In 1664, England decided to invade the Dutch-controlled city of New Amsterdam on Manhattan Island in New Netherland. Charles II and his brother, the Duke of York, had dreams of empire, and their archrivals, the Dutch, were in the way. But Richard Nicolls, the military officer who led the English flotilla bent on destruction, changed his strategy once he encountered Peter Stuyvesant, New Netherland’s canny director general.
Drawing on his new book, Taking Manhattan, author Russell Shorto reveals the founding of New York to be the result of creative negotiations that blended the multiethnic, capitalistic society of New Amsterdam with the power of the rising English empire. But the birth of what might be termed the first modern city is also a story of the brutal dispossession of Native Americans and the roots of American slavery. Shorto draws from newly translated materials and illuminates neglected histories of religious refugees, Indigenous tribes, and free and enslaved Africans.
Shorto’s book Taking Manhattan: The Extraordinary Events That Created New York and Shaped America (W. W. Norton) is available for purchase.
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