How the English took Manhattan

Summary

History Extra Podcast: "How the English Took Manhattan"

Release Date: April 27, 2025

In this captivating episode of the History Extra Podcast, hosted by Eleanor Evans, renowned historian Russell Shorto delves into the intricate and often misunderstood history of how the English acquired Manhattan from the Dutch in 1664. Drawing from his extensive research and his acclaimed book, "Taking Manhattan," Shorto unpacks the nuanced events that transformed a peaceful Dutch trading post into what would eventually become one of the world's most iconic cities.

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1. Setting the Stage: The Dutch Presence in Manhattan

[02:00]

Russell Shorto begins by contextualizing the early European settlement of Manhattan. In 1624, the Dutch established the colony of New Netherland, with Manhattan as its focal point. The strategic location of the southern tip of Manhattan provided unparalleled access to the harbor, facilitating robust trade networks.

“The Dutch knew perfectly well that the Lenape did not have a concept of property transfer. So they knew that to them this was more like entering into an alliance...”
— Russell Shorto [03:05]

2. The Lenape Deed: Debunking the $24 Myth

Shorto addresses the infamous legend that the Dutch purchased Manhattan for $24. He clarifies that the 1626 deed with the Lenape was undervalued in later interpretations. The agreement stipulated the transfer of the island for 60 guilders, exchanged in European goods—not a mere fee but a seal for a defensive alliance.

3. New Amsterdam: A Hub of Tolerance and Capitalism

[06:55]

Contrary to the traditional American narrative that views Dutch settlement as disorganized, Shorto emphasizes that New Amsterdam was a well-established, multi-ethnic society. The Dutch fostered a culture of tolerance and laid the foundational elements of capitalism, setting Manhattan on a path that would influence its future profoundly.

“They brought the building blocks of capitalism. And those two things were a recipe for not just New York City, but for American history...”
— Russell Shorto [06:55]

4. The English Motivation: Expanding an Empire

[12:42]

Post the English Civil War, England sought to expand its imperial reach. The success of the Dutch in establishing a global trading empire sparked envy in England's leadership. Under the stewardship of James, the Duke of York, England aimed to seize New Netherland to bolster its own colonial ambitions and curb Dutch influence.

5. Richard Nicholls: The English Governor

[14:50]

Enter Richard Nicholls, a Royalist with deep ties to the Stuart monarchy. Born in Bedfordshire, Nicholls’ loyalty to the Crown made him the ideal candidate to lead the expedition to seize Manhattan. His strategic acumen and understanding of both Dutch and English interests positioned him uniquely for the task.

6. The Calm Before the Storm: Preparations for Takeover

[21:38]

As Nicholls arrived with his flotilla of warships, tensions escalated. The Dutch leader, Peter Stuyvesant, had fortified New Amsterdam in anticipation of such an event. However, both sides recognized the challenges of outright warfare in defending the exposed and strategic island.

7. A Negotiated Merger: Avoiding Bloodshed

[25:33]

Defying expectations of violence, Nicholls and Stuyvesant negotiated a peaceful transfer of power. Instead of a military takeover, they crafted the Articles of Transfer, which resembled a bill of rights. This agreement guaranteed that the multi-ethnic society and capitalist structures established by the Dutch would continue under English rule, preserving the colony's prosperity and cultural diversity.

“...they worked out what I call in the book a merger. So it wasn't a military takeover. It was the so-called articles of surrender are not actually called that. They're called articles of transfer.”
— Russell Shorto [25:33]

8. Unsung Heroes: The Role of Women in Negotiations

[30:58]

Amidst the high-stakes negotiations, two women played pivotal roles. They ventured from the fort to Gravesend, an English enclave within the Dutch settlement, to present a secret message to Nicholls. Their discreet mission exemplified the collective effort of the colony's inhabitants to preserve peace and maintain their way of life.

9. The Shadow of Slavery: Early Slaves in New Amsterdam

[23:15]

Shorto acknowledges the presence of enslaved Africans in the colony, highlighting that while slavery was not a dominant force during the Dutch period, its seeds were sown with the arrival of the first slaves in 1627. The English takeover amplified the slave trade, laying the groundwork for New York's later prominence in this grim aspect of history.

10. Aftermath and Legacy: Shaping Modern New York

[34:01]

The merger had lasting implications. Nicholls, as the first English governor, named the colony New York, solidifying English influence. Meanwhile, Stuyvesant’s legacy was complex; despite being recalled and initially criticized, his efforts to preserve the colony's Dutch heritage were vindicated as New York flourished as a nexus of trade and culture.

“He decided all this on the ground, just as he decided so much of this creative merger solution.”
— Russell Shorto [25:33]

11. Enduring Dual Heritage: Dutch and English Influences

[39:46]

Shorto posits that New York’s enduring identity is a blend of its Dutch and English roots. This dual heritage fostered a unique environment of diversity, tolerance, and economic innovation, underpinning the city's evolution into a global powerhouse.

“I think what gave New York its distinction was the fact that it had these two parents, that it had a Dutch base at a time.”
— Russell Shorto [39:46]

12. Conclusion: Revisiting Richard Nicholls and Peter Stuyvesant

In wrapping up, Shorto reflects on the legacies of Richard Nicholls and Peter Stuyvesant. While Nicholls is recognized for his role in the peaceful transfer and the establishment of English governance, Stuyvesant is remembered for his steadfast defense of the colony and his complex relationship with both the Dutch and the English authorities.

“...his loyalty to the place and its people and the settlement and what they had built there was greater.”
— Russell Shorto [37:13]

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Final Thoughts

Russell Shorto’s exploration offers a fresh perspective on a pivotal moment in New York’s history, shedding light on the delicate balance of power, culture, and negotiation that shaped the city. By highlighting lesser-known figures and emphasizing the collaborative efforts that avoided conflict, the episode enriches our understanding of Manhattan’s transformation from a Dutch enclave to an English colony.

Listeners are encouraged to explore Shorto’s “Taking Manhattan” for a more comprehensive delve into this fascinating episode of history.

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This episode was produced by Daniel Kramer Arden.

Transcript

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Welcome to the History Extra Podcast. Fascinating historical conversations from the makers of BBC History Magazine. The English takeover of Manhattan from Dutch colonists is often seen as the start of the island's history. Yet knowing what came before this moment and how exactly the takeover happened is just as important in understanding the island's place in world history. In today's episode, Russell Shorto tells the story of a peaceful yet transformative handover that turned a Dutch trading post into an English colony and set Manhattan on its path to becoming a global powerhouse.

[Eleanor]

We are talking today about the taking of Manhattan in 1664 from the Dutch by the English. But Russell, before we go into this subject of your wonderful book, I wonder if we can backtrack and look at the first taking and what is commonly understood about this transaction. And what would you like our listeners to understand before we move ahead in this story?

[Russell Shorto]

Well, first of all, Eleanor, thank you very much for having me. And I think you are right to look at the first taking first because it remains part of the story and remains part of American history to this day. Europeans took parts of the American continent from native people and eventually took virtually all of it. In 1624, thereabouts, the Dutch came to set up a colony which they called New Netherland, in and around the region that became New York City and extending far beyond. The borders were always unclear. And they quickly settled on Manhattan island, specifically the southern tip of Manhattan island because it juts out into the harbor, just so in this world class harbor and giving them access to the wider world. And they were meticulous business people. They always wanted to get things in writing. And as a result of that, people like me are able to write books because they wrote so much and they recorded so much. They knew perfectly well that the native people did not have a concept of property transfer, but they wanted to record it, to have something especially to show other Europeans if the French or the English were going to come in, they could wave a piece of paper. So in 1626, they signed an agreement, a deed, with a branch, probably a branch of the Lenape people. The Lenape, who were also called Munsee or Delaware, are the people who inhabited the region around New York City, extending into New Jersey and south to Delaware for Manhattan Island. Now, the Dutch knew perfectly well that the Lenape did not have a concept of property transfer. So they knew that to them this was more like entering into an alliance, a defensive alliance, where the Lenape were saying, we will allow you to come here, you can settle. We're going to continue to use this island, and if one of us is attacked, the other will help. And the most infamous part of the deed of the agreement was the figure which in the agreement said the value of 60 guilders. So it was goods that were exchanged. These were European manufactured goods, knives and kettles, things like that, which wasn't intended as a fee for the purchase of the island. It was to seal the deal. And then in the 19th century, a translator translated that as $24, hence the infamous notion that the Dutch bought Manhattan island for $24. It's complicated and could spend an hour talking just about that. But that was the first taking, and.

[Eleanor]

As you say, it's one that's gone down infamously in American history. Another common conception about this time is that when the Dutch began to settle here, it was then a colony that was not necessarily done the right way. It was perhaps a bit higgledy piggledy and not settled. And it took the English coming in to really establish it. What do you make of this assertion? And can you take us into the early settlement of Manhattan Island?

[Russell Shorto]

Yeah, yeah. I think that's the traditional view of American history that Americans had. Because Americans largely looked at their colonial history through English eyes. The fact that I'm speaking to you in English today, in so many ways Americans still unconsciously look at the world through English eyes. And so when it came to this event, that's how they perceived things.

[Eleanor]

So in reality then what is the picture? What does the town of New Amsterdam look like in its earliest years? Who is living there and how is it built up?

[Russell Shorto]

The Dutch period. So it begins 1624. The city of New Amsterdam is founded in 1626. It lasts for essentially 40 years. 1664 was the date of the so called takeover. And as you were suggesting, that's the date traditionally American history says, okay, now the English took over, so now it became a real settlement. So my earlier book, the island at the center of the World told the story of the Dutch colony itself, of New Amsterdam in this wider colony. And it made the case that in fact not only did the Dutch establish a real consequential presence, what they brought were two things in particular. They brought a multi ethnic society, which was unusual in Europe at the time, undergirded by a policy of tolerance, which by the way didn't apply to everyone. It certainly didn't apply to Native Americans, it didn't apply to the enslaved Africans. But it was something new, it was striking in terms of what was going on elsewhere in Europe. And they brought the building blocks of capitalism. And those two things were a recipe for not just New York City, but for American history at a larger level. Because ultimately New York became so dominant. And these concepts, when Europeans later came to America, they landed typically in Manhattan. They looked around, they saw this, you know, what we would call upward mobility and different people speaking, speaking different languages. And then as they moved westward and settled, the rest of the continent settled, so called. They brought these ideas with them. So that's, I think the larger spread of what the Dutch did. And then of course the English came in 1664 and it became then part of the so called original 13 English colonies.

[Eleanor]

It's a great illustration of this notion of the plurality of it that made it New York before it became New York today. Some of the figures that you bring out in your book tell this story rather well. I wonder if we could look at Catalina Tricot's story. Maybe you could bring her out a bit for listeners.

[Russell Shorto]

Sure. I suppose if I were writing 50 years ago, I would just talk about the leaders of the colony. But I wanted to tell the story as much through the ordinary people of the colony as through the leaders. Catalina Trico is a fascinating one. The original Dutch settlement, they gathered really just a handful of couples. So they had this Adam and Eve kind of notion. They brought all these newly married people into these ships and convinced them to go to the back of beyond and live in this wilderness. So Catalina was a French speaking teenager. She was about 18, and she had just gotten betrothed. And a couple of days before the ship left Amsterdam, she married her husband, Joris Rapalh. They were both French speaking from what is now Belgium, France, that area. And they had arrived in Amsterdam because Amsterdam was the big booming city. And very shortly after, somehow they got word of this new venture and got married and got on the ship and sailed to, first into New York harbor, and then they were sent directly upriver to the area that's now Albany, the capital of New York. That was going to be their second city, Beaverwyke, which essentially means Beavertown, so named because initially they were there to trade with the native people for animal furs, and beaver in particular was prized. So the Haudenosaunee people would trap animals along the Mohawk river, but bring them to this spot at the confluence of the Mohawk in the Hudson River. And that's where the Dutch built this town of Beaverwijk and built a fort. And so they would trade with them there and then ship the beavers and other pelts to the south to Manhattan. And then from there they'd go to Europe. So Catalina and Joris are there for a couple of years. She gives birth to a daughter, who later, throughout the colony, becomes well known among the colonists as the first Christian daughter. So she's the first of these couples to give birth. Catalina is. Later, Catalina and Joris move south to Manhattan. They have a home there, they have a house there. And then they have a farm across the east river in what's now Brooklyn. And they become prominent residents of the colonies. Joris eventually dies, and she and their children and their grandchildren live in this extensive settlement just across the river from Manhattan, this farm on Wallabout Bay, it's called. And she becomes truly kind of the Eve of this colony. And their descendants are particularly active. They're particularly aware of their roots. And I have. When I wrote island at the center of the world 20 years ago, it came out. I got hundreds and hundreds of emails. I was bewildered by, you know, where are these people coming from? Who are they? But it turns out so many of them would say, I'm a descendant of Catalina, you know, and you wrote this book and I've learned so much and that sort of thing. So the New York Genealogical and Biographical Society estimates that their descendants now number in the millions.

[Eleanor]

From what you've just told us of Catalina's story and elsewhere, this was a thriving place of trade, of people coming in and out, of people settling and building lives. There's plenty more in this book. So to move us on, when and why does England turn its sights to this Dutch settlement?

[Russell Shorto]

Well, England in the 17th century was a society completely in the grips of polarization, where you had the breakaway religious sects, the Puritans and others ultimately engaging in a civil war with the Stuart government, with the Stuart regime, the royalists, so called. But the Royalists to my mind, really meant everyone who were not the Puritans who wanted to take over and establish a theocratic rule. So that's the backdrop to England during this period. It comes to a crisis point in 1649 when Charles I is beheaded. Oliver Cromwell becomes the leader of the country. His rule lasts until he dies in 1658, 1660. Finally, the sons of the beheaded King Charles II and James, the Duke of York, return from exile on the continent and re establish this Stuart monarchy. They then very quickly want to get things off the ground. They have been looking for a long time. England has at the Dutch with envy. The Dutch have established this global empire of trade. They want to do that. They know they have colonies in North America and they have two issues. One issue is the Puritans established decades earlier colonies in New England with the base in Boston. And the Puritans are still seen to be in many ways the enemies of the regime. The second issue in America is the Dutch have this colony of New Netherland which occupies the central position on the eastern seaboard. So they decide to. And it was James, the Duke of York, as the head of the Navy, who sends a man who has been very close to him his whole life, named Richard Nichols, at the head of this flotilla of warships, into New York harbor, the future New York harbor, to deal first with the Dutch problem.

[Eleanor]

Nicol is very important to this story as listeners will gather. Can you introduce us to him as a figure?

[Russell Shorto]

Yeah. Richard Nicholls is a fascinating figure. Fascinating to me and exciting to me as a writer, because if you come upon a figure who is very consequential to history but who is almost unknown, that's thrilling because you have this chance to develop and to introduce this character. He was born in the little town of Empty Hill in Bedfordshire. His father was the keeper of the hunting grounds that Henry VIII had established in the town. And so Henry VIII would go there and then Elizabeth didn't do much hunting, but then James I would go there regularly and would bring his family, bring his sons. And this child, the son of the groundskeeper, Richard Nicholls, grew up effectively with the young Charles, who would become Charles II and James. And so they had this really strong attachment. He was about eight years older than James, and the two of them in particular became quite close. By and large, Bedfordshire was Puritan territory, but they were very much, during the Civil war, Royalists. When the princes went to the continent into exile, Nichols went with them. He fought alongside James. Strangely, from our perspective, James decided while he was in Europe in exile that he would fight on behalf of the French in the French civil wars. I mean, you'd think, you know, you have enough problems with your own country. But so he did that. And Nichols was at his side during that whole time. Then when they return finally to England to take the throne, Nichols goes with them. He becomes groom of the bedchamber to James and he is the one that James points to and says, I want you, someone he's known all his life and trusted to lead this expedition.

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[Russell Shorto]

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[Eleanor]

You write in your book that a lot of royalists might not have been royalists because they loved the royals, but because they were shying away from the sort of tyrannical puritanism that the other side offered. What do you think this part of his character means for what's to come?

[Russell Shorto]

Yeah, well, I think that's exactly how I see it. The term royalist suggests these are people who love royalty. But I think for many, if not most people who were on that side, they wanted normalcy. They wanted a return to the status quo, which was life with the monarchy. And they were, many of them, deeply opposed to the kind of rule that the Puritans were going to bring. And I think that in the case of Richard Nichols, both of those things applied. That is to say, he was so close to the royals that he had that natural affinity, natural reason for siding with them. But he also, from everything he wrote, the way he behaved, he abhorred extremism. One of the first things they did, the royals, when they returned to power was to establish the Royal Society, which is still the most, probably the most prestigious organization in the world for the advancement of science. He was very close with the people who were part of that, including Robert Murray, the first president of the Royal Society. He exchanged letters with Murray and others while he was in America about the wildlife and nature in America and so on. His whole personality was very much opposed to what the Puritans represented.

[Eleanor]

Okay, so that's great context to understand about Nicholls going forward. Can you tell us exactly what he's tasked with by his patron?

[Russell Shorto]

Yeah, well, two things. The first thing is to deal with the Dutch. His ships are loaded with soldiers and munitions and he's ready to do battle with the Dutch. And by the way, the Dutch and the English have been bitter rivals. They fought wars. And this is, of course, the great age of imperialism and colonialism. And this is what you do. You go and kick the other guy out of whether it's West Africa or in the Caribbean. And so he's prepared to do that. Take this prime piece of real estate on the eastern seaboard of North America from the Dutch. And then the second task is to deal with the Puritans in New England who have established this defiant regime, very theocratic. You know, American history. It's such a funny thing. I grew up reading textbooks about the Puritans in New England and how they were the advocates of religious liberty. Well, they were advocates of religious liberty for themselves and for their very narrow brand of Christianity, and they didn't want it for anyone else. And in fact, they persecuted people and punished them and put them to death. And so that was the second task. Now, you know, again, the Civil War is over. The Stuarts are on the throne again. Puritans in the home country, as happens, because you're on the ground, are coming to terms with this. But the Puritan colonies in New England are an ocean away, and they've established this very strong power base, and they don't want to toe the line. That was Nicholl's second task, to get them to be part of the empire, part of England.

[Eleanor]

You painted the picture then of a dangerous situation for New Netherland. We've got Richard Nicholl sailing across the Atlantic, who is in the picture, ready to defend or having to deal with things in the Dutch colony.

[Russell Shorto]

The leader of the Dutch colony was Peter Stuyvesant. He was the last of the directors and the most capable. He had been in position for 17 years. He had had threats for a long while. He had heard rumors that the English might be coming. And as the English colonies around them, New England colonies and in Maryland and Virginia, as they got more and more settlers, he could feel this encroachment. So he was long worried about this. So his colony as a whole, There are about 10,000 people in it. There are about 1500 in the capital of New Amsterdam. And as soon as they get word that the English are coming, they begin to fortify and prepare to defend themselves. So when Nicholls warships come in the harbor, you literally have them pointing guns at each other. You've got the English on the ships pointing their cannons at the fort and at the city, which is very exposed. It's a very difficult piece of land to defend. And you've got the Dutch in the fort pointing their cannons at the ships. And it's logic would say you could see what's going to happen. It's going to come to violence because this is what they did over and over in that time period.

[Eleanor]

Yes, it seems like a powder keg. And listeners who have any appreciation of Anglo Dutch relations at this time can clearly see what could be afoot. If we can pause just there for just one more moment, because there's a strand. You have in the book I really want to bring in, there's also Manhattan's earliest brush with transatlantic slavery at this time. That's a really important part to understand what has recently happened in the colony of New Netherlands that listeners should be thinking about here.

[Russell Shorto]

Yeah, slavery is indeed an important part of the story. However, it was never a large factor in the Dutch colony until the very end. So the first slaves probably arrived in 1627. They came sort of by accident. The Dutch were fighting against the Spanish and the Portuguese. They captured a Portuguese ship, and it had these enslaved Africans on it. And so they had heard that there was this new Dutch colony, and so they went there, they went north, and they brought them. And so the first enslaved Africans arrive very early. And slavery is a part of the colony throughout its 40 or so years of existence. But in a small way, the numbers were probably no more than a couple dozen, a few dozen at any one time, until the very end. Two weeks before Nichols arrives with his ships, the first really large shipment of Africans is in the harbor, bringing 290 men, women and children. So you paint the picture. You've got this little town. It's kind of like a Wild west town, but with, like, Dutch gables and things like that. And you've got people preparing to defend themselves. And somewhere you've got these couple of hundred Africans who just arrived trying to figure out what on earth. And so for Peter Stuyvesant, the leader, he's got to deal with them, too. And this is just more mouths to feed, more people to try to figure out what to do with them. So that's part of the picture on his side. And if I can just sketch forward about slavery, of course the English are going to take the colony eventually, and slavery then ramps up, and it ramps up under the English. But the Dutch had got it going. Even though the Dutch had this very small stake and hadn't put much effort into it, they had gotten it going. So the English then pick up, and eventually New York becomes quite a prominent slave trading base.

[Eleanor]

So it's something inherited, but only just. So let's return to this powder keg. We've got Richard Nicholls waiting with his ships. You've got Stuyvesant wondering how to proceed. What happens next is such a sort of conglomerate of fascinating movements. Where would you like to start with? What happens between these two leaders?

[Russell Shorto]

Always in a case like this, you send your messenger. So messenger on a boat comes ashore, and the message is, basically, we are here to take over, so give up the place now or we're going to open fire. And then Stuyvesant writes back. But overall, what's going on is Nichols is a very thoughtful, creative thinker, and I think you have to give Stuyvesant similar credit. Before he left London, Nichols did a lot of homework. He interviewed a lot of people who had been in the Dutch colony and, by the way, people who had been in New England as well. And he had brought some of them with him on the ship, including one man named Baxter, who had been a member of Stuyvesant's government. So he knew a lot about this. He didn't just value the real estate, this island of Manhattan that sits in this harbor. He wanted this kind of secret sauce that the Dutch had developed. They had this multi ethnic society, and they had this thing that we would call capitalism, although the word wouldn't come into being for a couple of centuries. They had developed the building blocks of capitalism. The first stock exchange in Amsterdam was not much earlier. So he understood that there was something special about this Dutch colony. And this, by the way, is why I wrote this second book, Taking Manhattan, because the newly translated records of the later period in the life of the Dutch colony give a sense of this robust, growing little settlement that has, you know, it's just a wilderness place on the edge of this vast continent, but they've got connections with Europe, with South America, with the Caribbean, with West Africa. So it was this very vibrant thing. And Nichols wanted to preserve that. So he wanted to find a way to make a deal with them. Now from the Dutch side, Stuyvesant and everyone else in the colony, and this is very much a group effort. Everyone who lived there, including people like Catalina Trico, including probably most of the enslaved people who'd been there for some time. I shouldn't say most, I should say many of them, because we don't know, had won their freedom. And we can talk about that. So all of these people knew the overriding problem, and that was that the West India Company was not supporting them adequately. Stuyvesant for years had written letters home saying, effectively, look, we have this opportunity. We've got this magnificent real estate in this whole continent to be exploited. But the English are encroaching and we need ships, we need more soldiers, we need more settlers, otherwise the English are going to take over. By this time, everyone had kind of given up on the West India Company, in fact, supporting them. So both sides had reason for not fighting. And essentially what they did, what Nichols and Stuyvesant and their lieutenants did, was they worked out what I call in the book a merger. So it wasn't a military takeover. It was the so called articles of surrender are not actually called that. They're called articles of transfer. And they read like a bill of rights. So there's nothing that the Dutch are giving up in these articles. What they're doing is promising them that if they allow this to become an English city, all of the people there who are, I'm saying Dutch, but this is a whole 18, 20 different languages spoken. Everyone will keep their homes, their families, their contacts. These were traders who had contacts all around the world. And they're basically saying, everyone, keep everything going the way you want. Because that's what Nichols wanted. He wanted this to continue functioning. So they are given this promise, and they're given this promise that if they just relinquish the control so that it's no longer controlled by the Dutch, but by the English, that they will maintain they will continue to flourish. So that was the interesting thing that these people worked out. And, you know, especially at a time when we're experiencing in the world now all this sort of transactional approach to international affairs. It's this very creative, you know, understanding. I did some reading of books about the art of negotiations while I was working on this section of the book. And you can see them saying all these things to themselves. What do I want? What do I absolutely have to maintain? What does my opponent want? What does he need to hang on to? And so they work out this agreement, and so New York becomes really a merger so that it remains in many ways Dutch and its foundation, but it will carry on henceforth as a node in this rising English empire.

[Eleanor]

Yes, it's staggeringly pragmatic, it's lenient. I love some of the language, how guardedly polite it is, and yet very, you know, assertive. It's wonderful to read about in your book and obviously pulls this off without any real violence. Before we get into the outcome of this merger, I also wanted to just ask about one more detail about. There's two women in the course of these negotiations whose actions are quite fascinating. Can you introduce them?

[Russell Shorto]

Yeah. There are several times when either Nichols or Stuyvesant has said, all right, enough. Load up the cannons. We're just going after this. And at one of these moments, two women leave the fort and they get on a boat and cross over. So I should mention that if we had a map, that would help, a map of New York harbor. But you have not just New Amsterdam, but in the New York, what is now The New York City region. There are five other Dutch towns at the tip of Long island, in what's now Brooklyn and Queens, and one town that is within this Dutch domain, but it's largely an English settlement, and that's Gravesend. It was settled by Lady Deborah Moody, a religious dissident who fled England to New England and then was persecuted there. And so she came to the Dutch colony. So it's an English enclave within the Dutch settlement. That's where Richard Nicholls anchors while he's doing this negotiation. So these two women quietly leave the fort and get on boats across the east river to go to Gravesend to present kind of a secret message of some sort to Nichols. And they're seen by the soldiers as they're leaving the fort. And we know this because one of the soldiers later files a deposition in Amsterdam explaining their behavior. And he mentions this. One of these women was the wife of Stuyvesant's secretary, and she was the daughter of the prominent minister in New Amsterdam. So she was part of the hierarchy. But they went on this sort of rogue mission, which was probably blessed by some of the people. Not Stuyvesant, but some of the other New Amsterdammers, because there's a split in the middle of this. As things get very tense between Stuyvesant and his advisors over what to do. He suddenly gets hardline, and they're desperate and saying, no, we have to find another way. So they seem to have sent these two women because they couldn't possibly be serious emissaries. So they are kind of invisible, and they go and present a message. We don't know to what extent that little mission helped to pull Stuyvesant back from the brink. But it's an interesting little interlude.

[Eleanor]

It is. And it brought home for me, I think, so much that the inhabitants of the colony and the town, they cared so much about what happened, and they weren't just sort of passive, waiting for a leader to make a decision about what their futures were going to be, which is really interesting.

[Russell Shorto]

Yeah, yeah. And in fact, at a point not long after that, during this tense period, a whole list of prominent New Amsterdammers writes a letter to Stuyvesant saying, we don't support attack. And the second name on the list is Stuyvesant's own son. So, you know, you get this sense of the whole community is part of this, and it's dividing families completely.

[Eleanor]

So, yeah, that sense of people being really invested really does come across. And so to skip forward again, we have this merger. How successful is it? In its aims, does Nichols stay true to what he's able to promise?

[Russell Shorto]

Once they sign this agreement and it becomes New York? There is a complicated period, as there, I think, inevitably would be in a situation like this. Nichols is now the governor. He's New York's first governor, which is one of the amazing reason why I think it's remarkable that he's so little remembered. And he was the first governor. He names the place. He writes to the Duke of York and says, oh, and I named this place N. York.

[Eleanor]

You mentioned that. He names it New York. It could have easily been something different, perhaps New Albania.

[Russell Shorto]

Yeah. First of all, I should mention that as part of the rationale for taking over the colony, Charles, as king, under advisement, decides that it always was English, but we would just allow the Dutch. And while our backs were turned, they developed something else there. But it was always English. And I've now decided to give it as a present to my brother. That's why his brother, the Duke of York, is the one who's kind of organizing this effort. So he was the Duke of York, he was the Duke of Albany. He was the Earl of Ulster. So there were a number of different titles. And I found a letter that Nicholls writes to James in which he's completely exasperated for the most part, when he writes these letters, he's very obsequious. But in these letters, he's exasperated because a little side story here is once they have the colony, James gives away a huge chunk of it to a couple of his mates. And Nichols gets word of this, and he's like, what are you talking about? He's got big plans for developing this. So what James chose to give away is the land on the west side of the Hudson river, just right across from Manhattan. And Nichols had plans for that. And he was going to call it Albania after the Duke of Albany. And my little joke when I'm giving talks is that there are many New Yorkers who still think of New Jersey as Albania. So then he writes to James and says. And he's still trying to talk him out of it. And he says, look, I was going to call that Albania after you. And by the way, I named this place where he is now New York for one of your other titles, which tells us they didn't go there saying, okay, you're going to take this, and then you're going to call it New York. He decided all this on the ground, just as he decided so much of this creative merger solution. I mean, it was him and the people around him. Who, needless to say, they couldn't phone home for, you know, instructions on what to do.

[Eleanor]

So it sounds like Nicholls deserves a lot more credit than history gives him. Before we leave his story, is there anything you'd just like to say that we haven't covered about his character or something you'd like to leave listeners with when perhaps thinking about Richard Nicholls or wanting to know more?

[Russell Shorto]

Well, just to modify and put him more properly in context, he continued and tried to find ways to continue and to develop a slave trade. So it's not like he's some noble figure. And he was involved in this great colonizing effort, and he negotiated land deeds with the native people to push them further and further out of their land. So he was very much that kind of figure. He was a figure of this era of colonialism.

[Eleanor]

And Stuyvesant.

[Russell Shorto]

What becomes of him, Stuyvesant, after they sign over the colony? He knew this would happen. He was recalled to the home country. He spent a couple of years. He brought chests full of documents to support his defense because they, you know, from their perspective, the West India Company and the Dutch government, he just gave up this whole colony that he was charged with keeping and defending, and he put up this valiant defense. Ultimately, though, he couldn't deny that he had indeed done that. And what I argue in the book is he came to realize that he had, while he had a loyalty to the West India Company, of which he was an employee, and to the Dutch government, he decided ultimately that his loyalty to the place and its people and the settlement and what they had built there was greater. And that by doing this, by keeping its Dutchness, but allowing it henceforth to become English, that he was doing rights by them. And so he tried to argue that in the home country, he got saved by the fact that the war, the second Anglo Dutch War, which this action precipitated, ended. And once it ended, to everyone's surprise, they decided. The treaty negotiators said, we're not going to return properties because there were other pieces of around the world that the one side had taken from the other. We're not going to return them. In fact, we're going to. I forgot there's a Latin phrase, but it means keep everything as it is. So New York stayed English. With that being the case, the trial against him basically dissolved, and he was exonerated. And the most telling thing about him, I think, is that he decided then to return, and he lived out the rest of his life in New York. So he was truly, you might say, a real New Yorker. Whereas Richard Nichols spent four years as governor, set up the place, decided that New York City would not just be this little triangle of 16 streets, but would in fact, be the whole island of Manhattan. He named it. He was the governor. He set up a lot of the parameters that would play out through its history. But then he went back home, so he was just doing a job.

[Eleanor]

So interesting fates for both of these figures in this story, returning perhaps finally to New York as an entity, shall we say, as we know it today. Today, I'm really interested to pick up on this idea that you have in the book of these two parents, of the Dutch parent and the English parent, and what that has meant for the city's identity through history and even today.

[Russell Shorto]

I think what gave New York its distinction was the fact that it had these two parents, that it had a Dutch base at a time. And it got at the time when the Dutch Empire was at its height, but then it shifted to English control as the British Empire was beginning to develop. And it remained a node in both of these empires. You know, it was connected to all the ports that each of these places, each of these empires did business with, which helped then to make it what it eventually became. And if you think of if you move forward in time to the 19th century, when these great waves of immigrants come to America, they by and large make footfall first in Manhattan and then they move westward from there and they see this teeming place and they think of it as America, but it wasn't truly America because the rest of America wasn't like that. It was New York. But really what they're looking at beneath that is New Amsterdam, and that's all.

[Eleanor]

Part of that story, and a very important part of the story we've covered today, 1664. But clearly there's plenty to learn. Russell, is there anything else you'd like to leave our listeners with before we wrap up this episode?

[Russell Shorto]

I just thought I'd mention, in case it's of interest to you, that I took in the course of doing the research on the book. I did most of my research at the New York State Archive and then also at the Bodleian Library at Oxford and at the British National Archives. But I did a very important piece of research on the site, research in the town of Amp Till with a man named Kevin Fadden, who was sort of the town's unofficial historian, who took me around the town, showed me the sites that were of interest in the 17th century. And there's a pub there called the White Hart, which was in business at the time. And there is a painting on the wall in plaster above the fireplace there, which they only discovered when they were doing restorations in the 1970s. And it is a painting honoring the Stuarts and honoring James and Charles ii. And it was. What seems to have happened was this was Puritan country, so the small band of people like Richard Nicholls, who were royalists, must have gone there. They created this painting, and then they covered it over so that no one would know. So it was. It represented their secret faith in the monarchy. And so Kevin took me around, took me to the church, St. Andrew's Church there, which is. It's a delightful series of historical features in the church, one of which is the tomb of Richard Nicholls. He died in 1672 in Battle off the English coast with the Dutch. Ironically, it was the Dutch who killed him. And the cannonball, supposedly the cannonball that did him in, is embedded in this tomb. How someone would have had the presence of mind to say, oh, this guy did something that will later be seen as important. So let's take this cannonball. But the tomb has a lot of information about Nichols on it. It's got the cannonball in it, and it's got an American and a British flag over it. So people in amp till anyway know who Richard Nichols is.

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That was Russell Shorto, author of Taking Manhattan, speaking to Ellen Evans. Russell also appeared on another of our podcasts, History's Greatest Cities, to discuss how the Dutch capital of Amsterdam became famed as a center for trade, art, and pleasures of the flesh. You can find that by searching for history's greatest cities wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening. This podcast was produced by Daniel Kramer Arden.