Hills, forests, rivers, swamps and wild animals such as bears, wolves, frogs and hawks: scientists believe that the island of Manhattan once had greater ecological diversity than the famous Yellowstone National Park in the western United States. The Algonquin natives called it “Manahatta”, the island of many hills.
In the 16th and early 17th centuries, European sailors such as Giovanni da Verrazzano and Henry Hudson first discovered and explored the area around the island on the east coast of what is now the USA. Shortly afterwards, the first trade began, eventually with a monopoly by a Dutch company. Colonization began in 1624 when the first immigrants from what are now the Netherlands, Belgium and France settled on the island. In 2024, New York will celebrate its 400th birthday – has expanded its urban area to include two additional islands and the American mainland and has become an important global metropolis with around eight million inhabitants.
However, according to scientists like Russell Shorto, head of the “New Amsterdam Project” at the New York Historical Society, the first years of colonization continue to shape the metropolis to this day. “The Dutch brought capitalism in its early form and a groundbreaking policy of tolerance, thereby laying the foundation for the most dynamic metropolis in the world,” says the “New Amsterdam Project”, named after the city’s first name, New Amsterdam. “They also brought slavery with them and in other ways failed to live up to their ideals. These ideals and failures eventually became our own.”
The immigrants initially all settled at the very southern tip of Manhattan, where the financial center is today and where there are plaques indicating the early days and a few stone remains. Among the immigrants: Catalina Trico and her husband Joris Rapalje from what is now Belgium, who had eleven children in New Amsterdam. “To me they are Adam and Eve of New Amsterdam,” says Shorto. “Their descendants now number in the millions.” Shorto also works with the New Netherland Project in Albany, New York State’s capital, where thousands of founding-era documents are stored, translated and studied.
Allegedly, New Amsterdam co-founder Peter Minuit bought the island of Manhattan from the natives in 1626, according to legend for pearls and other small items of comparatively little value. But the concept of land ownership probably didn’t exist among the natives at the time and the Dutch were aware of that, scientists argue today. In 1653 New Amsterdam received city rights.
The relationship between the newcomers from Europe and the natives was characterized from the beginning by trade, by some efforts for mutual understanding – but ultimately, above all, by brutal repression by the Europeans, by some resistance from the natives and by fear, writes Russo in his Book “The Island at the Center of the World”. To protect against raids, the Europeans built a protective wall that would later become the famous Wall Street. The former native trade route through Manhattan later became the famous Broadway.
Not the government of the Netherlands, but a Dutch trading company monitored New Amsterdam at the beginning and so the early years were characterized by “tolerance, free trade and water”, as the “New Amsterdam Project” says. And to this day, the metropolis is characterized by its port location on the Atlantic, is considered one of the centers of world trade and a “sanctuary city” in which – at least on paper, but to a large extent also in practice – people of all origins, religions and identity can live securely and feel good.
In 1664, New Amsterdam passed to the English and became New York, but remained controversial for a while until the United States finally became independent in 1774. In the early years of the USA, New York was even the capital for a short time; the first president, George Washington, was sworn in at the southern tip of Manhattan – but major politics were then made elsewhere; New York remained the capital of trade and tolerance. “We can trace our ideals of tolerance and individual freedom,” Shorto says. “They made us who we are and they give us hope for the future. But they also came coupled with their opposites and we are struggling to untangle the threads.”
(By Christina Horsten/dpa)
2023-12-26 10:15:06
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