Four Hundred Years of New Amsterdam
With apologies to Dominicans, Italians, the Hasidim et al., NYC is still Dutch
Finding the essence of a place in its origin story: it’s more like what a tour guide would do than a historian. Good for a quip, spoken through a megaphone, while the double-decker bus is stuck in traffic. But it’s not just a schtick: there is still some of the Netherlands in the cultural makeup of New York City.
Colin Woodard even finds that “New Netherland” is one of eleven distinct nations within today’s United States. NN is “materialistic, with a profound tolerance for ethnic and religious diversity and an unflinching commitment to the freedom of inquiry and conscience.” Dutch settlers in America certainly were liberal on women’s rights, permitting them to keep their maiden names, inherit land and make joint wills with husbands.
The various 17th century burgomaster-types (Stuyvesant, Minuit and a surveyor named Willem Verhulst), they all imagined a clean slate. These pioneers were doing something similar to the visionaries behind Beemster Polder, who pumped the North Sea back from a marshy area in 1612 and earned themselves some new land. But instead of reclaiming terrain, NYC’s first developers imagined purchasing an island for sixty guilders, plotting right-angled streets, and evoking the tidy sophistication of Dutch cities on a fetid river delta thousands of miles from the mother country.
Dennis Maika points out that if you want to build a system of credit in a location cut off from the world’s other power centers, then you had better create an illusion of order. That meant canals, a dense population, sanitation, and the political unity to fend off indigenous attacks. All of those elements, to varying degrees, went sideways immediately, and New Yorkers commenced to yelling at each other about land use and public safety for the next four hundred years.
So do you buy it? Do you think your investment in this newfangled world trade center is assured? The Castello Plan from 1660, currently on display at the New-York Historical Society, is a copied map circulated by European boosters who had never laid eyes on the city. The map suggests a form of orderly development that never matched the chaotic reality. Everyone in New York was in a 17th century grindset, trading pelts, tobacco, sugar, as well as human beings. Dutch folkways may have contributed to that concoction, but in New York commerce decisively pushed culture to the background. Capitalism might leave behind some intriguing traces for us to review but, then as now, you’re not really in New York unless you’re too busy planning your next swindle.
Further Reading:
Justin Davidson, “The Streets of Pre-New York,” New York,
Andy Kiersz and Marguerite Ward, “The 11 Nations of the United States,” Business Insider, July 4, 2020.