Van Slyke Article Prize
Van Slyke Article Prize – April 1, 2025
Clague Van Slyke and Carol Van Slyke Lazo, brother and sister, were born and raised in Benson, Minnesota. They were tenth-generation descendants of Cornelis Antonissen Van Slyck, who settled in the area around present-day Albany in 1634. The Van Slyke Article Prize is supported by Sandra Lazo, Clague’s niece and Carol’s daughter. It is given in their memory, and in honor of their New Netherland ancestry.
The New Netherland Institute now offers an annual $1,000 prize for the best published article relating to the Dutch colonial experience in the Atlantic world, with a special sensitivity to New Netherland or its legacy. A committee of scholars will consider entries in the fields of history, archaeology, literature, language, geography, biography, and the arts. Entries must be based upon original research. Articles must be written in English and be published for the first time no earlier than two calendar years before the deadline, e.g. no earlier than 2020 for the 2022 prize. Chapters from a monograph, works of fiction, and encyclopedia entries will not be considered. Only one submission per author will be accepted. Articles previously submitted for consideration may not be resubmitted. Both academic and independent scholars are invited to participate.
Submissions should make an important contribution to the understanding of New Netherland and its legacy, specifically or broadly defined, exhibit exceptional research and be well written. Submissions may come from self-nomination, an outside nomination, committee members, or in response to invitations to submit articles from committee members.
Articles for consideration must be submitted by the author, editor, colleague, or other interested party by April 1st to nni@newnetherlandinstitute.org. The article must be provided in a PDF (portable document format). Please include your e-mail address and mailing address with your submission. The winner will be notified by August and the prize will be presented at the Institute’s Annual Conference.
Annual Award Prize Winners
2025
Jaap Jacobs, “The First Arrival of Enslaved Africans in New Amsterdam,” New York History, vol. 104, no. 1 (Summer 2023), pp. 96-114.
2024
Erin Kramer, “Corlaer’s House: Diplomatic Spaces, Lineages, and Memory in the New York Borderlands,” The William and Mary Quarterly, vol. 79 no. 4 (October 2022), pp. 499–532.
2023
D.L. Noorlander, “Banishment, penal labor, and the quest for order in the early Dutch Atlantic world,” Atlantic Studies, 2023.
2022
Erin Kramer, “‘That she shall be forever banished from this country’: Alcohol, Sovereignty, and Social Segregation in New Netherland,” Early American Studies.
2021
Dennis Maika, “To ‘experiment with a parcel of negros’: Incentive, Collaboration, and Competition in New Amsterdam’s Slave Trade,” Journal of Early American History 10 (2020), 33–69.
Susanah Shaw Romney, “Reytory Angola, Seventeenth-Century Manhattan (US),” in Erica L. Ball, Tatiana Seijas, & Terri L. Snyder (eds.), As If She Were Free: A Collective Biography of Women and Emancipation in the Americas (pp. 58–78), (Cambridge University Press, 2020).
2020
D.L. Noorlander, “The Lost Poems of Jacob Steendman,” New York History 100, no. 1 (Summer 2019).
2019
Jaap Jacobs, “‘Act with the Cunning of a Fox’: The Political Dimensions of the Struggle for Hegemony over New Netherland, 1647–1653,” Journal of Early American History 8, no. 2 (October 2018).
2018
Reinoud Vermoesen and Rogier van Kooten, “Peasants’ Paradise: A Comparison of Kings County, New York, and Inland Flanders Economies in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,” de Halve Maen 90, no. 1 (2017).
2017
Lou Roper, “The Fall of New Netherland and Seventeenth-Century Anglo-American Imperial Formation, 1654–1676,” New England Quarterly 87, no. 4 (2014).
2016
Jeroen Dewulf, “‘A Strong Barbaric Accent?’ America’s Dutch-Speaking Black Community from Seventeenth-Century New Netherland to Nineteenth-Century New York and New Jersey,” American Speech 90, No. 2 (2015).
2015
Jeroen Dewulf, “Emulating a Portuguese Model: The Slave Policy of the West India Company and the Dutch Reformed Church in Dutch Brazil (1630–1654),” Journal of Early American History 4, Issue 1 (2014).
2014
David Voorhees, “English Law through Dutch Eyes: The Leislerian Understanding of the English Legal System in New York,” published in Opening Statements: Law, Jurisprudence, and the Legacy of Dutch New York.
2013
Mark Meuwese, “The Dutch Connection: New Netherland, the Pequots, and the Puritans in Southern New England, 1620–1638,” Early American Studies, Vol. 9 (Spring 2011), 295–323.
