Charles River Editors - Colonial New York City: The History of the City under British Control before the American Revolution

By Charles River Editors

A drawing of New York City in the 1770s

Charles River Editors is a boutique digital publishing company, specializing in bringing history back to life with educational and engaging books on a wide range of topics. Keep up to date with our new and free offerings with this 5 second sign up on our weekly mailing list , and visit Our Kindle Author Page to see other recently published Kindle titles.

We make these books for you and always want to know our readers opinions, so we encourage you to leave reviews and look forward to publishing new and exciting titles each week.

A contemporary map of New York during the Revolution

New York City

One belongs to New York instantly; one belongs to it as much in five minutes as in five years. Tom Wolfe

New York City. The Big Apple. The city of dreams. The city so nice they named it twice. These are just some of the monikers given to not only the most highly populated city in North America, but perhaps the most culturally diverse region in all the world. Modern age New York is stamped on the map for its breathtaking skylines and iconic financial centers, as well as being the quintessential melting pot, where people go to make it big and take a chance on long-awaited dreams. What is less known is the rich tapestry of history behind this one-of-a-kind city. It is one that tells the story of invigorating hope, new discoveries, and broadening horizons, shaped by power wrangles and blood-shedding all for the sake of conquest.

In fact, Manhattan has long been part of a bustling community, even before it formed the backbone of New York City. Centuries before New York City became a shining city of steel that enthralled millions of immigrants, Lenni-Lenape Indians, an Algonquin-speaking tribe whose name means the People, lived in what would become New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. They had lived there for at least 1,500 years and were mainly hunters and gatherers who would use well-worn paths that would one day bear the names of Flatbush Avenue, Kings Highway, and Broadway. Indeed, the legendary street now known as Broadway was once named the Wickquasgeck Trail, a route that stretched 15-mi across fresh greenery and marshlands. This trail, one of the first thoroughfares between the North and South, was throbbing with trade and financial promise. Merchants from faraway European lands crossed the high seas and frequented the Wickquasgeck to barter with the Lenapes. The Lenapes lived by the code of the Three Sisters agricultural methods, their farmers, hunters, and fishermen the heart of their community. The multiplying clans flourished, and the harmony of the trail would remain unperturbed until the 16th century.

The first known European sightings of the island and its inhabitants were made by the Italian explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano in 1524. Verrazzano described the sightly view: [The harbor] is a very agreeable place between two small but prominent hills; between them a very wide river, deep at its mouth, flowed out into the sea... He characterized the Lenapes he came across: The people were almost the same as others, dressed in birds' feathers of various colors... Unfortunately, when the brooding skies began to loom over them, the crew had no choice but to scurry back into the ship, leaving the land with much regret on account of its favorable conditions and beauty.

After the Englishman Henry Hudson, under the aegis of the Dutch East India Company, sailed by Manhattan in 1609, he returned home with good news and bad news. Like the other explorers before him, he hadnt been able to find a water route to the Orient. He had, however, returned with maps (confiscated by the British) and beaver pelts. With that, it became clear that the region around the bay that would take Hudsons name was a very promising new territory for trade and settlement, which would become a serious bone of contention between the Dutch and the British for the rest of the century.

In 1614, another East India merchant, Adriaen Block, entered through the narrows of the East River between Queens and Randalls Island, a difficult and dangerous passage that later sank numerous ships and that Block named Hells Gate (Hellegat). The European world would know the name Manhates when Block returned to the Netherlands with new and improved maps.

After that further exploration, the Dutch returned to build settlements on the southern tip of Manhattan and elsewhere, and by 1626 trade was brisk both between the Native Americans and the European settlers and between the settlers and their mother countries. In the 1620s, the Dutch established their first permanent base at Fort Orange, a city now known as Albany, and the Dutch dispatched vessels housing 30 families to Nutten Island and re-branded the settlement as New Amsterdam. All in all, 110 men, women, and young children of the Belgian Huguenots a French Protestant sect settled in their new sanctuary. This would be the breeding ground for the Dutch's new experiment. They aimed to create a city of religious tolerance, where people from all backgrounds could seek refuge and live alongside one another in peace. More so, the Dutch were in the business of making money, a mission that still rings true of the state in this day and age.

1626 was the year that the famous purchase of Manhattan took place, a transaction for which no record has survived. Peter Minuit, the Director-General of New Amsterdam, paid out sixty guilders worth of trade goods like cloth, kettles, tools, and wampuman amount thats come down in history as being worth $24. While that sounds perversely low today, accountant types like to speculate with this amount, if the Lenni-Lenapes had invested it at a 10% interest rate over the centuries, it would today be worth $117 quadrillionenough to buy present-day Manhattan many, many times over.

Many such purchases took place, but because Native Americans and Europeans had very different concepts of what it meant to own or sell land, misunderstandingsand violencewould frequently break out on both sides. Minor (and often unsubstantiated) thefts of property could ignite the colonists wrath, resulting in such bloody skirmishes as the Pig War (1640) and the Peach Tree War (1655), named for the items allegedly stolen.

When the West India Company, which presided over Dutch trade in the Americas, was created in 1621, the little settlement at the tip of Manhattan began to both grow and falter. When Willem Kieft arrived as director in 1638, it was already a sort of den of iniquity, full of mischief and perversity, where residents were given over to smoking and drinking grog and beer. Under Kiefts reign, more land was acquired mostly through bloody, all-but-exterminating wars with the Native American population, whose numbers also dwindled at the hands of European-borne diseases.

In 1652, England and the Netherlands were at war, but heavy losses on both sides hurried the prospect of peace. Nevertheless, the two countries representatives in the New World were increasingly hostile toward each other, even though they were an ocean away from the main belligerents. The Puritans of New England were said to be intent on attacking Manhattan, so preparations were made in New Amsterdam. A wall would be erected at New Amsterdams northern border, at a cost of 5,000 guilders, with the labor being cheaply supplied by slaves. Made of 15 foot planks, bastions, cannons, and two gates (one at the corner of present-day Wall and Pearl, the other at Wall and Broadway) the location of the wall would become not a barrier to invasion but the center of the financial world.