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- [00:00]
Don Wildman
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- [00:32]
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- [01:34]
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- [02:11]
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- [02:46]
Don Wildman
Whoa, it is rush hour on Wall Street. Look at all these people. But watch out for that taxi. Ooh, and the bike. Okay, well, we're standing here at the corner of Wall street and Broadway here in the financial district of New York. Ground zero of US Capital markets. If you look right down the block there, that's the New York Stock Exchange. Opens at 9:30, closes at 4, and all these suits streaming past us in the morning will stream right back out at night. But the wall this street is so famously named for. Where's that, you ask? Well, nowhere to be found, I'm afraid. It did once stand here. Erected in 1653, back in the days of Dutch colonialization. Now, in name only, it is still a remnant of New Amsterdam. Like Brooklyn, like Harlem. Staten Island. Evidence of a former colony that stood strong for 50 years. For a time protected by a wall built to fend off perceived dangers inland, when in fact the bigger threat, the one that would usurp them, came from the sea. Back in 2023, I spoke to author Russell Shorto about New Amsterdam, the Dutch colony on Manhattan Island. Russell is the best selling author of the island at the center of the World and most recently Taking Manhattan. The extraordinary events that created New York and shaped America. He is back with us on this episode to talk about how New Amsterdam became New. Russell Shorto, hello again. We spoke last in March 2022, episode 47, discussing your first book on New York. You must have been in the midst of this, the second one back then. Is there a third in store?
- [04:38]
Russell Shorto
Hey, Don, great to be with you again. So this book that we're talking about, Taking Manhattan, is the story of New York's birth, essentially when it actually becomes New York, which is 1664. I've got ideas for a book that would be sort of the next step in, I guess you would say an early New York trilogy, but I haven't committed to it.
- [04:59]
Don Wildman
I think you should. It's amazing how few New Yorkers even understand this story. And this has everything to do with this ongoing process of translation of these Dutch records. Right? Which is right in New York.
- [05:10]
Russell Shorto
Yeah. My earlier book, the island at the center of the World. I wrote that because I stumbled upon this translation effort that's been going on in Albany, New York and at the State Library since 1974. 12,000 pages of records about the Dutch colony of New Netherland and its capital, New Amsterdam. It's such a big story and yet people still know so very little about it. And it's so influential to what America became. The idea that this colony of New Netherland extended over five future states, that it seeded pluralism. And what we would now call capitalism that it contributed so much to what America became. So that was on the basis of that effort. The translator, Charles Goering, he just retired last year after 51 years. I wrote island center of the World based on that. And then as the translation project got to the last few years in the life of the colony, just before the English come into the picture, I realized, well, now in these late volumes, we can see this vibrant, energetic little city at the tip of Manhattan island as something very desirable that the English suddenly wanted. So then I was very interested in, okay, what's this interplay between these two European colonial powers that results in New York?
- [06:40]
Don Wildman
Interesting, all of which we are about to talk about. The Dutch first arrive in 1609 in the person of Henry Hudson, an English navigator hired by the Dutch West India Company. His mission to lead an exploration eventually of the river that will one day bear his name, the, the Hudson River. He was actually on a different mission, but he ends up there. Permanent Dutch settlements come along in the years later, into the 1620s, with Fort Orange in 1624, what eventually becomes Albany. And then of course, New Amsterdam in 1620, which is right at the southern tip of Manhattan Island. How big was the colony of New Netherland at first and how large does it eventually become? Russell?
- [07:21]
Russell Shorto
Well, how big? I mean, initially there were a couple dozen people, so it was very tiny. And they were mostly immigrants, that is, immigrants to the Netherlands, that mostly they were these poor people from Wallonia, what is now part of Belgium, who had arrived in Amsterdam, you know, in their immigrants, they're looking for work. And the Dutch put out this notice, hey, you know, come and participate in this new colonizing effort. And it was the, the so called golden age. So it was hard to get people to be colonists on a wilderness continent. So these are the people who managed to do it. There were very few of them at the start. And by the end there are probably about 10,000 people in the colony. Important note is that they mixed. The Dutch had kind of the melting pot of Europe in the 17th century, which was really unusual. They had an official policy of religious toleration. And that was a time when across Europe, in England, in France, in Spain, intolerance was official policy. I mean, and it was common sense too. The idea was, you it's a dangerous world, and in order to survive, we have to all be on the same page. And religion in particular was very divisive. So you had a state religion and all that. So in the Dutch provinces, they turned that on its head. They were sea going people. They were used to dealing with different kinds of people. So they had this idea that allowing different people, different religions, different languages to be together would actually be strong for society. And it proved to be the case. They built this incredible nation empire and all of that in one way or another came along when they formed this colony.
- [09:09]
Don Wildman
Yeah, I mean, it's something I've only understood in my adult life, you know, that this, that what happened in the Netherlands back in Europe was so remarkable. Kind of an outgrowth of the Renaissance in a way. Right. I mean, that idea of tolerance and bringing people in from all over creates a whole nother world in opposition to what is so taken for granted even by us historically, as we talk about these times, this was all happening. It was a big deal in, in the Netherlands and it was being noticed by a lot of people elsewhere. Does it come over to the Atlantic with those early settlements?
- [09:40]
Russell Shorto
You mean the notion of tolerance?
- [09:42]
Don Wildman
Yeah, yeah.
- [09:43]
Russell Shorto
Well, it doesn't, it doesn't because there was tolerance and intolerance in the home country. I mean, people are people and the same went for the colony. So on the one hand you have famously, at one point, there are recorded to be 18 languages spoken at a time when New Amsterdam probably only had about 500 people. So as I like to say, New York was New York even before it was New York. So that suggests, you know, that this tolerance was indeed in play. On the other hand, you can't ignore the fact that they had slavery. I mean, how tolerant can you be if you are enslaving human beings and that they were dispossessing native people? So somehow when you put all this together, you have to. I mean, I often think that when you do history, you have to be able to put clashing ideas in your head and manage them because that's what, that's what they did and that's what people still do.
- [10:41]
Don Wildman
The story we tell this, the story you tell in your books is really a 50 year process of rise and fall of the Dutch in North America. But they had every intention of going big. Right. They weren't, they weren't here for any kind of temporary stay at the beginning.
- [10:56]
Russell Shorto
Yeah, I mean, that was part of the struggle, the internal struggle throughout the life of the colony. They were trying to get the home country to support them. And people, everyone who was a director of the colony was writing letters as were other people saying, look, we've got this amazing thing going. We've got the ability, the possibility of exploiting this continent. We're just Sitting on one, you know, in the eastern edge of this continent. But it goes on and on and on, and we can do great things. The powers that be in the home country were mostly. They were getting money. They were getting wealth from the East Indies, that is Asia, and from different parts of. And from Brazil, from the Caribbean. And so that's where they were focused. Very rarely do people say, you know, let's do this, because in a hundred years, it's going to really be something. I mean, people are looking, you know, next year or maybe a couple years out, and there was money coming from there. So you can't fault them for their lack of foresight, I think. Sure.
- [11:57]
Don Wildman
Well, and all of these colonial efforts by everyone was all about making money. You know, this was. And the Dutch, especially, because they had refined that process quite a bit. It would continue all the way to this day, but it depended on securing power and acquiring land. Previously, in our other episodes, which I really encourage people to listen to, you debunked the story of the buying of Manhattan for $24 of trinkets. In truth, how did the Dutch get their lands from the native people? I mean, by what process?
- [12:24]
Russell Shorto
Essentially, I guess the overall important fact, just to keep in mind is they were here to do business with the native people. They didn't come thinking, all right, we're going to displace all them, push them out or exterminate them. The name of the game was the fur trade. The Europeans were not fur trappers. The native people were. So the idea was they would trade with them for furs, tell them what kind of furs mattered most to them in a given season, and then they would ship them home. And this was, most importantly, beavers, because beavers, you have fur, but under that, you have the pelt. And if you process the pelt, you get felt. And felt is very thin, but very warm. And this is, you know, an era without central heating. And so people lined their coats and their jackets with it. They made hats out of it. So it was a big deal, a big enterprise. And from the perspective of the native people, they were not, you know, these passive, oh, we don't know what to do. We're being overwhelmed by these newcomers. They were very savvy, and they wanted something out of this trade. They valued European manufactured goods. So that was the exchange. And when you look at the whole history of the period, of course you're drawn to these outbreaks of warfare that happen, which you have to look at. But at the same time, the whole scope of the period it was a business relationship, and I think most of the time it worked for all parties.
- [13:56]
Don Wildman
Yeah. We're in the middle of the 1600s at this point. England has a foothold itself up in New England, obviously, with the. With the separatists who have moved there and set up Plymouth Colony, which becomes Massachusetts Bay Colony down south in Jamestown. That was the earliest settlement for the. For the English. That's going on as well. So in between, vice is not the right word for it, but they're being sort of pincered by these two English presidencies. Your book concerns itself. Your new book concerns itself with the transition of power. Power in 1664, when England under Charles II, the restoration of the royals in England after the civil War, decides to invade New Amsterdam. We call it an invasion. It turns out to be quite a bit different. They're essentially saying, enough of these Dutch in North America. It's time to consolidate our. Our control of the Eastern seaboard. Right.
- [14:45]
Russell Shorto
The Dutch and the English were. I often think of them as. As sibling rivals. They were a lot alike in certain ways. But the Dutch were ahead of the English much of the time. So the English were envious of them and envious. So the Dutch got the choice piece of the Eastern seaboard that because New York harbor, the Hudson river connects to the Mohawk river, that goes all the way to the Great Lakes. The Dutch envisioned this. We can get access to the whole. To the heart of the continent here. And belatedly, the English in New England realize, oh, gosh, they have this good bit. But the backstory from the English side is, as you said, the English Civil War, going back to the early part of the 1600s. The Puritans start to rise. The Puritans are, in my estimation, a kind of religious cult. They're religious extremists. And it comes to a head, literally, when they behead the King Charles I, when they decide that the monarchy, that the establishment is corrupt and it needs an overhaul, and they're the ones to do it. And you have two sides in the war. You've got the Puritans who want to purify, and then you've got the other side, which historically are, quote, the royalists, which is, I think, a bit of a misnomer because it suggests they were all huge fans of the monarchy, which surely a lot of them were. But I think the more important thing is they were anti Puritans. These were like the masses of the population that didn't want the Puritans to come in and outlaw Christmas and dancing and Close the theaters down. But then the Puritans did come in. They beheaded the King and they outlawed Christmas and dancing and theater. So you had this eight year period of Puritan rule. At the end of that, then the sons of the king who had fled to exile on the continent, come back and they now want to establish, they want to get things going. They want to establish what we would call the British Empire. That this was the beginnings of the British Empire. And they look across the Atlantic Ocean and they see, okay, we've got this great possibility there in America. But there are a couple of problems. One is the Dutch, you know, damn, the Dutch again, are right there at the, you know, right where we would like to be. And, and the other problem they see is that, yes, there are all these English colonies in New England, but by and large they were founded by the Puritans, the very people who had beheaded their father, the people who, they. Who still hated the monarchy, you know, so that was a very complicated situation that they faced. And yet they wanted to have a go at it.
- [17:33]
Don Wildman
Right. What happens in 1664 is called a bloodless transfer. One of those rare moments in Western history when men don't massacre each other over territory. But was it such a peaceful matter, really? And how.
- [17:49]
Russell Shorto
So you can look at it from as the English versus the Dutch. The English are sending ships in. In fact, they sent this little flotilla of warships packed to the gills with soldiers and weapons and gunpowder. So they're ready to have a go at the Dutch. You can also look at it though, as within both the Dutch society and English society, there are. There's a split, as I said, during the English Civil War, it was the split between religious, kind of a religious right wing and then everybody else and the monarchy represented. And when they came back into power, they represented relative tolerance, which is a little bit hard to unpack because American history used to. We used to look at the Puritans in New England as the people who stood up for religious tolerance. The caveat though, is they wanted religious tolerance for themselves. That's why they left and they settled in New England and they said, okay, this is the promised land, and because we're succeeding, that means God favors us. And eventually over time, that, you know, that idea just becomes part of American inheritance. But the fact was, once they were there, they were brutally intolerant of other Protestant sects. Even so you've got that split on the Dutch side. You have something similar going on in the home country. You have this struggle between kind of a left wing and a Right wing, the more left or progressive. And it's all over the question of predestination, the idea that everybody is born and God has sort of imprinted each soul. Like, yes, you're going to go to heaven. No you're not. You know, and then some people started to say, well, maybe we shouldn't be so, so sure that we know God's mind and maybe, you know, you can do good works and you can earn a place to heaven. And other than the Orthodox said, no way, you can't, you know, you, you can't do that. So that caused this huge political split there as well. So on the ground here, we're in New York harbor, it's the late summer of 1664. You've got the English and their ships pointing their cannons at the fort at the tip of Manhattan Island. You've got the Dutch in the fort pointing their cannons back. So this is very much in play in this interaction. So yes, it's English versus Dutch, but it's also this sort of right wing versus left wing views about not just religion but society and how you, how you progress and who has a right to participate and all that and what they discover. And this is really the heart of the book. And what I found most interesting as I got into it in this two week period, they're feeling each other out and they are coming to understand that, you know, the English on their ships are thinking, those Dutch in the fort are kind of a lot like us. And the Dutch in the fort were saying the same thing. They knew perfectly well that the English in those ships represented the monarchy, represented relative toleration. They represented a kind of globally minded view as opposed to the Puritans in New England who they've been living next to for 40 years. And they knew perfectly well that they were Puritans. They had their strictures and at the same time. So I should maybe talk a little bit about the two leaders.
- [21:15]
Don Wildman
Yeah, this was a very uncertain time. We're talking about a very specific period of a matter of weeks in August of 1664. And this is always sort of broad stroked. And what's interesting about this conversation is the details, I think how this really works. It's a matter of tremendous uncertainty. They've just arrived, right? There wasn't some advance guard saying, hey, by the way, there's going to be a fleet or one or two ships are going to come in and point their cannons. They're just arriving as one did in those days, and suddenly, whoops, the English are right there in the harbor. So take me through the steps. There's a man named Richard Nichols who figures into this, right?
- [21:50]
Russell Shorto
Yeah. Richard Nichols is the leader of this English force that's coming to take the colony from the Dutch. For the 25 years or whatever I've been writing about this, I knew Richard Nichols because he's the one that takes over from the Dutch and makes it New York. But most pretty much all histories of New York give him a sentence or two sentences. Nichols came and took the colony. Who was he? So that's what I had probably the most fun working on this book, digging into the past of this person who is quite consequential and pretty much unknown. I mean, that's an exciting thing for a writer of history. So I spent a lot of time at the Bodleian Library at Oxford University and the UK National Archives and in his hometown. He's from this little town called Amphill in Bedfordshire. The question in the back of my mind was the new king Charles II and his brother James, the Duke of York. Their father had been beheaded. You had the Civil War, and they come back, why did they pick this guy to do this? And it wasn't just one mission, wasn't just get that Dutch colony, but it was also deal with the Puritans in New England. Very complicated. So how do they pick him? So it turns out that they're from that. Nicholls is from this little village in Bedfordshire. Around the village was the royal hunting preserve going back to Henry viii. Kings would come there depending on. Some kings liked hunting more than others. At the time of Charles the first, their. Their father, he was a big hunter. So he would come all the time and he would bring his sons. They stayed in the. The lodge of the keeper of the hunting grounds, who was Richard Nichols father. So you start to see them coming. They knew each other as they as kids. They all grew up together. And then when the Civil war breaks out, Nichols goes with them into exile. He then becomes a spy on behalf of the royals. He's going back and forth across the English Channel. He's part of this whole network of spies and trying to win power back from the Puritans. So then they're back in power. And who do they appoint? They appoint this guy who has been at their side in the Civil War, who's been they've known since children. And everything we know about him, he was a great believer in moderation. And he detested this Puritan intolerance. So he's there now in the harbor, and he's sending messengers to Peter Stuyvesant, the leader of the Dutch colony who's been in power for 17 years. Stuyvesant's sending messengers back. The English are anchored off the tip of Long island in Gravesend Bay, and they're sending these messengers on boats through the Narrows, and they're feeling each other out. So Nichols comes to understand that he wants not just this rock, this island of Manhattan, he wants this remarkable little society that the Dutch have created there. They have created this. And this goes back to the records, the last years of the records that got me into writing this book. It's this burgeoning society where you have these traders who have networks and doing business with the Caribbean, with South America, with West Africa, with different parts of Europe. I mean, really kind of tough, nervy men who had built this up. And they have this. This tolerance, you know, there it's people of different backgrounds and so on. So he doesn't get this, you know, capitalism is. Doesn't. The word won't even exist for a long time. He doesn't entirely get it, but he gets that it works and he wants it. And the only way to get that is to keep the people there happy because they are the kind of keepers of this secret sauce. So he wants to appease them from the Dutch side. They know that he represents relative tolerance and that the. As opposed to the Puritans in New England. And they also know that they have been trying for years to get the Dutch government to support them so that they can grow. And they have been failing because the Dutch government is focused on, oh, we're getting easy wealth from, from Asia and elsewhere. So in this standoff, in this back and forth, and of course, they're threatening each other. You read this, and this is what the heart of the book is this, the back and forth. And, you know, as the reader, you know, the outcome. You know, the English are going to take it and it's going to become New York. But, you know, when you get lost in these details, I mean, pleasantly lost, you know, in these, we have all the little letters they wrote back and forth, these notes, and periodically they're saying, that's it, we're attacking tomorrow. And then, you know, the other side backs down a little bit, and they're just doing this parrying, but ultimately they come to recognize. And this is, you know, this is negotiation in a. You know, you can do negotiation in the sense that it's, I win, you lose. But they. They both came to recognize that there was a kind of win, win for the people on the ground. The people in the home country in the West India Company would be furious when they got word of this, that the whole colony had just been given over to the English. But what they came down to was the people on the ground in the colony would keep everything they're going to keep their homes, their trade networks, their businesses, all of that, and it would be supported under a new English regime.
- [27:28]
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- [28:30]
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- [28:50]
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- [29:52]
Don Wildman
Folks should remember this colony is really about making money. So everybody that's there is very pragmatically focused on that. And that's why there are so few fortifications. Right. They weren't building their kingdom here. This was really a. A practical enterprise. So when faced with this opponent, very formidable opponent, they're figuring all of this out about how do this benefit them in the end, how are they going to continue this society? Right. Is that. That's what's so.
- [30:20]
Russell Shorto
Yeah, but making money. I mean, they wanted to develop their society.
- [30:25]
Don Wildman
Right, Right.
- [30:26]
Russell Shorto
So they really wanted to put down root. That's what they were doing. They were putting. By now, by this time, it's 40 years into this enterprise, you have like the second and third generation people are their little grandchildren running around. You know, it's a real society. And their beef against the Dutch government was they weren't giving them the soldiers and what they needed to really support their enterprise, which was why ultimately they make this sort of counterintuitive decision. And it wasn't just Stuyvesant. The whole town was involved in this. Everybody. I mean, if you go down to the financial district, you can in your mind, strip away all the skyscrapers. You know, you can see the harbor, you can see the boat come in. You could see everybody could see these messengers going into the fort. I mean, everybody was there. So they made this counterintuitive decision that the way to strengthen their colony was to make this deal with the English, have them take it over on the promise that they would keep everything. And in fact, that's what happened. And Those people in 1664, those traders, the members of that community, became the dynasties of New York. I mean, the Dutch and the English as well. And the others who were in there, there were people from different parts of Europe and elsewhere. They became the dynastic families. So it did indeed work.
- [31:48]
Don Wildman
Who was Petrus Stuyvesant, Peter? We're calling the director general. He was not the first leader of the colony. We covered this in this other episode, but I want to review. He comes along from a military background. Right.
- [31:58]
Russell Shorto
Stuyvesant was the last of five directors and the most consequential. He was there for 17 years. He was a West India Company employee. The confusion there has to do with the way the Dutch set up their government. It was kind of like the American Confederation before you had the constitution, where they envisioned weak, almost independent states. That's how the Dutch provinces were. And they were called the United Provinces, just as the United States would be called the United States. And so you had a very weak central government. And then they developed these two multinational corporations, the East India Company and the West India Company, that sort of did the foreign diplomacy. They were the State Department, and Stuyvesant was an employee of the West India Company. But if you had ambitions, as he did, you became. I mean, they were a military force, too. They were a naval power. So they were fighting a war of independence against Spain for much of the period before this. And Stuyvesant then is in battle against Spain in the Caribbean, and there he loses his leg and gets a wooden leg. So he's really battle hardened, and then eventually comes into the position of running this colony. He was the son of a Frisian minister, very stern figure. And initially, in my earlier book, the island at the center of the World that we talked about a few years ago, Stuyvesant is. When he comes in, he faces this colony in turmoil, and he tries to lay down the law. He refers to the people as his subjects. You know, he's gonna, you know, I'm your ruler. And he very quickly gets this blowback from this. You know, his population are, as I said, these traders who do business in different parts of the world. I mean, they're really tough guys, and they're not gonna just sit there and be, you know, be told what they have to do. So for a few years, it's chaos. And then he comes to realize that the way this colony is going to succeed is if these traitors succeed. So he sort of reinvents his job description and sees that he's a middleman between the directors of the colony who are in Europe, who are never going to come here, and his own population. And once he starts to do that, then he essentially, I think Stuyvesant doesn't really get credit, but he is the one that laid the foundation for this successful trading colony that then the English are interested in. And so, in a sense, he lays the foundation for New York.
- [34:36]
Don Wildman
Exactly. I can feel you when you were writing this book or researching it, the squirm that must have come upon you, because you're really looking at this in a kind of macrocosmic way. These two weeks kind of tell the story of so much that makes New York unique. I mean, it's not fair to say it's all tracked to that, but, I mean, it has the seeds of all this pragmatic thinking that eventually lays in to become this very unique culture. And it Sort of begins there in a way. You can at least tell the story from that perspective. I just want to understand, does Nichols, like, demand surrender, or is this kind of a friendly conversation? Are there. There's articles of capitulation, right?
- [35:14]
Russell Shorto
Of course, you know, when you're doing this kind of negotiation, ultimately comes down to an accommodation. But Nichols comes right in and says, I demand your immediate surrender, of course, because that's what you do. So during this two weeks, there are times when one side or the other are. You know, have said, basically, that's it. We're fighting, we're not. But then each time, they back down just enough to. Because they really know that's not. Nichols knew that leveling the place is not in his benefit. And, you know, it's interesting to try to figure out, when did he make that determination? Surely he made that determination during. During this negotiation period. Not, you know, before when he left. He left clearly with orders and soldiers and the equipment. So, you know, you're gonna. You're gonna bomb them and you're gonna take it over. But I think he changed his mind when he was on the ground because he realized, this is too valuable. I want it as is.
- [36:08]
Don Wildman
Boy, it really comes down to a romantic movie scene for me. You know, that sense of, like, two guys probably sitting over a bottle of Claret or something, saying, you know what? This could go one way or the other. Could it possibly have come down to that kind of subtlety?
- [36:21]
Russell Shorto
Well, you know, so much of history, we have this sense of inevitability. Things had to come this. Become this way, because here we are. But time and time and time again, you know, the old theory about the notion of if a butterfly somewhere flaps its wings, then it changes the weather on the other side of the planet. I mean, that's how history really works. It does come down to, you know, if. Because, you know, things that just happened to fall this way. They made these decisions, but of course, on both sides, they were prepared for. For war. They were prepared, and it would have started a war. And in fact, it did start a war. When the English took, quote, took this colony that precipitated a war. And I should note that the Dutch assumed. Many of the people in the colony assumed that when a couple of years later, they negotiated the end of this trade war, it was really a trade war. They weren't bombing each other's cities at home, that they would get it back, that it would become Dutch again. And this one guy, quote, him writing a letter three years later, when they negotiate and they decide, all right, you'll keep it. That the English would keep it. Writing home and saying, well, I guess now we're going to have to learn English.
- [37:35]
Don Wildman
Okay, those articles of capitulation I mentioned state, in them we will protect. You can have your property rights, the inheritance laws, religious freedoms. All of those things are part of this negotiation. And that's part of. That's what you're saying Nichols had figured out, gee, it's better to keep it intact than it is. I think it comes down to we're going to make taxes immediately. You know, the businesses are already in place. All we're going to do is change what were Dutch, you know, payments into English taxes, essentially. And that makes perfect sense. Does this lead to a name change immediately? Does it become New York right away? And why.
- [38:09]
Russell Shorto
Yeah, it does. And I found this letter in which Nichols is writing to James, the Duke of York, that was his patron. And this goes back to their childhood. Those two had been closest from then. And he writes to him and says, I named this place New York. So he's saying, I named this after you, the Duke of York. And he also, in that same letter. Well, he was actually in that letter complaining, because this is after he takes over. Once he takes over, you know, if you happen to have an idea, a picture in your head of New York harbor with Manhattan and Staten island and New Jersey to the west and all of that region, he had this plan to develop it because it's this one complex system of land and waterways. And then the Duke of York, his patron, sends this letter saying, there was this friend of mine who was very supportive during the Civil War. I've decided to give him that western portion. And he was the governor of the island of Jersey, so we're gonna call that New Jersey. And Nichols is, you know, completely discombobulated by this. He's. What are you talking about? This messes up my whole. You know, if you look at this harbor and all the land, I mean, it all fits together. You can't just divide it like that. And, you know, footnote, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey has all. Has had the job now of trying to, like, stitch this together. You know, what? The Duke of York split. So Nichols wrote to him in this letter, saying, trying to, you know, he's. He said at one point, he says, look, why don't you give your friend Delaware? That's a nice place. But he wouldn't do it. And he says, because he knows that James was not only the Duke of York and his other title was the Duke of Albany. And he said, look, I was going to call that place the western side of the Hudson River Albania, after you.
- [40:01]
Don Wildman
Oh, interesting.
- [40:02]
Russell Shorto
And my little joke here is that there are a lot of New Yorkers who still think of New Jersey as Albania. But. But you know, it. Needless to say, it didn't work out that way. He did name the second city Albany, after the Duke of Albany.
- [40:24]
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- [42:09]
Don Wildman
You've mentioned and hinted that this this takes a lot longer than we think, because permanent English annexation of all of New Netherland comes a decade later. I mean, first the two nations have to fight a war because of the capitulation and that which they try to so assiduously avoid in New Amsterdam itself takes place on a worldwide basis. 1673-74 the Third Anglo Dutch War in which the Dutch take over the colony. Again, briefly Rename it as New Orange. That doesn't last long, though, does it?
- [42:39]
Russell Shorto
Yeah, that. I think some historians of New Netherlands disagree with me, but I think that was really almost an accident in that war. In the 1672,73, the Dutch were different provinces, just as the American colonies were. You know, you thought of yourself as a New Yorker or a Virginian, you didn't really think of yourself as an American first. So that's how the Dutch provinces were in these wars. And in the middle of this war with England, one of the Dutch provinces, Zeeland or Zealand, they get it in their heads, why don't we send out some ships and see what damage we can do to England and maybe we can make some money? And they go in the Caribbean and then they come up the east coast and they see New York is basically undefended, and they just send their ships in and take it. So when this gets back to the Hague, to the government there, the Dutch government, they're like, you did what? You know, this was not part of the. The plan here. So I think that was a little bit of a footnote to history.
- [43:40]
Don Wildman
I see. Because in 1674, very briefly afterwards, the Treaty of Westminster formally cedes the colony back to England permanently. And there we go. So While we mark 1664 as the year of Dutch capitulation, it really isn't until 1674, it becomes the right and truthful New York with a clean slate. But the tricks on the English, as you say, because as. As far as the New York's concerned, the Dutch don't go anywhere. And this is what you were referring to before, all these patroon ships, you know, which are really the way that the land is divided primarily up the Hudson River. Those become the dynasties, those become the families that really rule. And you can play it right through to the Roosevelts. You know, all these Dutch names that are so American to us now were actually Dutch people who stayed and kept going on with their trade under the English rule. The city retains its commercial ethos. It becomes more of what it was already seeded to become an ethnic mix, religious openness, an obsession with trade and finance, which is to this day, you know, I mean, it really is the cultural bed of everything that New York becomes. I think it's extraordinary that way.
- [44:48]
Russell Shorto
Yeah, the Dutch, you could argue that they got exactly what they wanted and they thought that their best interest, I mean, they, meaning Stuyvesant, and the people on the ground at the time thought that it was in the best interest of their community to make this deal. With the English. And what I argue in the book is that I think Stuyvesant had loyalties as the director of the colony. His loyalty was to preserve the colony as a Dutch colony. But I think ultimately, in this crucible of the English guns pointed at us and how do we negotiate, he decides that his greater loyalty is to the people of this community where he had. I mean, he really felt that it was his and he had built it up. And I mean, he and his wife Judith had raised their two sons there. I mean, they knew literally everyone in town. And he decides that what is best for them is different from what is best for the West India Company. So that's. That's the call he makes.
- [45:50]
Don Wildman
Interesting. I mean, he lives right there on. On the Bowery, right? This is.
- [45:53]
Russell Shorto
And then after. The most interesting thing about him is that so after all this happens, he's recalled to the Hague where he has to defend himself on trial for giving up this colony. And he spends a couple of years defending himself. In the end, he's exonerated. And then he goes back, he returns and lives out his life as a New Yorker. And it seems to me, reading a little bit between the lines, that he is an unofficial advisor to Nichols, who becomes the first governor of New York.
- [46:24]
Don Wildman
Gotcha. But your book underscores the fact that the Dutch influence because of New York goes on to affect the course of events in America's founding. I mean, this goes beyond New York. It becomes a huge layer in the reality of early America, the early republic. That Dutch.
- [46:40]
Russell Shorto
Yeah, I mean, New York. What I argue at the end of the book is that this. So Nichols. We didn't mention that. Nichols second mission with the Puritans in New England, he fails completely in Boston. They are too powerful and they despise the Stuarts and they just, you know, flick him away. And that then sets up two ideological bases. In New England. You have this puritanical base that is Christian, that is, you know, America first, ultimately, that is inward looking. And then in New York, you have this relatively open, tolerant, business minded, multi ethnic. They continue throughout American history. And they color, I mean, basically every aspect of American history. The Revolution, the Civil War. You can look at any era right where we are now and see these two ideologies kind of competing with, with one another. And, you know, yet to me, it's, you know, going all the way back to New Amsterdam. And, oh, I should mention, Don, that I have curated an art exhibit at the New York Historical in Manhattan, which is up through August 30th called Old Masters New Amsterdam. And it brings paintings by Rembrandt and his contemporaries of scenes, street scenes, market scenes, interiors of homes. These are all paintings that. That were painted in Europe, but they give windows onto what New Amsterdam may have looked like.
- [48:07]
Don Wildman
Nice. We're speaking in May of 2026. When is that exhibit on?
- [48:11]
Russell Shorto
It is on now. It opened May 1st and it's through August now.
- [48:16]
Don Wildman
Cool. I can't wait to see that. So the important book we've been discussing is called Taking Manhattan. The Extraordinary events that Created New York and Shaped America. I'm going to embarrass you, Russell. If you read this man's books, you will talk about them at cocktail parties. I can attest to this because people, especially in New York, where I live, think they know everything. But until you read these books, island at the center of the World and now Taking Manhattan, you're. You don't have the detail. You don't have the subtleties of these stories. That is, that really explain how this place became what it is. And I'm so grateful to talk to you. Thank you so much for. For being here. I can't wait to talk about your third book.
- [48:55]
Russell Shorto
Thank you very much, Don. I don't mind being embarrassed when you're talking about talking up my book.
- [48:59]
Don Wildman
All right. Thanks for listening to American history hit. You know, every week we release new episodes, two new episodes dropping Mondays and Thursdays. From mysterious missing colonies to powerful political movements to some of the biggest battles across the centuries. Don't miss an episode by hitting like and follow. You help us out, which is great, but you'll also be reminded when our shows are on. And while you're at it, please share with a friend. American history hit with me. Don Wildman, so grateful for your support. Thanks so much.
- [49:44]
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- [50:04]
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