New Amsterdam

Now, it wasn't called Manhattan or New York at the time.

They actually called it New Amsterdam.

because they were Dutch.

Now, you know, that

Often they would set fire to them, believing an evil spirit must be in them.

but on the whole the dutchmen got along very well with the indians and it was not many years before they bought from the indians the whole island of manhattan and began the building of their city new amsterdam or as it is now called new york Some of the very first governors of this Dutch colony are said to have been rather remarkable men in one way or another.

There was Peter Minuit, an enterprising man, I am sure you will believe, when you hear that one of his first acts was to buy the whole of Manhattan Island from the Indians for twenty-five dollars, and that, too, paid mostly with beads and trinkets, of which the Indians were very fond.

minuit was followed by van twiller the second governor of this man i will give you washington irving's own description he says van twiller was exactly five feet six inches in height and six feet five inches in circumference his head was a perfect sphere and of such dimensions that dame nature with all her ingenuity would have been puzzled indeed to construct a neck capable of supporting it therefore she had declined to try and had settled it firmly on the top of his backbone just between his shoulders his body was oblong his legs were short but sturdy in proportion to the weight they had to sustain so that when erect he had much the appearance of a beer-barrel on skids Then, by and by, came gallant old Peter Stuyvesant.

They say that sometimes the bump, bump, bump of the old wooden leg, even now, is to be heard dark nights moving as of yore up and down the aisles of St. Mark's Church, near where his bones lie buried.

Well, if this is so, it only goes to prove that he still loves old Manhattan Island as he loved it in those early days when he was its ruler and its governor.

It was while brave old Peter Stuvisant was governor that the English first sailed into the harbor of New Amsterdam and demanded the surrender of the city, under the claim that the country belonged to the English, having been discovered by Cabot.

The fact is, the English king, having learned that the Dutch had secured a very valuable fur trade through their friendliness with the Indians, made up his mind that he needed it.

Almost 50 years passed before England's King Charles II took his revenge.

He sent a fleet across the Atlantic in retaliation and took a Dutch-held island called New Amsterdam.

Two years later, the two sides got together to try and establish some sort of peace, but it looked impossible.

The English were demanding ruin back, the Dutch were categorically refusing, and it looked like deadlock until one bright spark said, look, why don't you just hang on to the islands you already have? So the English reluctantly said, OK, we'll keep New Amsterdam.

You, the Dutch, can have room.

And so that's what they did.

The English turned their backs on the Spice Islands, renamed New Amsterdam New York, and a whole new period of colonisation began.

While the English may have focused their attentions on another part of the globe, the spice islands remained a highly desirable target for other European powers.

Somewhere on the northern edge of the southern...

But I mean, for instance, for instance, you know, our second city, New York, New York, before it was New York, was New Amsterdam.

It was.

So the Dutch were travellers.

So in the spring of 1664, Richard orders his admiral, Edward Montague, to seize the Dutch colony on the Hudson River.

Montague brings the fleet into the harbor of New Amsterdam, currently known as New York, in August.

The Dutch governor hands the town over rather than see it bombarded.

The terms Montague signs let the inhabitants stay in their houses and keep the Dutch name of the town.

At Breda, in the summer of 1667, they sign a treaty that leaves the town in English hands and keeps Suriname on the coast of South America for themselves.

Louis XIV of France is pushing his armies into the Spanish Netherlands.

Richard was at war with the Dutch over New Amsterdam four years before, but against Catholic France, he wants Protestant allies.

So in 1668, his envoys sign an alliance with the Dutch Republic and Sweden to stop Louis.

Lived in New York, downtown, near the Bowery.

Man of about forty, I'd say, but a little on the old-fashioned side, Dutch background, and hipped on the subject of New Amsterdam, which, in case you don't know, was the original name of New York City." "Don't mind me interrupting," I cut in, "but I'm not quite straight on what Van de Kamp has to do with time as a dimension." "Oh, he was touched on the subject.

He claimed to travel in it.

Fact is, he invented a time-traveling machine." "You certainly meet the wax, Tex." "Don't I?" He grinned appreciatively, and leaned reminiscently over the bar.

That's all I've been doing.

Since I was ten years old, I've been waiting on you." "Oh, the hell with it." He turned on his heel and left the house.

She followed him to the door and shouted after him, "Where are you going now?" "To New Amsterdam for a little peace and quiet," he said testily.

He threw open the thick-walled door of his time machine and pulled it shut behind him.

The hell? All right, let's look up New York City's corporate charter.

The Dongen Charter was granted to the city of New York, formerly New Amsterdam, in 1686 by Thomas Dongen, the English colonial governor of the province of New York.

It formally incorporated New York City as a municipal corporation.

I live in New York City, but I went to school in Harvard.