In 1585, the Dutch pledged Vlissingen to England for a loan. After regaining it, residents—including English soldiers—launched a 1616 Amazon colony. They prospered briefly through Indigenous alliances and trade, but Portuguese aggression forced the settlers to abandon the venture and return home.
The Lily among Thorns is one of the early symbols of the Dutch Reformed Church. It originated in the mid-16th century as the rebellion of the Low Countries against Spain.
By 1663, fears of an English invasion gripped New Netherland. Peter Stuyvesant convened rare assemblies to plan defense, but the colony remained divided—villages refused aid, officials prioritized self-protection, and colonists, frustrated by neglect, threatened allegiance to another government for safety.
James DeWolf (1764–1837) was a Rhode Island merchant, slave trader, and politician who served as a U.S. senator and state legislator. He amassed great wealth through maritime trade and slavery while also investing in early American cotton manufacturing.k.
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E B. O'Callaghan was keeper of historical manuscripts for the State of New York in 1848. In that role he completed the original translation of the Register of the Provincial Secretary, 1638-1642.
In June 1743, three sailors aboard the schooner Rising Sun mutinied, killing captain Newark Jackson, supercargo George Ledain, and two crew members after a slave-trading voyage to Suriname. This case reveals how Dutch archives illuminate the history of British colonial America.
Simeon De Witt (1756–1834) was New York State’s long-serving Surveyor General, a Revolutionary War army geographer, planner of New York City’s grid street system, Erie Canal commissioner, and an early founder and land developer of Ithaca, New York.
The voyage of the ship Beaver from the Netherlands to New Amsterdam in 1660 must have been an awkward one for those on board. Boudewijn van Nieulant, one of the ship’s passengers, was fleeing a woman whom he had impregnated in Amsterdam.
