4.6 • 2.7K Ratings
🗓️ 5 April 2025
⏱️ 6 minutes
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0:00.0 | I'm John Batchel, visiting with the author Russell Shorto, his new book, Taking Manhattan. |
0:06.0 | Everything you don't know about Manhattan and where it came from, especially the naming part. |
0:12.0 | The extraordinary events that created New York and shaped America. |
0:15.0 | New Amsterdam. It's at the base of what it will become called Manhattan Island. |
0:20.0 | And Richard Nichols is now |
0:24.0 | the governor so-called but Peter Stuyveson and the council of the city are |
0:31.3 | there with him and they're working together the naming is everything how did it |
0:36.8 | come to be New York, given that the York was the Duke of York, |
0:43.4 | and that was James, who would cause enormous amounts of trouble and anxiety for the English in a few years' time, and the Dutch would be dominant for a few more wars. |
0:57.7 | So how is it New York? |
1:00.0 | Well, according to this agreement, it would become English. |
1:03.4 | It would change hands, which meant renaming. |
1:07.7 | Nichols, much was left in his hands, including what to call the place. |
1:13.6 | So James was the Duke of York. |
1:16.6 | He was also the Duke of Albany and he was the Earl of Ulster. |
1:20.6 | Nichols could, no one had given him instructions. |
1:23.6 | So in a letter home to the Duke of York, at one point, almost as a throwaway, he says, |
1:29.7 | oh, and I named this place New York. |
1:32.3 | So he just chose one of the titles and decided what to call it. |
1:36.3 | And again, you know, Nichols in so many ways shapes not just the city, but American colonial history and therefore the shape of how America |
1:48.1 | would develop. Not just naming of New York, but he decides. So New Amsterdam had been just |
1:54.3 | what is now the financial district, this little tip of Manhattan Island. Nichols decides Manhattan Island itself, the whole, whatever it is 12 miles long, |
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