New Netherland Company

“ Yet no less true is this in the story of Dutch America. The pompous corporation officials have attracted attention, even to caricature or transfiguration, but it was the plain people who made New Netherland. Theirs were the heroic figures, and the best things in the Empire State are inheritances from them. Like most office-holders, the Company’s servants succumbed to the intoxication of authority, but, the people sanely and soberly laid the foundations and reared the enduring structure. ”

“ Besides this, the country of the Company is so taxed, and is burdened and kept down in such a manner, that the inhabitants are not able to appear beside their neighbors of Virginia or New England, or to undertake any enterprise. It seems—and so far as is known by us all the inhabitants of New Netherland declare—that the Managers have scarce any care or regard for New Netherland, except when there is something to receive, for which reason, however, they receive less. ”

“ For which purpose he has always offered to lend a helping hand; but the remonstrants have pursued devious paths and excited some of the commonalty, and by that means obtained a clandestine and secret subscription, as is to be seen by their remonstrance, designed for no other object than to render the Company—their patrons—and the officers in New Netherland odious before Their High Mightinesses, so that the Company might be deprived of the jus patronatus and be still further injured. ”

“ Had the Honorable West India Company, in the beginning, sought population instead of running to great expense for unnecessary things, which under more favorable circumstances might have been suitable and very proper, the account of New Netherland would not have been so large as it now is, caused by building the ship New Netherland at an excessive outlay, (1) by erecting three expensive mills, by brick-making, by tar-burning, by ash-burning, by salt-making and the like operations, which through bad management and calculation have all gone to nought, or come to little ”

“ This desire could not well be gratified in a small country like Holland. Here the earth had to be rescued by pump, spade, and dyke from under the jealous waters, and held only through sleepless vigilance. In America land was plentiful and cheap. It was this coveted prize that was a lure. By securing and owning great manors in New Netherland, plain burghers might become landed proprietors and rank as nobles.
So, with the threefold idea of enlarging their fortunes, becoming patroons, and developing New Netherland, the directors of the Dutch West India Company, in 1630, enlarged their plans. ”

“ Nevertheless, the tendency of the Patroons was ever to exceed rather than to limit their powers. They even went so far as to invade the Company's darling monopoly of the fur trade, by sending agents and setting up trading-stations in new regions. This brought on another storm of bitter complaints. On the Bourse and in the Chambers jealousies were rife. Some one must be made a scapegoat.
In New Netherland Minuit, as a good servant of the corporation which employed him, continued to do his best. He was popular, progressive, and unceasingly active. ”

“ The question is whether the Honorable Company or the Directors are bound to construct any works for the commonalty out of the recognition which the trader pays in New Netherland for goods exported, especially as those duties were allowed to the Company by Their High Mightinesses for the establishment of garrisons, and the expenses which they must thereby incur, and not for the construction of poor-houses, orphan asylums, or even churches and school-houses, for the commonalty. ”

“ Upon the first point of redress, as they call it, the remonstrants advise, that the Company should abandon and transfer the country. What frivolous talk this is! The Company have at their own expense conveyed cattle and many persons thither, built forts, protected many people who were poor and needy emigrating from Holland, and provided them with provisions and clothing; and now when some of them have a little more than they can eat up in a day, they wish to be released from the authority of their benefactors, and without paying if they could ”

“ Faithful to his trust as agent of the Patroon, van Curler sometimes found matters of duty disagreeable. The rules of the Company forbade free trade in “the bush” or open forest, and in carrying out the Patroon’s orders, he came into collision with Adrian van der Donck, the first lawyer in New Netherland. “Every peasant was a trader,” as de Vries had noticed, and the Patroon’s right of monopoly must be maintained and enforced. ”

“ The Founding of New Netherland.--In 1621 the Dutch West India Company was founded. Its first object was trade, but it also was directed "to advance the peopling" of the American lands claimed by the Dutch. Colonists now came over; they settled at New Amsterdam, on the southern end of Manhattan Island, and also on the western end of Long Island. By 1628 there were four hundred colonists in New Netherland. But the colony did not grow rapidly, so the Company tried to interest rich men in the scheme of colonization, by giving them large tracts of land and large powers of government. ”

“ The recognition of eight in a hundred upon exported beaver skins does not come out of the inhabitants, but out of the trader, who is bound to pay it according to contract.
The Director has always shown that he was desirous and pleased to see a deputation from the commonalty, who should seek in the Fatherland from the Company as patrons and the Lords States as sovereigns, the following: population, settlement of boundaries, reduction of charges upon New Netherland tobacco and other productions, means of transporting people, permanent and solid privileges, etc. ”

“ The shiploads of American furs sold in Amsterdam set Dutch money-makers hot on the trail for more. Led by Usselinx, they urged in the State Legislature of Holland that a West India Company be formed. Asia had enriched the Republic. Why should not New Netherland? ”

“ According to my belief, the West India Company could not have found in all the world any other man who would have served so faithfully, both the people and the Company, as did Master Minuit.
The last thing of moment which Director Minuit did, was to have built, so that the merchants of Holland might see what we of New Netherland could do, one of the finest ships, so I have heard it said, that was [Pg 79] ever put together. She was called the New Netherland. She measured eight hundred tons, and carried thirty guns. ”

“ Planting a colony with roots was quieter but nobler work. The contrast between “a river of silver a yard deep” flowing into the Company’s coffers from South America and the West Indies, and the slow returns from the colder climates of North America, in furs, fish, and grain, explains why it was that immigrants were hard to obtain for the new colony, and also why the Company neglected New Netherland, and even allowed official oppression. Yet all the more clearly shines the true story of the Dutch in America, which is not that of official figure-heads, but of the “Commonality.” ”

“ That the inhabitants have had need of the Directors appears by the books of accounts, in which it can be seen that the Company has assisted all the freemen (some few excepted) with clothing, provisions and other things, and in the erection of houses, and this at the rate of fifty per cent. advance above the actual cost in the Fatherland, which is not yet paid. And they would gladly, by means of complaints, drive the Company from the land, and pay nothing.
It is ridiculous to suppose Director Kieft should have said that he was sovereign, like the Prince in the Fatherland ”

“ WE have seen that Dutch colonists for New Netherland were difficult to secure, and that artificial stimulus to emigration was needed. From England good men were driven out by spiritual tyranny, but in Holland conscience was free and the country well off. The ordinary lures — gold, fish, furs, freedom to worship God — which led Spaniards, Frenchmen, some Dutchmen, and many Englishmen beyond sea, did not suffice for the men of the Republic. So "John Company" bit upon a new device, which was nothing less than a reversion to feudalism. ”

“ Stuyvesant laid the blame of this Indian uprising oil a few foolish men, and insisted that the people were too scattered, and that henceforth they should live concentrated in villages.
This Indian calamity, following upon the enormous expense of the South River expedition against the Swedes, helped to seal the fate of New Netherland, which could no longer pay its expenses, while at home the Company was wabbling towards bankruptcy. The Delaware River lands were sold to the city of Amsterdam for seven hundred thousand guilders, or $3,500,000 in present values. ”

“ Whereas the Director and Council of New Netherland have ascertained that there are persons here who seek to enrich themselves with the Company’s property and effects, appropriating the same to themselves as if they were their own substance, and Whereas such tends to the prejudice of the Honble Company, all persons, therefore, who have yet any property in their hands belonging to the Company, be it great or small, are warned the same to return within the space of eight days, unless they have purchased it from the former Honble Directors, without which proof no excuse shall be admitted ”

“ New Netherland had the distinction of being founded and governed by a great slave-trading corporation—the Dutch West India Company—which endeavored to extend the market for its human merchandise whithersoever its influence reached. ”

“ With a craft quite equaling what we have so often seen in our free’ land, the “machine,” consisting of “John Company” and Peter, had so “fixed” it that the Director not only appointed the city officers, but even made ordinances on his own account. Stuyvesant never lacked vigor and conscientious industry, and from 1653 dates an era of progress and prosperity on Manhattan and in New Netherland at large.
Yet the credit of good results in no sense belongs to Stuyvesant, but rather to van der Donck. ”

“ Now there were two distinct classes of people in New Netherland: the peasants who worked the land, and the landowners, called patroons, who had bought vast tracts from the West India Company, and lived on them like European nobles. It was the patroons who brought the peasants over, paying for their passage, and the peasants worked for them until they could repay the amount of their passage money, and then took up small farms on their patroon's estate, paying the rental in crops, as tenants did to the feudal lords of Europe. ”

“ They were the real settlers of New Netherland, "John Company" being merely the figurehead and money-maker. Among these thirty-one families, with children and young men and maidens of marriageable age, the adults in the company, of course, spoke French. Bible-reading and singing of the psalms in Marot's version were part of the daily routine of a Walloon family. The Belgic Confession of Faith, which many of the adults knew by heart, was their foundation creed, as it was of the Dutch National Church, already established for over a half-century. ”

“ The States-General gave some attention to the colony, and by a proclamation in September, 1638, the Amsterdam Chamber threw open New Netherland to trade by all inhabitants of the United Provinces and of friendly nations, "in the company's ships," with an import duty of fifteen per cent., and an export duty of ten per cent. Every immigrant was to receive from the Director and [37] Council "according to his condition and means, with as much land as he and his family can properly cultivate," the company reserving a quit-rent of a tenth. ”

“ Thus have they not only in that Country spoiled the Company’s trade by paying more for Skins and Peltries than the Company, which they could do, being free from all burthens and charges both of freight and crews, and not having to defray the dayly expence of maintaining so many people, fortifications, and other heavy charges which the Company have to bear there, who in consequence either have received only a few Furs or have been forced to a like advance in price, but also in this country brought the Furs and Peltries into disrepute and caused them to be sold at a lower price ”

“ Hendrick Kip is a tailor, and has never suffered any injury in New Netherland to our knowledge.
Jan Evertsen-Bout, formerly an officer of the Company, came the last time in the year 1634, with the ship Eendracht [Union] , in the service of the Honorable Michiel Paauw, and lived in Pavonia until the year 1643, and prospered tolerably. As the Honorable Company purchased the property of the Heer Paauw, the said Jan Evertsen succeeded well in the service of the Company, but as his house and barn at Pavonia were burnt down in the war, he appears to take that as a cause for complaint. ”

“ It is impossible for us to rehearse and to state in detail wherein and how often the Company have acted injuriously to this country. They have not approved of our own country-men settling the land, as is shown in the case of Jacob Walingen and his people at the Fresh River, and quite Recently in the cases at the South River; while foreigners Were permitted to take land there without other opposition than orders and protests. ”