7/8: Taking Manhattan: The Extraordinary Events That Created New York and Shaped America Hardcover – March 4, 2025 by Russell Shorto (Author)

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John Batchelor

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🗓️ 5 April 2025

⏱️ 12 minutes

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Summary

7/8: Taking Manhattan: The Extraordinary Events That Created New York and Shaped America Hardcover – March 4, 2025
by Russell Shorto (Author)
https://www.amazon.com/Taking-Manhattan-Extraordinary-Created-America/dp/0393881164/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0
The author of The Island at the Center of the World offers up a thrilling narrative of how New York―that brash, bold, archetypal city―came to be.

In 1664, England decided to invade the Dutch-controlled city of New Amsterdam on Manhattan Island. Charles II and his brother, the Duke of York, had dreams of empire, and their archrivals, the Dutch, were in the way. But Richard Nicolls, the military officer who led the English flotilla bent on destruction, changed his strategy once he encountered Peter Stuyvesant, New Netherland’s canny director general.
Bristling with vibrant characters, Taking Manhattan reveals the founding of New York to be an invention, the result of creative negotiations that would blend the multiethnic, capitalistic society of New Amsterdam with the power of the rising English empire. But the birth of what might be termed the first modern city is also a story of the brutal dispossession of Native Americans and of the roots of American slavery. The book draws from newly translated materials and illuminates neglected histories―of religious refugees, Indigenous tribes, and free and enslaved Africans.
Taking Manhattan tells the riveting story of the birth of New York City as a center of capitalism and pluralism, a foundation from which America would rise. It also shows how the paradox of New York’s origins―boundless opportunity coupled with subjugation and displacement―reflects America’s promise and failure to this day. Russell Shorto, whose work has been described as “astonishing” (New York Times) and “literary alchemy” (Chicago Tribune), has once again mined archival sources to offer a vibrant tale and a fresh and trenchant argument about American beginnings.

1655 REMBRANDT "CHRISTENING"

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0:00.0	This is CBS. I on the world. I'm John Batchel, continuing with Russell Shorto, the author of the new book, Taking Manhattan, the extraordinary events that created New York and shaped America. Okay, it's New York. Richard Nichols is the governor. However, there's a world out there that is not going to stand still. And we go to a meeting between Julian DeWitt, the effective Prime Minister of the Netherlands,
0:27.6	of Amsterdam, and a man named Downing, a character I knew little about before Russell introduced
0:35.6	him to me, George Downing, who apparently is brilliant. I believe
0:39.5	he's Harvard College educated. At the same time, nobody likes him and he's effective. What are they
0:44.8	talking about, Russell? So this is a few months after this takeover, and we are in the Hague.
0:51.7	Downing was the English ambassador to the Dutch.
0:56.8	Johan Devitt was the brilliant, both of these men were extremely smart.
1:05.0	De Witt was a mathematician who had done all sorts of interesting work with insurance and actuarial tables.
1:12.6	But he was the Prime Minister of the Dutch Republic.
1:15.6	They're having a meeting, and during the meeting, some directors of the Dutch West India Company
1:23.6	had gotten word that the Dutch colony of New Netherlands had been taken by the English.
1:29.0	They were outside this meeting room.
1:31.8	They had been coming to just tell their prime minister this, and they realized, of all things,
1:36.2	he's meeting with the English ambassador.
1:38.6	And so they sort of knock on the door and somebody hands a note to do it.
1:42.5	And the note was still preserved in the Dutch National Archives.
1:46.1	And it basically says, we thought we should interrupt you in this meeting because you might
1:51.2	want to know that the English have taken our colony in North America.
1:55.7	So it's just one of these historic moments when, you know, all of these forces come to play, and you actually
2:02.2	can almost envision how the, what the looks are on the faces. And George Downing, a brilliant,
2:08.5	brilliant man, raised in Puritan, Massachusetts, was part of the first graduating class of Harvard
2:15.9	College, goes to England.
	...

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