Remapping the History of Dutch New Yorkers

Abstract

Imagining the Dutch at the center of New York City’s early history is not an act of redemption. It does not entail rehabilitating a marginalized group that has suffered from discrimination based on race or religion. Dutch New Yorkers were not “others.” They were property owners, business proprietors, voters, and churchgoers. Their church—the Dutch Reformed Church—had legal standing in British New York, and they worshipped there freely. In short, their identity as white Protestants placed them in the ranks of the privileged. Yet their story has virtually disappeared from the dominant narrative of the city’s history because they were on the losing side of a seventeenth-century military and diplomatic battle between the Dutch Republic and England. This essay contends that “losers” like the descendants of the New Amsterdam Dutch merit sustained attention because, despite the dilution of their political power, they left an indelible imprint on early New York City. Scrutinizing how they adapted to their altered position in society complicates our understanding of the dynamic process of coexistence in territories that changed hands during imperial contests. Historians of the seventeenthcentury Atlantic world who have examined the impact of such transitions in government on local populations pose questions that point to the value of a comparative approach to instances of cohabitation in American territories claimed by European nations. A recent analysis of Dutch-English interaction in Suriname, an English colony acquired by the Dutch in 1667 shortly after New Amsterdam had fallen into English hands, is especially instructive.1 In Surinam, the positions of the Dutch and English were reversed as the Dutch gained dominance over the English colonists, many of whom eventually chose to leave. The English seizure of New Amsterdam in 1664 triggered an entirely different scenario as the great majority of the Dutch living there opted to remain.