The Dutch attempt at colonization in the new world

In 1609, Henry Hudson embarked on a voyage for the Dutch East India Company and sought a Northwest Passage to the Indies and the spices and riches of Asia. Hudson’s attempt was unsuccessful, but thanks to him, he learned that the mouth of the Hudson River offered attractive settlement possibilities, due to the fertility of the land and the potential for a lucrative fur trade with the Iroquois Indians.

The Dutch East India Company quickly lost interest in this region, after an attempt to find a passage to the Far East failed. However, other Dutch entrepreneurs quickly sent trips to explore what is now New York, to seek out these new business opportunities, which eventually led to a permanent settlement. An important figure was Adrian Block, who sailed to Manhattan in 1613 and discovered; the Housatonic and Connecticut rivers, Rhode Island and Block Island. In 1614, other Dutch ship owners secured trading posts in the area, leading to the permanent settlement of Albany.

All of the top trading posts were established thanks to the direct efforts of trading companies and not the initiative of governments.

The West Indies Company Dtuch

However, in 1621, the Dutch government hired the Dutch West India Company to trade and colonize that area. The government gave the company the authority to appoint a governor and draft government rules, of which the settlers were divided into two classes, free settlers, who received transportation and maintenance for the first two years, who could own property, and the Associated farmers, who had to work on the farms of the company or on the farms of its employees. The first settlements were near, what is today, the New York City area. The first official settlement on the island of Manhattan was secured by Peter Minuit. He arrived in 1626 and proceeded to buy Manhattan from Native Indian chieftains for trinkets worth twenty-four US dollars from 1933.

While the Dutch secured the first colony along the mid-Atlantic coast, they failed to establish it as such, a Dutch colony, mainly for three notorious reasons; its territorial politics, its inept leadership, and its reluctance to grant settlers the kind of self-government that English settlers would enjoy elsewhere on the North Atlantic coast.

Although the Dutch were shrewd businessmen, they failed to capitalize on the greatest of all impulses toward colonizing America, the desire of the underprivileged in Europe to secure a piece of land they could call their own. Dutch companies granted land to settlers on a perpetual lease. There weren’t enough settlers who accepted his concept, when other colonies were giving up parcels of land for the farm, the concept that New England was founded on, so the Dutch don’t have a permanent settlement that they can call their own.

The Dutch West Indies Company, which oversaw the Dutch colonization attempt, had a leadership that put self-interest before the public good. According to Washington Irving, they were a rowdy and arrogant bunch, who were too friendly with the wrong people, including Peter Minuit. One failed leadership replacement after another of the Dutch West India Company, in addition to not having good relations with the Indians in the area, led to their failure to colonize. Finally, Peter Stuyvesant, the tenacious and colorful one-legged Dutch hero, was the right leader, but too late to turn the Dutch colonization attempt around.

A third basic reason for the collapse of the Dutch to colonize was the failure of the authorities of the Dutch West India Company to recognize the positive values ​​of self-government and their long-standing hostility to anything that smacked of democracy. The failure to grant broad legislative powers to the representatives of the people certainly contributed to the gradual breakdown of morale in the colony.

English participation in Dutch affairs

Meanwhile, the English had come to see that the Dutch were interfering with their expansion and enforcement of trade laws, they had outbreaks with the Dutch for control of New York, beginning in 1664. Except for a brief period, the English maintained control of New York, until the evacuation of British troops in 1783.

But Father Knickerbocker’s cultural control over the colony persisted long after Dutch political rule ended. As much as they could, the Dutch in the Hudson Valley had doubled the life of Holland, building their cities on the models of Amsterdam, establishing Dutch law, the Dutch Reform Church, and the Dutch language, which continued to be spoken for generations afterward. the area came under English rule.

Although the 1776 fire in lower Manhattan destroyed the Dutch legacy, it could not destroy the Dutch spirit. Although the Dutch did not make theirs, the part of New England that we call New York today, the Dutch spirit lives on. It is the American spirit and it has made this nation great. Congratulations to the Dutch!