Hello and welcome to a history of the United States.

Episode 37, New Netherlands.

Remember that this is a listener-supported podcast.

If you want to support the show, then one way of doing that is to sign up for our membership

program. Just head over to the website, the History of Podcast.com, and click on the PayPal

subscription button. In our last episode, we introduced what will be a major player in the history

of the United States, the United Provinces of the Netherlands.

They have come up fairly frequently in our narrative for the other English colonies,

but we've now established how the state was formed in its war for independence against the Spanish Habsburgs.

As they were unable to gain access to Spanish ports, they were forced to more extreme trading methods,

and so Dutch traders began to spread around the world,

a process which resulted in the creation of the Dutch East India Company in 1602.

We now turn towards Dutch trading, and specifically to Henry Hudson.

Henry Hudson was one of the great explorers at the turn of the 17th century, and we know almost

nothing about his early life. We suspect he was born sometime around 1565, and we cannot get more

specific than England as to a location.

That's it. We know nothing about the first 40 years of his life, and he emerges into the historical narrative in 1607.

It seems that his family was connected with the drive towards Arctic exploration,

and he probably developed

an interest in this early on in his life.

It might seem odd that the Dutch would turn to an Englishman interested in Arctic exploration

as a solution to their trade conflict with the Spanish, but if you think about it, it sort of makes sense.

...