The Remarkable Story of How the English Captured Nieuw-Amsterdam

Russell Shorto is the author of The Island at the Center of the World (2005), a history of the Dutch colony of Nieuw-Amsterdam and its importance in global commerce during the mid-Seventeenth Century. He now gives us a marvelously detailed and often amusing book about the remarkably neglected subject of how that bustling town of about 1,500 people, who spoke 18 European languages, plus several Indigenous and African ones, became New York in 1664, and how that event shaped the future growth of the city, and ultimately of the United States.

Shorto offers a global perspective, looking at how geography and climate shaped the events, and the how events were influenced by the actions of the Native Americans, the Dutch Republic, the Reformation, the rise of capitalism, the English Civil Wars and the Restoration, the Atlantic Slave trade, Puritan separatism, and more. Shorto often shows these have echoed down the ages to give us New York City as a – perhaps the ultimate – global powerhouse.

It’s a story with a great cast, a few famous, such as Peter Sturvesant, the Cromwells, the kings of England, but most not, even some who ought to be far better known, notably Richard Nicolls, an English gentleman and soldier-of-fortune, who not only captured the town, but also served four years as its first English governor. Aside from these “famous” people, Shorto follows in some depth the lives of four “ordinary” folks who lived in the city; an Indigenous woman from Long Island, a woman from what is now Belgium, an African woman who arrived enslaved, and a Jewish man who hailed from what is now Lithuania, all of whom experienced various degrees of hardship, but all attained a some measure of prosperity, even leaving descendants to the present. Many other people are touched on briefly, often with mention of later quite famous descendants, some of whom may have preferred not to know about their long-ago ancestor.

Perhaps most important to the point of the book, is that the transition of Dutch Nieuw-Amsterdam into English New York was by a negotiated arrangement. When it became clear the town could not be defended, Peter Stuyvesant and Richard Nicolls forged a lengthy agreement that laid the foundation for the future growth of the town, protecting the religious and ethnic diversity that had flourished under Dutch tolerance, providing for legal equality between Dutch, English, and other residents, permitting continued immigration, and maintaining a degree of local self-government, in effect merging Dutch and English traditions, providing the basis for the future growth of the city.

Taking Manhattan is an outstand book about a critical, yet largely overlooked event in American history.

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