It's 1653 and we are on the island of Manhattan. In the midst of the first Anglo-Dutch war,

workmen are building a wall on the north side of the Dutch colonial settlement, New Amsterdam, to keep out potential

invaders from their neighboring English colonies. While the Dutch would lose that

war, fought in the end entirely at sea, they would keep New Amsterdam for the time being, turning it into a thriving

multicultural, multilingual center of trade in the new world. And so it would remain.

Seized by the British just over a decade later

and renamed in honor of the King of England's brother.

New York is one of the most visited cities on the globe

and home to people from all over the world.

And where the Dutch influence is felt to this day.

That wall, now called Wall Street, is the center of the world's most famous financial

trading district.

The Dutch would like that. Hello everyone, I'm Don Wildman, your host of American History Hit. Thanks for joining us.

Those who call themselves New Yorkers, I am proudly one, typically do so with a certain level of ignorance about what made New York what it truly is.

There's a skewed understanding of the city's heritage.

New York was an English colony, this is true, named for James Duke of York. But at first it wasn't at all. At first,

it was a hunting and fishing grounds for indigenous peoples, of course, for thousands of years.

But then it became a Dutch claim,

then a Dutch business venture,

then an official colony and municipality.

It was New Amsterdam in New Netherlands

from the arrival of Henry Hudson in 1609

...