On February 2, 1625, the Dutch established a fort on Manhattan Island, at the mouth of the Hudson River. Thirty families of Flemish, French and especially Walloon Protestants settled around the fort, sent by the Dutch West India Company (the VOC). The small colony is named New Amsterdam.
Governor Peter Midnight legalizes the occupation by handing over to the nearby Algonkins Indians a few junk pearls worth 60 florins (the equivalent of a few handfuls of dollars). The beginnings are difficult. Wars with the Algonkins, cholera epidemics.
In 1664, four English ships blocked the port and Governor Peter Stuyvesant resolved to cede the colony to the King of England.
New Amsterdam becomes New York, in homage to the Duke of York, future King of England under the name of Jacques II.
The city experienced rapid development thanks to the fur trade with the Great Lakes region. When the War of Independence broke out, it was already the main city in North America with 30,000 inhabitants.
The metropolis had 500,000 inhabitants in 1850 and three million at the end of the 19th century. The invention of the electric elevator spurred the construction of the first skyscrapers, posed without ceremony on the granite of Manhattan.
Immigrants are pouring in from Europe. In total, 16 million pass through Ellis Island, now transformed into a museum.
In 1909, a guide called New York … « Big Apple », nickname that will be popularized by jazz musicians.
Today, New York is the largest metropolis on the planet, large if not by the number of its population (7 million inhabitants), at least by its intellectual effervescence and by its diversity, which makes it a « melting-pot » (creuset) of all humanity.
Posted or updated on: 2020-01-22 13:53:28
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