reinforce defenses.

The magistrates, with Stuyvesant sitting in on their session, took action. The first decision was "to surround the greater part of the City with a high stockade and a small breastwork." To fund it, the magistrates raised money from the town"s wealthiest residents, Stuyvesant matching the top figure of one hundred and fifty guilders. Then they plunged into the details: the palisade along the northern perimeter of the town would be comprised of twelve-foot oak logs, each eighteen inches in circ.u.mference and "sharpened at the upper end." These would be sunk three feet into the earth and be fortified by a four-foot-high breastwork. Payment to the builder, the government declared, "will be made weekly in good wampum." A crier was sent out, declaring that the town council was asking for bids to carry out the work. Englishman Thomas Baxter signed on to provide the wood, and the thing was built by early July. In the long term, what"s notable about this first public works project orchestrated by the town government is not the wall itself but the street that ran along it. It"s a safe bet that no matter how wildly they tended to dream, the magistrates could not have imagined that this rough pathway would replace the gleaming, colonnaded bourse of Amsterdam as the epicenter of global finance. It"s also worth noting that the wall along Wall Street was built not to keep Indians out, as folklore has it, but to keep the English out.

While the Manhattanites were fearing an attack from New England, the residents of Connecticut, New Haven, Ma.s.sachusetts, and Plymouth were likewise feeding on a steady diet of rumors that the Dutch were about to move northward against them. One of these rumors-that the Dutch had hired Indians to ma.s.sacre New England families while they were at church-made it to London, and was packaged by an enterprising printer in the most explosive way. The memory of the killing of ten English traders by Dutch soldiers on the far-off Southeast Asian island of Ambon or Amboyna three decades earlier hadn"t died in England, and had been rekindled the year before by republication of the inflammatory pamphlet reporting the event. Now, someone in the English colonies, possibly a.s.sociated with the government of either Connecticut or New Haven, had the genius to use Amboyna specifically to stir the New Englanders against the multiethnic Dutch-run colony to their south. The new pamphlet that swept through England and was shipped to America was t.i.tled "The Second Part of the Tragedy of Amboyna: or a True Relation of a Most b.l.o.o.d.y, Treacherous, and Cruel Design of the Dutch in the New Netherlands in America. For the total Ruining and Murthering of the English Colonies in New-England." It was a double-barreled shot of ethnic hatred, decrying the Indians as "b.l.o.o.d.y people, fit instruments for so horrid a design," and lauding an English colonist who had "in one night cut off fourteen hundred of them," while also seeing the plot as an instance of the genetic wickedness of the Dutch, "Amboyna"s treacherous Cruelty extending its self from the East to the West Indies, running in its proper channel of Dutch blood . . ."

The pamphlet was a model of wartime disinformation, forcing the Dutch government to carry out an investigation and deny the accusation while keeping the flame of English public opinion stoked. Months earlier, several New England leaders had disembarked at New Amsterdam to meet with Stuyvesant on the matter. He had a.s.sured them that his people had no designs on the English colonies. While on Manhattan, however, the Puritans got an eyeful of the rude, boisterous, growing port city, through which, they well knew, much of their own region"s trade pa.s.sed. If England were to make a play for the Dutch colony and so gain a lock on the interior of the continent and the shipping center of the entire coast, it had better be soon. The trade war was as good a pretext as any, and anyway the story was too good not to use. In addition to supplying the material for the "second Amboyna" pamphlet, the New England governors wrote to Cromwell personally and put the case that his so-called Western Design, by which England would weave the lands of the Atlantic Rim into the beginnings of an empire, would be perfectly served by conquering the island at the mouth of the Hudson River. Cromwell, who had just a.s.sumed the t.i.tle Lord Protector and with it many of the trappings of the king he had helped behead, liked the grandiosity in the plan, agreed it was time to carry it out, and wrote back to say he was sending a four-frigate flotilla and a company of soldiers to Boston, whose "utmost a.s.sistance may be given for gaining the Manhattoes."

At this juncture, Adriaen van der Donck finally sailed back to Manhattan. It"s frustrating, but not surprising, that we have no record of his homecoming. People viewed him as a hero; residents had followed every action he undertook in The Hague on their behalf. The new magistrates had him to thank for their jobs, and must still have considered him the leader of the reform party. But there was no public display-no one wanted to incur the wrath of Stuyvesant. It"s especially frustrating that we are forced to imagine the encounter between Van der Donck and Stuyvesant, which had to have been freighted with emotion. When last they had been together, Stuyvesant had imprisoned Van der Donck for treason. Since that time, the onetime protege had spent four years in the Dutch Republic hectoring the government for Stuyvesant"s removal, and had actually succeeded, only to have the decision reversed. Now, having gambled everything and lost, he was returning and putting himself at Stuyvesant"s mercy. The only item we have shows Van der Donck, shortly after his arrival, asking Stuyvesant for access to the records of the colony, so that he can add to the book he had written, which was still awaiting publication in Amsterdam. Stuyvesant turned him down, citing the advice of the company directors, who warned of "new troubles" from "Meester Adriaen van der Donck," and feared he would turn "the Company"s own weapons . . . upon itself." Stuyvesant could be a dangerous enemy. Van der Donck had to proceed with extreme caution, and the fact that he drops from the official records at this point suggests that he did.

But that doesn"t mean he stayed out of politics. Certainly on his arrival he was busy with domestic matters, reacquainting himself with his property and helping his newly arrived relatives adjust to America. His mother moved into a house on Pearl Street looking out across the East River to the Breuckelen meadows, and his sister-in-law needed help dealing with her teenaged son, who was a bit of a handful (Gysbert van der Donck, along with his friend, the son of Cornelis Melyn, was a member of the gang who had taunted Joost G.o.deris as a cuckold). But it doesn"t fit Adriaen van der Donck"s character that he would be content with domesticity.

In fact, he seems to have picked up right where he left off in The Hague, only now working behind the scenes. Within weeks of his return, there was a new political uprising against Stuyvesant. With the colony on the upswing, towns in the vicinity of Manhattan (which would later be incorporated into the boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens) were growing, and the leaders of several of these-Gravesende (later Gravesend), Vlissingen (Flushing), Middelburgh (Newtown), Heemsteede (Hempstead), New Amersfoort (Flatlands), Breuckelen (Brooklyn), and Midwout a.k.a. Vlackebos (Flatbush)-began clamoring for their rights. Piracy had sparked the controversy. It was still commonplace in the colony; a recurring problem stemmed from locals who, having failed to make a go of things through legitimate business, turned pirate. The most recent villain was well known to all: Thomas Baxter, who had supplied the oak posts for the "wall," was marauding along Long Island Sound, stealing horses. The residents of outlying towns a.s.sembled to declare that if the company couldn"t protect them they would stop paying taxes.

Some historians have explained this breach between Stuyvesant and the Long Island towns as a Dutch-English encounter. There were many English residents in these towns and there was a war on between the Dutch and the English, therefore, according to the reasoning, the agitation amounted to an internal revolt, a way of a.s.sisting England in the war. The episode has also been used to support the standard notion that any yearning for political rights that existed in the Dutch colony could only have come from its English residents. This is a misreading of events. The confusion seems to stem from the fact that the pet.i.tion presented to Stuyvesant in December was written in English and then translated into Dutch. But the "Remonstrance and Pet.i.tion of the Colonies and Villages in this New Netherland Province," in which colonists complained of the "arbitrary government" Stuyvesant exercised, follows Dutch legal forms. John Brodhead, the nineteenth-century historian who gathered the records of Van der Donck"s doings in The Hague and who was intimately familiar with Van der Donck"s writing, noticed a similarity in tone between Van der Donck"s Remonstrance of New Netherland Remonstrance of New Netherland and this current remonstrance, with its spirited rejection of Stuyvesant"s continued rule by fiat. Another early historian of the period noted the similarity in style of this complaint to the earlier complaints written during Kieft"s time-for which, as detailed in Chapters 7 and 9, there is ample evidence of Van der Donck"s involvement. and this current remonstrance, with its spirited rejection of Stuyvesant"s continued rule by fiat. Another early historian of the period noted the similarity in style of this complaint to the earlier complaints written during Kieft"s time-for which, as detailed in Chapters 7 and 9, there is ample evidence of Van der Donck"s involvement.

In demanding a voice in their affairs, the residents of the Long Island towns-Dutch and English both-were reacting not to the war but to the founding of the munic.i.p.ality of New Amsterdam. In fact, the magistrates of the New Amsterdam government not only supported their pet.i.tion to the West India Company; they called on these leaders to travel out of their wooded plains and valleys, cross over on the Breuckelen Ferry, and join with them in the capital to craft a formal complaint. In other words, this minirevolt that Stuyvesant found himself faced with at the end of 1653 was a direct result of Van der Donck"s achievement in The Hague, and it was also a direct continuation of that work, an attempt to push Stuyvesant and the company further toward political reform. It took place within weeks of Van der Donck"s return. Van der Donck was uniquely suited to act as intermediary between the Dutch and English leaders: his wife was English, and his father-in-law, the firebrand English preacher Francis Doughty, was now minister of Flushing, one of the towns that was party to the complaint. Van der Donck also knew well the Englishman who penned the remonstrance. George Baxter had been around since Kieft"s time, like Van der Donck had a.s.sisted Stuyvesant as an English translator, and had even served on Stuyvesant"s council during Van der Donck"s trial-and therefore, like Van der Donck, had split with Stuyvesant after once being close to him.

As a final piece of evidence, Stuyvesant seems to have complained to his superiors about the possibility of Van der Donck being behind this latest insurgency. In response to a letter of his that is now lost, the directors write: "We do not know, whether you have sufficient reason to be so suspicious of Adriaen van der Donck, as all the charges against him are based upon nothing but suspicion and presumptions, however, we shall not take his part, and only say that as we have heretofore recommended him to you on condition of his good behavior, we intend also that he be reprimanded and punished, if contrary to his promise he should misdemean himself."

The picture that emerges, then, is not one in which English interlopers come into the colony, lay in wait for several years, and then, Trojan horselike, emerge at time of war to add to the Dutch troubles. Indeed, there is no indication in this encounter of the English residents expressing a longing for English government. As they point out in their complaint, they had fled to these parts to escape it, and hoped to put down roots in the area surrounding Manhattan to take advantage of the more liberal justice of the Dutch Republic, the government of which, they noted, was "made up of various nations from divers quarters of the globe." What they wanted was exactly what Van der Donck had strived for all these years: an end to the West India Company"s rule, and a spread of rights through the rapidly growing towns of the colony. Such rights, the remonstrance declared, in a phrase out of Grotius that Van der Donck liked, were based on "natural law."

So the movement Van der Donck had launched was still animating the people of the colony, and in fact had spread. It was the continuation of a long, sustained, well-reasoned appeal for political reform that came not from England but from the early-modern heart of the European continent.

It did little good, however. Stuyvesant reacted to the remonstrance in trademark fashion. The directors of the West India Company, he declared, were "absolute and general lords and masters of this province." The pet.i.tion was denied. Stuyvesant was nothing if not consistent.

Then again, Stuyvesant himself was in danger of being trumped: violent change was bearing down on the colony while this debate still echoed. Unknown to everyone, Cromwell"s squadron left England in February of 1654. New Amsterdam would have been quickly subdued-the West India Company"s soldiers were spread thinly around the colony, and hundreds of New Englanders, alarmed by the threats of a Dutch invasion, had declared themselves ready to follow an English military leader in a preemptive strike.

But fate-i.e., the weather-intervened. The storm-tossed squadron didn"t arrive in Boston Harbor until June. As Major Robert Sedgwicke, commander of the fleet, wrote to Cromwell, the very day he was about to embark from Boston with "nyne hundred foote" and "one troope of horse" for the a.s.sault on Manhattan, "there arrived a shipp from London, bringing with her diverse printed proclemations of peace between the English and the Dutch." Jan de Witt had hammered out a treaty with Cromwell, yielding England control of the Channel while retaining trading supremacy in the Mediterranean and in Asia. The First Anglo-Dutch War ended with the North American sphere unchanged. The invasion squadron was called back home.

ONE MIGHT SAY that this is the point in history when Manhattan became Manhattan. With a rudimentary representative government in place, the island rapidly came into its own. Stuyvesant and the West India Company still officially ran the place, but, whether they were Dutch, English, or any of the other nationalities represented in the colony, the businessmen-the fur traders, the tobacco farmers, the shippers of French wines, Delft tiles, salt, horses, dyewood, and a hundred other products-increasingly got their way. As the business leaders won positions in the city government and became political leaders, others-bakers, tavernkeepers, school teachers, ministers-came to them for support. These alliances strengthened New Amsterdam"s munic.i.p.al government, which, in its turn, set a flurry of development in motion. Roads were paved with cobbles. Brick houses replaced wooden ones; tile roofs came in (mostly red and black, giving the town a crisp finish), and the old thatch ones were banned as a fire hazard. A proper wharf was built off Pearl Street. A street survey of New Amsterdam was commissioned. As the town picked itself up, it took on that defining Dutch characteristic: tidiness. Its streets and stoops were swept clean. Trees were aesthetically pruned; gardens took neat diamond, oval, and square shapes. An order went out forcing farmers to tear down pigsties and chicken coops that occupied prominent roadside positions. Owners of vacant lots on the main streets were slapped with an extra tax to encourage them to develop their property. The ditch that had been chopped through the center of the town was widened into a proper ca.n.a.l, its banks reinforced with pilings and crossed by pretty stone bridges, which, together with the gabled buildings, gave the town a strong echo of its namesake. Taverns were even more numerous than before, but staggering, puking drunkenness had abated somewhat. The taverns now functioned as clubs for traders and businessmen to meet, places where news was exchanged, and maybe dens for sampling that wanton new elixir, coffee. that this is the point in history when Manhattan became Manhattan. With a rudimentary representative government in place, the island rapidly came into its own. Stuyvesant and the West India Company still officially ran the place, but, whether they were Dutch, English, or any of the other nationalities represented in the colony, the businessmen-the fur traders, the tobacco farmers, the shippers of French wines, Delft tiles, salt, horses, dyewood, and a hundred other products-increasingly got their way. As the business leaders won positions in the city government and became political leaders, others-bakers, tavernkeepers, school teachers, ministers-came to them for support. These alliances strengthened New Amsterdam"s munic.i.p.al government, which, in its turn, set a flurry of development in motion. Roads were paved with cobbles. Brick houses replaced wooden ones; tile roofs came in (mostly red and black, giving the town a crisp finish), and the old thatch ones were banned as a fire hazard. A proper wharf was built off Pearl Street. A street survey of New Amsterdam was commissioned. As the town picked itself up, it took on that defining Dutch characteristic: tidiness. Its streets and stoops were swept clean. Trees were aesthetically pruned; gardens took neat diamond, oval, and square shapes. An order went out forcing farmers to tear down pigsties and chicken coops that occupied prominent roadside positions. Owners of vacant lots on the main streets were slapped with an extra tax to encourage them to develop their property. The ditch that had been chopped through the center of the town was widened into a proper ca.n.a.l, its banks reinforced with pilings and crossed by pretty stone bridges, which, together with the gabled buildings, gave the town a strong echo of its namesake. Taverns were even more numerous than before, but staggering, puking drunkenness had abated somewhat. The taverns now functioned as clubs for traders and businessmen to meet, places where news was exchanged, and maybe dens for sampling that wanton new elixir, coffee.

It was still a port town, with tentacles that stretched across the globe, so piracy and whoring, syphilic scabs and cutla.s.s scars, remained fixtures. But you get glimpses, too, of the well of ordinary life that any society draws from and that, in its quiet, pious normalcy, falls outside the margins of official records. A family gathers in the evening around the hearth, the father reading the Bible and carefully recording special events inside its front cover. A minister, writing home to Europe, recounts his weekly circuit on the Breuckelen Ferry between the churches of Long Island, New Amsterdam, and "Stuyvesant"s Bouwerie." An "orphanmaster" describes the progress of his charges.

The place was maturing, thanks largely to the munic.i.p.al leadership on Manhattan. It gave people a sense that this island on the edge of the wilderness, which had always veered sharply between lawlessness and tyranny, had become a place where families could let their dreams take root.

In what might have been seen as a good omen, one of the colony"s dodgiest residents, Kieft"s and Stuyvesant"s longtime henchman, Cornelis van Tienhoven, disappeared at this time, with appropriate flamboyance. Fleeing from The Hague, where he was opposing Van der Donck, and later turning up on Manhattan with a young mistress, had made him a laughingstock; we can only guess how his wife greeted him. Stuyvesant had kept him on for a time, but he soon became too much of a liability. He had bullied colonists for years, and there was a growing sense that he was involved in cooking the company"s books. As troubles reached a climax, he vanished one day in 1656, with his hat and cane found floating near the sh.o.r.e. Stuyvesant wanted badly to cover the matter up, have his a.s.sociation with the man forgotten, and quickly declare a death by drowning. But people felt they knew better-for one thing, Van Tienhoven"s brother, who had also become entangled in financial irregularities, vanished at about the same time, and later turned up on Barbados. Whatever happened to Cornelis van Tienhoven is one of the unsolved mysteries of New Netherland.

But Manhattan wasn"t the only eventful part of the colony; it wasn"t just the island capital that took off after 1653. Only a year before the munic.i.p.al government came into being, in an effort to resolve his dispute with the upriver duchy of Rensselaerswyck, Stuyvesant had created by decree the town of Beverwyck on territory staked out around Fort Orange. The beaver trade for which it was named was still flourishing, and the community came into being seemingly overnight. Mills, brickyards, and tile yards were laid out and produced the materials for creating a town whose citizens were self-consciously urban enough to construct a poorhouse as one of their first community projects. By 1660 it was the colony"s second city, with a thousand residents. Compared with New Amsterdam, it kept its remote, Wild West feel. Through the records we get fleeting views of Indians as ordinary partic.i.p.ants in town life. They are boarders in residents" homes, sitting by the fireside of an evening with pewter mugs of beer. One shows up, purse in hand, at the baker"s house to buy cakes. Once, in 1659, two Mohawk chiefs ask for-and receive-an extraordinary session of court in which to present grievances against Dutchmen who have been abusing their people. For the twelve years in which it existed, before morphing into the town of Albany, Beverwyck was a hardscrabble place, poised between the looming mountains and the vast river, the thunk of beaver skins on countertops the sound of commerce. But it was also a well-ordered community, with a court of justice that functioned identically to the one in New Amsterdam and those in Holland. In makeup it was more Dutch than New Amsterdam, but still a quarter of its residents came from outside the United Provinces, and with Germans, Swedes, French, English, Irish, Norwegians, and Africans, it had a far more mixed population than New England towns.

In Amsterdam, meanwhile, men like Seth Verbrugge and Dirck de Wolff-the coiffed and groomed merchant princes who ran Europe"s trade from their red leather chairs and ornately carved desks, their walls hung with framed maps showing their global sway, their wives collared in lace and studded with diamonds-took advantage of the newfound stability on Manhattan. They gave their agents there greater sway and purchasing power, and the agents used their contacts with English and Dutch merchants from Canada to Virginia to Jamaica and Brazil to make their island port the hub of Atlantic trade. The new products appearing in New Amsterdam"s shops speak of a more refined life for its inhabitants-medicine, measuring equipment, damask, fine writing paper, oranges and lemons, parakeets and parrots, saffron, sa.s.safras, and sarsaparilla.

With munic.i.p.al government on Manhattan came an innovation whose affect would long outlive the colony itself, and help to impress the island"s legacy into the American character. Going back into the Middle Ages, cities throughout Europe had offered a form of local citizenship to inhabitants: English cities had their freemen, Dutch towns their burghers. Amsterdam had recently installed a new, two-tiered system, and the local government on Manhattan promptly copied it. The so-called great burgher was a powerful trader who contributed sizable sums for civic improvements and, in exchange, got the right to trade and had a voice in setting policy. What was different was the offering of small burgher status. Nearly every resident of New Amsterdam applied for it, and it gave even the humblest-shoemakers, chimney sweeps, tailors, blacksmiths, hatters, coopers, millers, masons-a stake in the community, a kind of minority shareholder status. The system encouraged inhabitants to support one another and largely did away with the itinerant traders who used to sweep in, make a quick profit, and then leave. It also made for a more egalitarian place than New England, where the number of freemen, or town citizens, never exceeded twenty percent of the population. In New Amsterdam, nearly everyone-rich and poor, the coiffed and the scabby-was part of the same club. When shipping increased in the port, all benefited.

Added to this, workers in the colony never organized themselves into the guilds that had held sway in Europe since the Middle Ages. This was probably because the West India Company did its best to bar the guilds, fearing their power. But this form of union-busting turned out to have an advantage. Artisans branched out: a baker might own land, invest in a shipment of tobacco, and earn extra income as a soldier. Young men who entered the colony"s rolls as humble artisans rose to heights, and a muscular strain of American upward mobility was born. Frederick Flipsen (a.k.a. Philipse) traveled to Manhattan from Friesland and signed himself a lowly carpenter when he became a small burgher in 1657; at the time of his death in 1702, after a long career of multifaceted wheeling and dealing, he was one of the wealthiest men in America, his upriver estate, the famous Philipsburg Manor, encompa.s.sing ninety-two thousand acres of what would become Westchester County (including, incidentally, all of Adriaen van der Donck"s former holdings).

There is a linguistic inheritance that would come along with this new relationship to work. Frederick Flipsen"s workers, and the a.s.sistants to the colony"s smiths, wheelwrights, bakers, and gunstock makers, had a looser relationship to their superiors than did workers in traditional guilds; a wheelwright"s apprentice might also serve beer in the tavern or help bake bread. In time the typical Dutch word for master-baas-would take on a different connotation in the New World, and an Americanism came into being. And no Americanism is more American, and at the same time more New York, than boss. From Tweed to Corleone to Springsteen, the ur-bosses are all-American and utterly New York.*32 As New Amsterdam gave way to New York, the word would have a natural attraction for English colonists, too, because in its adapted usage it frankly distinguished itself from the power system that held sway in Old England; it spelled out a different kind of power relationship. "No," it says, "we have no cla.s.s system in place here, but there is someone in charge. I"m not your master, lord, or sovereign, but I am your boss. Now get to work." As New Amsterdam gave way to New York, the word would have a natural attraction for English colonists, too, because in its adapted usage it frankly distinguished itself from the power system that held sway in Old England; it spelled out a different kind of power relationship. "No," it says, "we have no cla.s.s system in place here, but there is someone in charge. I"m not your master, lord, or sovereign, but I am your boss. Now get to work."

In this period of growth and activity, we see the emergence of other customs and usages that would influence American culture-little things, meaningless in themselves, but indications that the Dutch colony never really died out, but became part of something larger. In October of 1661, there was a grain shortage in the city, and the munic.i.p.al government issued an order to the bakers of the town to restrict themselves to baking bread and not "to bake any more koeckjes, koeckjes, jumbles or sweet cake." It"s the tiniest of things, but note the Dutch word. It is p.r.o.nounced "cook-yehs." Literally, little cakes. More than a century later, with the publication of jumbles or sweet cake." It"s the tiniest of things, but note the Dutch word. It is p.r.o.nounced "cook-yehs." Literally, little cakes. More than a century later, with the publication of American Cookery, American Cookery, the first American cookbook, in 1796, Amelia Simmons would lock in print what had by then become a standard usage. It"s because the first Manhattanites called them that that Americans would never eat biscuits, but cookies. the first American cookbook, in 1796, Amelia Simmons would lock in print what had by then become a standard usage. It"s because the first Manhattanites called them that that Americans would never eat biscuits, but cookies.

While they were waiting (or not) for the bakers to produce their sweets, the women of New Amsterdam were inclined to pick up a head of cabbage, chop it finely, slather it with vinegar and melted b.u.t.ter, and serve it alongside, maybe, a platter of pike with smoked bacon, or veal meatb.a.l.l.s. Koolsla- Koolsla-"cabbage salad"-was their straightforward name for the dish. Again, jump forward a century. In 1751 a Swedish traveler in the Hudson Valley, in describing a meal his Dutch landlady had served him, fused into the written language a term that was still given the original Dutch p.r.o.nunciation but now had a phonetic American spelling: cole slaw.

As the town expanded and developed its seasonal routines and rituals, those of the dominant culture tended to prevail. We can imagine how the colony"s most iconic legacy got established: every year in early December children of non-Dutch families in New Amsterdam had to have pouted at being left out of something good. As in the home country, the Dutch children would break out in song: Saint Nicholas, good holy man,Put on your best coat,Then gallop to Amsterdam . . .

And on the sixth of the month, the saint"s feast day, they would wake to find that he had left treats for them. This, surely, was unbearable; among the English, the French, the German, the Swedish families of Manhattan, pressure was brought to bear on parents, and the Dutch tradition was adopted, and, later, pushed forward a couple of weeks to align with the more generally observed festival of Christmas. So Sinterklaas Sinterklaas began his American odyssey. began his American odyssey.

All of this activity-children clamoring, bakers baking, tradesmen muscling their way to the top-intensified as Manhattan matured in its last decade under the Dutch. How New Amsterdam flourished in the years following the establishment of the munic.i.p.al government is an area that has only recently been studied in depth, thanks largely to Charles Gehring"s translation work. Ironically, however, the very intensity of activity in this period of the colony"s life has slowed the translating of its records. "In the late 1650s I"m dealing with much more complicated legalese," Dr. Gehring told me one day in 2002 as I sat observing him at work in his office in the New York State Library. His desk was stacked with volumes of an eighteenth-century guide to Dutch, Latin, and French legal terms; the shelves behind him were lined with the forty ma.s.sive volumes of Het Woordenboek der Nederlandsche Taal, Het Woordenboek der Nederlandsche Taal, the definitive historical dictionary of the Dutch language from the year 1500, and the ten-volume the definitive historical dictionary of the Dutch language from the year 1500, and the ten-volume Middelnederlandsch Woordenboek, Middelnederlandsch Woordenboek, which focuses on the sixteenth century. "There"s more legal activity now because there are more people," he said. "And there are more arguments. In the early days the land grants were vague because there was plenty of land. By now people are more packed in, and they are fighting about where property lines are. So you find Stuyvesant having to employ surveyors. And then you see the munic.i.p.al government order a street plan with all the building lots indicated." which focuses on the sixteenth century. "There"s more legal activity now because there are more people," he said. "And there are more arguments. In the early days the land grants were vague because there was plenty of land. By now people are more packed in, and they are fighting about where property lines are. So you find Stuyvesant having to employ surveyors. And then you see the munic.i.p.al government order a street plan with all the building lots indicated."

All of this paints a picture of Manhattan in its Dutch phase very different from the haggard, inept settlement we get in traditional tellings. But while trade and shipping details suggest that the region was thriving, they aren"t what most mattered about the place. Who was there, how they got along, how they mixed-that is the colony"s unheralded legacy. From the French Atlantic coast, the pine forests of Denmark, the streets of London, they made their way to this island, and, thanks to a farsighted program started by the city leaders, found someone waiting to offer them "burgher" status as they came off the ship. If they couldn"t afford citizenship dues ("twenty guilders in beavers"), they could pay it on installment. Eventually, maybe, they found a way to make enough guilders, beavers, or hands of wampum to convince them that it was worth staying.

The village of Harlem (Nieuw Haarlem, after the city in Holland), founded at this time at the northern end of Manhattan, was a kind of microcosm of this microcosm of the future American society. The initial bloc of thirty-two families who staked out lots along its two lanes came from six different parts of Europe-Denmark, Sweden, Germany, France, the Netherlands, and what is now southern Belgium-and spoke five different languages. Perched alongside one another on the edge of a wilderness continent, families that would have broken up into ghettos in Europe instead had to come together, and learned a common language.

Nothing better shows the kind of mixing that took place in this setting than a phenomenon that was unprecedented elsewhere in the colonies: intermarriage. Scan the marriage records of the Dutch Reformed Church of New Amsterdam and you find a degree of culture-mixing in such a small place that is remarkable for the time. A German man marries a Danish woman. A man from Venice marries a woman from Amsterdam. Isaac Bethloo from "Calis in Vranckryck" (i.e., Calais in France) weds Lysbeth Potters from "Batavia in the East Indies." Samuel Edsall, reared in the English countryside around Reading, finds himself on Manhattan, where he somehow manages to woo a girl named Jannetje Wessels who spent her early years in the wild heath country of Gelderland near the German border. A Norwegian marries a German. Swedish-English. Danish-Swedish. Prussian-German. German-Danish. French-Dutch. In all, a quarter of the marriages performed in the New Amsterdam church were mixed. Intermarriage also appears among the Africans of the population, as when a man from the island of St. Thomas marries a woman from West Africa, and there are instances of marriage between whites and blacks.

It"s easy to imagine Van der Donck, newly returned from Europe and strolling through New Amsterdam, comparing the rush of cultures in its streets to the mix he found on the Dam square in Amsterdam. He had come back to witness something that he himself had helped bring about: the forging of America"s first melting pot. It so happened that in this melting pot the common language to which everyone defaulted was Dutch. And it was a seventeenth-century Dutch sensibility-a mix of frankness, piety, a keen business sense, an eye on the wider world, and a willingness to put up with people"s differences-that formed the social glue. Already, a type was forming, which visitors were beginning to remark on: worldly, brash, confident, hustling.

Of course, equality was not part of the fabric of this pluralistic society. It wasn"t even an ideal. Tolerance-call it grudging acceptance-was the major leap forward in human civilization that had recently occurred, which helped form the societies both of the Dutch Republic and the Manhattan colony. But in the seventeenth century no one believed that blacks and whites, men and women, Catholics and Protestants, were equals, or should be treated as such. Last among the unequals were the Africans. The slaves in the colony were the human workhorses. In trying to get a sense of what life was for the African Manhattanites, however, it"s necessary to erase from your mind the idea of the fully formed inst.i.tution of slavery as it existed in, say, the American South in the early 1800s. The inst.i.tution was in its early days, and there was a strong belief in the Netherlands that it was morally wrong to buy and sell human beings, so that in the records of the colony you see a queer range of perspectives on Africans and their condition. There is the pious Reverend Jonas Michaelius referring to the black women who have worked in his house as "thievish, lazy, and useless trash," and there is Stuyvesant, sounding the cla.s.sic slaver, accusing a woman slave of theft, denouncing a man for his "laziness and unwillingness," and decreeing that both be sold "for the maximum profit of the Company." But there are also more than a few cases of owners freeing slaves after a number of years, on the belief that they had done their time, and there are even a few occasions when Europeans are recorded as working for freed Africans. A number of Africans owned property, and Stuyvesant himself declared, in an as-yet unpublished doc.u.ment, that their ownership was to be looked on as "true and free ownership with such privileges as all tracts of land are bestowed on the inhabitants [of this] province." Slaves also had some legal rights: repeatedly, slaves appear in court, filing lawsuits against Europeans.

It"s also necessary to keep in mind the scale of slavery in the colony. Manhattan was far removed from the sugar fields of Brazil and the Caribbean, where slave labor mattered. In its first decades there were no more than a few dozen slaves scattered across the colony at any one time; by the time of the English takeover there were about three hundred. What"s notable in the records is less the presence of slaves on Manhattan than the development of the West India Company"s slave trade. At first the company had refused to sully itself with the slave trade, but after failing in its other business ventures and seeing the money to be made from the transshipping of humans, it reversed course and became a significant player in one of history"s ugliest episodes.

The island of Curacao was transformed into a processing station for tens of thousands of chained, disease-riddled, and seasickened West Africans, and the records show Stuyvesant-whose t.i.tle was after all Director-General of New Netherland, Curacao, Bonaire, and Aruba-in the midst of running the North American colony, managing from afar his vice-director on Curacao, Matthais Beck. What jangles in reading their correspondence are the humdrum, helter-skelter inventories of goods being moved around the Atlantic, as in a ship that arrived in Curacao in August 1660 carrying "724 pine planks . . . 1245 pounds of English hardbread . . . 2 barrels of bacon . . . 75 skipples of peas . . ." and "10 N

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