Most of us have heard of Ferdinand Magellan and Francis Drake—early explorers who sailed around the world. One was Portuguese, the other English. But what about Olivier van Noort? Between 1598 and 1601, van Noort became the first Dutchman to complete a circumnavigation of the globe.
How Jan van Riebeeck’s 1652 landing at the Cape laid the foundation for Cape Town, shaping South Africa’s history, culture, and language.
When, in the early hours of March 29, 1911, fire gutted much of the New York State Capitol and State Library, few people, if any, could have been more devastated than State Archivist Arnold J.F. van Laer. Hundreds of thousands of books and documents were either burned up or severely damaged, including the 17th century Dutch colonial records that Van Laer had begun to translate.
A.J.F. van Laer, though little known outside New Netherland scholarship, laid the foundation for modern study of the colony. His meticulous translations of 17th-century Dutch records remain essential, shaping the work that continues through today’s New Netherland Project.
January 31, 2009, was the 400th anniversary of the founding of the Amsterdamsche Wisselbank (Exchange Bank of Amsterdam), and with it the idea of a national bank, modeled on such a bank in Venice, reached northern Europe.
“The Awful End of Prince William the Silent: the First Assassination of a Head of State with a Handgun,” by Lisa Jardine (Harper Collins, 2006, 176pp, $21.95, pbk $12.95).
He has been described as not only a military genius but also as a charismatic leader, and an honest, modest, and devout man. He is certainly the man upon whom the fledgling Republic of the United Provinces relied at a crucial time in its history, defending its newly gained independence and assuring its future.
Anyone searching for information about Cornelis Evertsen must be careful; there are three seventeenth century Dutch admirals with this name, and they are all related. Our interest lies in Cornelis Evertsen the Youngest (1642–1706).
On March 29, 1911, the New York State Library, then in the Capitol, burned, and with it went some half a million books and 300,000 manuscripts, among them priceless colonial documents. In charge of the state archives at the time was a Dutch immigrant called A.J.F. van Laer (1869–1955), for whom that day’s destruction was a particularly hard blow.
Numerous myths and misapprehensions have developed around the so-called Dutch "purchase" of Manhattan.
