#163 The Fall of New Amsterdam and the Founding of New York
The History of the Americans
Jack Henneman
4.9 • 632 Ratings
🗓️ 17 September 2024
⏱️ 34 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In August 1664, an English fleet acting under the orders of James, Duke of York, the brother of King Charles II, materialized off Manhattan and forced the bloodless surrender of New Amsterdam and New Netherland. It is easy – too easy – to conclude that this was inevitable because New England had roughly 17 times the population of New Netherland. It was in fact a foundational move in the construction of the English empire of the 17th century, and the product of the machinations of first cousins in conspiracy with each other: Sir George Downey, the “second” graduate of Harvard College and one of the most devious people in English politics ever, and John Winthrop the Younger, the pious Governor of Connecticut Colony, son of the leader of the Puritan Great Migration, and a stone cold operator of the first order.
In the end, Peter Stuyvesant was out of moves.
[Errata: Harvard’s first commencement was not in the spring of 1642, as I said in the episode, but on September 23, 1642]
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Selected references for this episode (Commission earned for Amazon purchases through the website)
Russell Shorto, The Island at the Center of the World: The Epic Story of Dutch Manhattan and the Forgotten Colony That Shaped America
J. Franklin Jameson, Narratives of New Netherland, 1609-1664
Richard Nicolls, Proposed Terms for the Surrender of New Netherland
Grant of March 12, 1664 from Charles II to his brother, James, Duke of York
L. H. Roper, “The Fall of New Netherland and Seventeenth-Century Anglo-American Imperial Formation, 1654-1676,” The New England Quarterly, December 2014.
Jonathan Scott, “‘Good Night Amsterdam’: Sir George Downing and Anglo-Dutch Statebuilding,” The English Historical Review, April 2003.
Steve Martin, “Mad at my Mother,” Let’s Get Small.
List of most populous cities in the United States by decade (Very interesting Wikipedia page if you love data and history)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the History of the Americans podcast episode 163. |
| 0:11.0 | I'm your host, Jack Heneman, and I'm recording this episode on September 16th, 24, in Austin, Texas. |
| 0:19.0 | We are telling the history of the lands now encompassed by the United States |
| 0:23.9 | from the beginning without intentional presentism. We are back in the Northeast, although not |
| 0:30.6 | as teased in the last episode, saying much about New Jersey. After reading a few hours of the |
| 0:36.6 | early history of the future Garden State, |
| 0:38.7 | my muse suggested that I had given short shrift to the conquest of New Amsterdam and New |
| 0:43.8 | Netherlands by the fleet of the Duke of York in 1664. I've mentioned it a few times, |
| 0:51.2 | but it never really gotten into the whys and the wherefores of the thing. |
| 0:55.6 | So this is that story. |
| 0:58.1 | Most accounts of the capture of New Amsterdam by the Duke of York basically come down to a few |
| 1:04.1 | bits. New England had a huge demographic advantage over New Netherlands, so absorption was |
| 1:09.6 | inevitable. Charles II gets restored to |
| 1:12.9 | the throne in 1660 and gives his brother, James, Duke of York, a huge land grant, skip a few to |
| 1:19.6 | 1664, Peter Stuyvesant, surrenders New Amsterdam without a fight, and York's commander |
| 1:25.8 | names the captured city after his patron. |
| 1:29.5 | It turns out there's a lot more to the story than I had known, which I picked up in reading |
| 1:34.3 | the chapter on New York and Russell Shorto's book on Manhattan and New Netherland, |
| 1:39.1 | The Island at the center of the world. Shortos, in fact, written a new book apparently devoted entirely to |
| 1:45.8 | the taking of Manhattan, but, sadly, for me and you, it won't be released until March 2025, |
| 1:52.6 | which is much too late for our purposes. Fortunately, there are other materials that cover the |
| 1:58.3 | moment, so I think we're good. |
... |
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