On this day in 1664, the Dutch Republic surrendered New Amsterdam to the English.
The initial trading factory gave rise to the settlement around Fort Amsterdam. The fort was situated on the strategic southern tip of the island of Manhattan and was meant to defend the fur trade operations of the Dutch West India Company in the North River (Hudson River). By 1655, the population of New Netherland had grown to over 2,000 people, with a 1,500 majority residing in the city of New Amsterdam. By 1664, the population of New Netherland had risen to almost 9,000 people, 2,500 of whom lived in New Amsterdam, 1,000 lived near Fort Orange (present day Albany), and the remainder in other towns and villages.
The commercial rivalry between the Dutch and the English, which provoked the First Anglo-Dutch War, was not resolved by the Treaty of Westminster (1654). Hostilities continued between the countries’ trading companies. Religious and political differences between the Anglican royalists in England and the Calvinist republicans that ruled the Netherlands also hampered peace. In March 1664, King Charles granted American territory between the Delaware and Connecticut rivers to his brother James. On May 25, 1664 Colonel Richard Nicolls set out from Portsmouth with four warships and about three hundred soldiers.
Having arrived at Fort Amsterdam on Manhattan Island, Nicolls sent director-general Peter Stuyvesant a letter offering lenient terms of surrender. James authorized generous terms because he preferred the profits of an intact colony to the spoils of a ruined one. Despite Fort Amsterdam’s limited supply of gunpowder, Stuyvesant was inclined to resist. On September 4, the English ships began to maneuver closer to the fort. Stuyvesant was confronted by ninety-three burghers and his own son, and conceded.
The Dutch colonists were guaranteed in the possession of their property rights, their laws of inheritance, and the enjoyment of religious freedom. Article 2 specified that all “publick houses” would remain open. Nicolls sent troops to Fort Orange, up the Hudson River, to demand the fort’s peaceful surrender. Realizing that control of the mouth of the river controlled the settlement’s future, on September 24, 1664 vice-director of New Netherland Johannes de Montagne surrendered the fort to the English and Colonel George Cartwright took command. The next day, Captain John Manning was given charge of the fort, which was renamed Fort Albany, after the Duke of York’s title in the Peerage of Scotland.
The fall of New Amsterdam by Jean Leon Gerome Ferris
Great room number!!
BACK THEN! (what were we thinking???)
short legs…
On this day in 1962, Patsy Cline released her third and final EP, So Wrong/You’re Stronger Than Me. This was the final EP released in her lifetime, as she would be killed in a plane crash less than a year later in March 1963. The other two tracks were, ‘Heartaches’ and a version of the Hank Williams song ‘Your Cheatin’ Heart.’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gzthI-oltM
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