In August 1664, the WIC ship Gideon arrived in New Amsterdam with 290 enslaved Africans, doubling the colony’s enslaved population. Though the voyage was momentous, almost nothing is known about those forced aboard or the ordeal they endured to reach the city.
The famous Dutch navigator, cartographer, and explorer Willem Barentsz led three expeditions into the Arctic in the last years of the sixteenth century in search of a northeastern trade route to Asia. Accompanying Barentsz on the first two voyages was a Dutch navigator whose name has not survived to the present day with such prominence as his fellow explorer. Unlike Barentsz, no sea was named for Cornelis Corneliszoon Nay, who is known to history through his association with two of the Barentsz expeditions.
In 1684 Schenectady, constable and enslaver Jacob Sanders sued Frenchman Matthys Boffie for threatening to poison and kill Pey, an enslaved woman. Boffie claimed a relationship and children with her, offered to buy her, was refused, and allegedly threatened murder-suicide.
One the many myths that blur the story of the Dutch “purchase” of Manhattan—one that is firmly cemented in the popular psyche—says that the price was mere “beads and baubles.”
Perhaps the most peculiar name of a neighborhood in the Bronx—thee northernmost of the five boroughs of New York City— is Spuyten Duyvil.
In recent years, the enslavement of Indigenous people by Europeans across the Americas has received renewed attention from scholars. However, when it comes to the Dutch colonies, only in studies of the Guiana region does Dutch Indigenous slavery appear as a significant factor.
Whatever you believe to be true about the Dutch acquisition of Manhattan—notably the tale of the baubles and beads and the $24—there is another broader myth that underlies all of this.
In October 1657 a meeting of specially-appointed commissioners was held in New Amsterdam, likely in the City Hall. The commissioners were appointed by Director-General Peter Stuyvesant to hear a complaint by a Spanish merchant against Stuyvesant and the council of New Netherland.
One the many myths that blur the story of the Dutch “purchase” of Manhattan—one that is firmly cemented in the popular psyche—says that the price was mere “beads and baubles.”
In the 1590s, the Dutch began to turn their attention to the East Indies, the lands and islands of Southeast Asia, and in time this interest grew into a vast moneymaking concern.
