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This chapter examines the kinds of partnerships diaspora Africans made in early 17th-century colonies. It focuses particularly on New Netherland and on Manhattan, which had the largest African community in North America before the 1650s. Using a close analysis of evidence from two criminal court cases, the chapter argues that Africans in New Amsterdam formed their own alliances and used them to challenge and sometimes to shape the power of Dutch colonial officials and institutions of authority.

Visscher’s famous map of New Netherland with profile view of New Amsterdam, and the reprint of it in a small book of Adriaen van der Donck’s Description of New Netherland show how the WIC wanted New Amsterdam to be seen in the defining years of the city’s growth. In these maps the profile significantly contributed to the marketing of New Amsterdam as comparable to Amsterdam, with similar legal and commercial rights and privileges. These views, which continued into the eighteenth century after New Amsterdam became New York, presented the city as a civilized settlement and significant trade center. This chapter sheds light on the context of these printed maps within the scope of the WIC’s negotiations with colonists in the years leading up to New Amsterdam’s city charter and Amsterdam publishers’ desire to profit from these events. The role of visual media and how colonists at New Amsterdam and WIC directors used the European city as a model to negotiate for their respective roles is discussed.

This chapter considers the experiences of Africans in New Amsterdam, many of whom began their lives in the colony as property of the West India Company (WIC). On February 25, 1644, the long-serving slaves of the WIC along with their wives were granted their freedom. However, this freedom was not absolute; these men were required to earn their livelihood by agriculture and were bound to pay an annual tax or face a return to slavery. Thus, these men and their wives were granted what has become known as “half freedom,” a remarkable if conditional success in the history of African resistance to the growing slave system in colonial North America. The lives of these Africans show how intimate networks provided the framework both for survival and for the creation of social hierarchy.

In this essay, we chart the changing definitions of race and racism and examine the lives of enslaved Africans in the 17th-century Dutch colony of New Netherland. To uncover little known details of the agency and social and ritual bonds of these Africans in early colonial America, we revisit an unusual coeval archaeological feature discovered in lower Manhattan to determine if it has roots in ritual practices of African, Dutch or Native peoples. After exploring 17^th-century historical, ethnographic and archaeological evidence from three continents, we conclude there is a strong likelihood that the feature is the material record, possibly the earliest we have in North America, of the action that an African took, perhaps to seek advice or protection, by revitalizing remembered traditional African rituals. We hope this case study contributes to the ongoing discussion of race and the experiences of Africans not only in the Northeast but in the larger Atlantic World during the early colonial period.

Lydia Maria Child's “Joanna,” featured in 1834 in the Boston anti-slavery collection The Oasis, was an early proof of abolitionist storytelling, and it has been regarded as the female-written origin of miscegenation literature in the United States. The story may have discussed the issues that were to remain in the foreground of aesthetic representation for a long time, yet it was hardly an original story, and its references had little to do with women's antislavery literature of the United States, as it was lifted from the account of a British mercenary's expedition to the colony that the Dutch had received in return for letting New Amsterdam become New York. For the objectives of thematic investigation, this relation asks the question of “versions” and “subversions” of precursor texts.

This chapter provides a broad overview of the geographical, social, and cultural conditions in New York that gave rise to its prominence as the major colonial Atlantic hub in the Indo-Atlantic trade network. Most of the family patriarchs and matriarchs were born in Dutch, English, or French regions of Europe, eventually migrating to the colonies under a variety of circumstances. Many prominent New York merchant families, such as the Philipses, DeLanceys, and Van Cortlandts, built their fortunes on the Indo-Atlantic trade, leaving their heirs both material wealth and, perhaps more importantly, a tradition of flouting imperial authority that reemerged during the Revolution. Most intriguing, perhaps, is the trove of letters and legal documents that crisscrossed the Indo-Atlantic world, linking pirates in Madagascar with their wives, sisters, and brothers in New York. By risking heavily in this global trade network, Frederick Philipse, a former carpenter of the Dutch West India Company, became the wealthiest man in the colony. Unable to acquire East India goods from London, New Yorkers, led by Philipse and others, turned to direct contraband trade with Indo-Atlantic pirates to satisfy their demand for rich silks and cotton textiles, as well as jewels and drugs.

New York and The Netherlands are two locations where genuine planning for sea-level rise is going on. Holland leads the world in preparation for sea-level rise, partly because it has no choice. The entire country is on a low-lying delta highly vulnerable to sea level change. In all construction projects in the country, sea-level rise is considered. New York is not nearly so far along, but Hurricane Sandy was a huge lesson and for the first time in the U.S. history of hurricane response, much debate occurred concerning the future response, and some major steps such as purchasing of some destroyed or highly threatened property occurred. In New York, it was recognized that Hurricane Sandy will occur again, with or without sea-level rise, and that low-elevation buildings must be prepared, e.g., moving of generators from the basement to the 10th floor.

Before the skyline could be built, New York had to create its land and the land market: hills had to be flattened, marshes drained, land distributed, subdivided, and prices assigned. The skyline emerges based on Manhattan’s early history of land formation. This chapter recounts the creation of New Amsterdam and the earliest real estate decisions. Next, the chapter discusses the 1686 Dongan Charter and the sale of water lots, which led to the expansion of the island. The chapter also discusses the emergence of the land market and land prices in colonial New York. Following that is the history of land subdivisions and the rise of the 25 x 100 square foot lot size during the Dutch period. The chapter then discusses the creation of the Grid Plan of 1811, and how it impacted Manhattan’s real estate and its land values.

Critics complain that Ziegfeld has begun to imitate himself in his shows, and this chapter tells how he pulls the Follies out of their rut. He joins the rooftop entertainment craze by transforming the New Amsterdam roof into a top-notch venue for an offshoot of the Follies, the Midnight Frolic. Ziegfeld employs Viennese designer and architect Joseph Urban to design the rooftop, beginning a long association; he hires Lucile Duff Gordon to design the costumes. Ziegfeld enlivens the Follies when he hires cowboy philosopher Will Rogers to perform his lariat act. The first bump in the Ziegfelds’ marriage occurs when Burke learns of Ziegfeld’s infatuation with a new showgirl, Olive Thomas. But Burke becomes his sole focus when he learns he is about to be a father. Ziegfeld plans his next two shows—the Ziegfeld Follies of 1916 and his first non-Follies musical since his union with Held, The Century Girl—to be celebrations of his child.

This chapter focuses on the descendants of the Algonquian peoples who once inhabited the region of New York Harbor. The descendants have recalled that the first Dutch colonists asked for as much land as the hide of a bullock could cover, then claimed as much land as that hide, cut into strips, could encircle. The author believes, however, that this fantastical story preserves the memory of an actual event. Moreover, the story threads the history of the founding of New Amsterdam together with those of other, far-flung maritime colonial outposts, and offers a window onto the cultural history of early modern European imperialism. This episode with the bullock's hide is the culmination of a longer historical tradition about “The Arrival of the Whites.” The first written version of this tradition is in an 1801 letter from the Moravian missionary John Heckewelder to the historian Samuel Miller.

This chapter examines the Dutch mercantile colony located on Manhattan Island and in the Hudson Valley up to Albany, English settlements on Long Island, and a small initially Swedish colony along the lower Delaware River. Its main focus is on the legal system created by the Dutch. It was a sophisticated, centralized, civil law system that reposed ultimate decisional power in the hands of a director-general directing the government from Manhattan Island and in the hands of his superiors in the Netherlands. The English settlements on Long Island, on the other hand, copied the localized power structures of New England, although the Long Islanders operated more informally and less learnedly. Dispute resolution in the tiny colony along the Delaware was unlearned and totally informal.

The 1912–1913 theater season marks a new chapter in Ziegfeld’s life, both professionally and personally. First, the Follies move to their permanent home at the prestigious New Amsterdam Theatre. The shows are becoming increasingly modern, showcasing the latest dance trends and even setting some of them. Ziegfeld’s personal life reaches its lowest ebb when he becomes embroiled in two fights with Lorraine’s other beaux. Lorraine leaves Ziegfeld’s employ, and their relationship is never again a romantic one. The upturn in Ziegfeld’s personal life occurs when he meets Broadway star Billie Burke. Drawing from Burke’s memoirs, newspaper articles, and daughter Patricia Ziegfeld’s memoir, the chapter details Burke’s history, her rise from London music halls to the Broadway stage, and her immediate infatuation with Ziegfeld. Ziegfeld sees Billie as his new ideal: a girl who combines modernity with old-fashioned charm. This is precisely the combination Ziegfeld wants to use in his shows, and Burke inspires him to continue honing his Follies.

This chapter describes Regina's active retirement years and examines her legacy. Regina lived for nearly a decade as a widow until February 5, 1993, when she died at the age of ninety-one in the Bethel Nursing Home. Regina's death was reported in the New York Amsterdam News—the newspaper that had covered her social engagements, creative pursuits, wedding, and professional accomplishments. Regina's last will was a testimony to her strong commitment to various organizations. Regina left several thousand dollars to various organizations located in New York City, including two thousand dollars to the National Urban League and an equal amount to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People; one thousand dollars to National Council of Women of the United States, two thousand dollars to the American Council for Nationalities Services, and one thousand to the Washington Heights Branch of the New York Public Library.

Lynn Simonson is a seminal dance artist whose work has profoundly affected both the artistry and pedagogy of jazz dance around the world. After spending her early career as a performer, she went on to develop and disseminate a somatically sound technique class long before it was popular to do so. The Simonson Technique, driven by its connection to both historically significant and contemporary jazz music, enables students to move without fear. Students in a Simonson Technique Class receive instruction based on the possibilities and limitations of their individual bodies. Simonson offers a 46-hour Simonson Technique teacher training intensive at Dance New Amsterdam in New York City, and has trained hundreds of certified teachers in 20 countries around the world. She is a conduit through which countless dancers and teachers have been inspired to pursue, preserve, and advocate jazz as a legitimate concert dance form.

The focus on the role of pirates in this trade network provides an important counterbalance to both scholarly and popular portrayals of pirates. The first chapter examines pirates and piracy in the longue durée, arguing that piracy is best understood along a fluid spectrum rather than as a static category. Individuals legally defined as a pirate might commit a single act of piracy or spend their entire lives pillaging on the high seas, with others falling somewhere in between. Piracy was merely one of many alternate maritime vocations undertaken by similarly situated groups in patterns that depended on local, regional, and global circumstances. The chapter also develops an analytical framework termed “the piracy/slave trade nexus.” This first chapter concludes with a case study of a pirate-slave ship, the Margaret, to demonstrate the significance of the pirate/slave trade nexus for the colonial New York economy. Examining the passengers, crew, cargo, correspondence, and other relevant documents of the Margaret unveils a fascinating social and cultural world of the Indo-Atlantic pirate trade network. This case study provides detailed evidence that pirates were not rogues and outcasts; they maintained familial and economic connections within the established and traditional colonial hierarchies.

This chapter examines how the economic transformation of America changed multiple aspects of native lifestyle and facilitated the transmission of infectious disease. Deer became a prime source of revenue, as did other fur-bearing animals. Smallpox, measles, and influenza are used as examples of those early colonial diseases. It was in the climate of commercial enterprise that the French, Dutch, and British all competed to establish relationships with native trading partners and build permanent colonial outposts. The northern territories where New France was established were only sparsely peppered with French, mostly traders. Despite their ambitions for success, in 1627 New France still had only 85 colonists, all men and all at Quebec. The Dutch realized that they also needed to protect their trade partnerships and established New Amsterdam (modern New York) at the mouth of the Hudson in 1625. At the same time, they extended their merchant efforts to agriculture in adjacent areas on Long Island into the present-day New Jersey. The mid-Atlantic remained open for English colonization.

The right culture, institutions, and policies all can encourage innovative dynamism. Heroes inspire cultural values of courage, perseverance, hard work, and tolerance. Religion enables innovative dynamism when it reduces violence and encourages respect for property. Religion constrains innovative dynamism when it limits questioning, as often occurs in hierarchical religions that emphasize faith. The Founding Fathers owed more to the tolerance of the Dutch of New Amsterdam, and to the trial-and-error experimentation of Galilean science, than they did to the religious fervor of the Pilgrims. Innovative dynamism often flourishes where institutions such as the rule of law, property rights, and the city enable diversity, collaboration, and a robustly redundant labor market. North and South Korea shared a culture, but through different institutions and policies, have diverged in innovation. Because policies matter, and we know best how to change them, policy reforms should be the focus of efforts to enhance innovative dynamism.