New Netherland Institute Press Release 5/20/2026

The New Netherland Institute announces a new research resource that focuses on enslavement in the New Netherland Colony and Early New York. This rich collection of essays and exhibits is now available on the New Netherland Institute’s website. Conceived and edited by New Netherland Institute Senior Historian, Dr. Dennis Maika, “Slavery” offers some of the latest research on the institution of slavery, the lives of the enslaved, and the slave trade in seventeenth and early eighteenth-century New York. These unique resources provide new insights and promote a deeper understanding of both the institution of slavery and the lives of the enslaved.

New for this feature is a series of short essays by Debra Bruno, Jeroen Dewulf, Evan Haefeli, Eric Odegard, and Valika Smeulders. Accompanying this feature are Andrea Mosterman’s digital exhibition on slavery (2018) as well as 2020 articles by Mosterman and Virginie Adane. These materials are written for both the public and scholars of the period. In her introduction to the collection, Lavada Nahon, suggests that making this new information available will “support a deeper and more truthful narrative,” “particularly at a time when difficult or challenging history is being forced out of public view.”

All of these resources are currently available on the New Netherland Institute Website: https://newnetherlandinstitute.org/slavery/, and we expect to add more essays in the coming months.

The New Netherland Institute was founded in 1986 to provide support for the conservation, translation, and publication of 17th-century Dutch colonial records. We are a registered 501c3 non-profit organization. This project was made possible with the generous support of Dutch Culture USA.