Index of included texts:
The Quest of the Half Moon
Hudson in North America
America's Dutch Heritage
New Netherland's Influence
The Legacy of Peter Stuyvesant
Blueprint for the Bill of Rights
Articles of Capitulation

Henry Hudson's 1609 Voyage

The original Half Moon (Halve Maen) was commissioned on March 25, 1609, for the Dutch East India Company. She was a ship of exploration and the spaceship of her age, designed to take a crew of twenty into unknown and uncharted waters.

Flag of the Dutch East India Company

Her captain, Henry Hudson, was already a famous explorer of Arctic waters when in 1608 he was hired by the Dutch East India Company to find a Northeast, all-water route to Asia. but only a month out of port, the Dutch/English crew of his ship was disheartened after their passage north of Norway was blocked by Arctic ice floes. Many talked of mutiny.

Sitting in his cabin, the concerned captain considered his dilemma and options. A compromise was made. The course was changed and what began as a search for a Northeast passage became a transatlantic crossing to look for a Northwest passage to the rich spice. trade of China. Of course, some think that Hudson's intention all along was to go Northwest.

Hudson in North America

After reaching the Maine coast and replacing a foremast lost in rough storms during her Atlantic crossing. the Half Moon sailed southward as far as the present day North Carolina Outer Banks. Then, turning northward, Hudson explored the Delaware Bay before arriving at the mouth of a wide river. Could this be a passage to the Pacific Ocean?

Jan Vinckeboons(attr.). "Manatvs Gelegen op de Noot [sic] Rivier." 1639. Manuscript, pen and ink and watercolor. Drawn for Dutch West India Company. The original of this earliest known survey of Manhattan Island is lost, but two known contemporary manuscript copies, drawn approximately thirty years later, exist. Colonial Dutch boweries, or farms, are located and keyed to names of their owners in the legend, thus establishing many present-day land titles.

It would be many years before the significance of Hudson s 1609 voyage to America would be understood, and the Half Moon universally recognized as one of the best known ships of exploration.

America's Dutch Heritage

Hudson's voyage had important consequences. In making this historic journey, Hudson claimed the region for the Dutch and opened the land for the settlers who followed. Hudson s voyage, nearly ten years before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock, led to the establishment, in 1614, of the Dutch trading post, Fort Nassau, at present day Albany, New York. The first European settlements in the States of Connecticut, Delaware, New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania were built by the Dutch beginning in 1624 and formed the Dutch colony of New Netherland, or Nieuw Nederlandt.

Fort New Amsterdam in 1626 – 28, earliest known view of New Amsterdam; Amsterdam, 1651.

By the end of the 17th century, all of New Netherland had become the possession of the British crown. Yet the maps of the region still reflect the original Dutch settlements. Brooklyn, Hoboken, Block Island and hundreds more places take their names from the first Dutch colonists. These names hint at the early Dutch role in establishing our nation, an involvement that continued through to the American Revolution.

New Netherland's Influence

The 1664 British capture of New Amsterdam and New Netherland in peacetime was one of the sparks that ignited the second Anglo-Dutch war. The English would pay dearly for their 1664 incursion, but the return of New Netherland to Dutch control was not among the conflict's peace terms as decided in Breda in 1667. The New Netherlanders would have to wait another five years for a brief reunion with their former mother country.

The second Anglo-Dutch war ended with the Peace of Breda in July 1667. The Netherlands had placed a stranglehold upon England, nearly bankrupting King Charles II, and finally sending a fleet up the Thames, through the Medway and on to Chatham, laying waste to shoreline warehouses on the Thames and the Chatham Naval Yard, and sending London into a panic. The ensuing blockade drew London's commerce to a standstill for the first half of the summer of 1667, virtually drying up Charles II's revenue. The subsequent Peace of Breda released Holland's grip on British commerce, gave the Dutch Suriname on coastal South America and some other concessions, but did not return New Netherland. The follow-on "Triple Alliance" of 1668, between England, Sweden and Holland, supposedly reaffirmed cooperation between these three Protestant states.

Charles II's humiliation was so thorough, however, that within two years he entered into a secret alliance with France's Louis XIV to once and for all, crush the Dutch Republic. Over 100,000 French soldiers invaded The Netherlands and rapidly captured a succession of cities and provinces, all the way up to, and including, Utrecht. A joint English French seaborne invasion fleet, however, was stymied at sea by Dutch naval fleets, and never affected the activity on land. What was worse for England, was that Charles II' was about to see his revenue sources dry up suddenly and this would directly affect the outcome of the new war.

After the disastrous (in the eyes of the British) end of the second Anglo-Dutch war, the merchant community (whose warehouses had been destroyed) could not nearly provide sufficient tax support to the British crown. Charles II's remaining revenue depended first on the Virginia tobacco trade, second, upon taxes and duties from the New World, and thirdly from revenue derived from the Newfoundland fisheries. The Dutch would swiftly move to end all three.

In July of 1673 a combined Dutch fleet under Cornelius Evertsen and Jacob Benckes captured almost half of the annual Virginia tobacco fleet, and sank or scuttled half of the remainder. They then sailed north and quickly recaptured New Netherland, and proceeded to lay waste to the coastal fishing towns in Newfoundland. For additional detail see "The Legacy of Peter Stuyvesant". All British ships in the former New York (now renamed New Orange) were captured. British merchantmen that could escape Boston, quickly did so, as rumors of an incredibly large Dutch fleet spread throughout New England. The Newfoundland fishing grounds were effectively shut down, while trade and commercial activity ceased. Most importantly, Charles II's revenue stream ground to a halt. From the perspective of the British crown, the whole of North America was threatened.

Charles II couldn't release the fleets guarding the Thames for fear of a repeat performance of 1667, and the Dutch, in fact, tried to capture Sheerness at the mouth of the Thames again in 1672, but this time its defenses had been improved. The few reports that were received from the New World probably exaggerated the scope of the disaster, but New Netherland was again firmly in Dutch hands, and the reality of revenue loss was certain. When the first ship sent to inform the Dutch back at home was inadvertently intercepted and captured by the English, Charles realized the extent of the losses and more importantly, could take advantage of a window of opportunity to conclude a peace with the Netherlands before the full impact of their victory in the New World could be realized by the Dutch negotiators.

The French, poised on the outskirts of Amsterdam, had been temporarily halted by the defenders breaking open the dikes and flooding the fields through which the armies had to cross. When the Treaty of Westminster was signed in 1674, English support of the French disappeared and France advanced no further, eventually withdrawing. Thus The Netherlands and the House of Orange were saved, but the New Netherland settlement again reverted to British control.

Fourteen years later, when William of Orange triumphantly accepted the British throne in the aftermath of the Glorious Revolution, Dutchmen again assumed control of New Netherland, this time under Protestant Jacob Leisler. William of Orange, however, interested in securing peace and cooperation among the English, allowed control of New Netherland to revert to their corrupt former governor, and in 1691, Leisler's rebellion, or King William's war, ended with the English again in authority over the region.

Having changed hands five times within a quarter century, the region's inhabitants were poised for the sixth change of control for the next two or three generations. This stimulated the former Dutch and English inhabitants to treat each other with enhanced respect, civility, and cooperation, greatly extending the length of Dutch influence in the New York area. Families such as the van Rensselaers, having survived the five transitions intact, wielded unusual influence well into the next two centuries.

The Dutch love for tolerance, free enterprise, free trade, and freedom of religion soon became entwined into the Colonial psyche that set the foundation for the American spirit of 1776. The "Apology" of William the Silent of Orange to Philip of Spain in 1581 blueprinted the Declaration of Independence that followed almost two hundred years later, and the Dutch Republic that William headed was the only model available for the American patriots to follow. Thus its preservation in the latter half of the 1600s would keep the model intact for Franklin, Paine, Jefferson Adams, and Washington's benefit.

Some provisions of the surrender documents of Peter Stuyvesant in 1664 (e.g. prohibiting the quartering of soldiers in civilian homes) even found their way into the Constitution of the United States over 100 years later. What began with Henry Hudson's Halve Maen in 1609 ended up fully integrating into and inordinately influencing the future United States of America, while simultaneously contributing to the preservation of the House of Orange-Nassau and the Kingdom of The Netherlands.

Blueprint for the Bill of Rights

The British frigate Guinea along with three other warships entered the lower Hudson river in late August, 1664, and demanded that Peter Stuyvesant's surrender New Netherland. The unprovoked, peacetime attack on New Amsterdam by Colonel Richard Nicolls, acting under orders from James, Duke of York, placed the English in control over New Netherland. Colonel Nicolls was a polished, able officer, who spoke Dutch well and was charged to treat the inhabitants "with all humility and gentleness," with the objective of securing a peaceful conquest without unnecessary bloodshed.

Stuyvesant at one point said that he "...would much rather be carried out dead," but the townspeople pieced together the surrender terms that he had torn to bits, and along with the clergy, prevailed upon him to accept English occupation. (See The Legacy of Peter stuyvesant for more detail on the capture (and later re-capture) of New Netherland).

Colonel Nicolls, cognizant of his precarious legal position (peacetime attacks were considered nothing less than pure piracy) made the situation more palatable by allowing the garrison to march out of the fort, matches lit, and "with their arms, drums beating, and colors flying." In addition Nicolls said that his capture was "subject to negotiations with the home governments." But what placated most, were the surrender terms themselves.

The Articles of Capitulation on the Reduction of New Netherland were filled with extraordinary generosity for their time. They had the (un)intended objective of securing a list of conditions that conferred rights upon the populace unheard of in those times. The irony, from a historical standpoint, is that the Dutch (and ex-Dutch) now would enjoy greater rights under the English Crown than those of any of the other colonial settlements, and many of these privileges, in one form or another, would last through the twentieth century!!!

The following year, Colonel Nicolls expanded upon these articles and promulgated a code of civil and criminal law called the "Dukes Laws," which added the right of jury trials and required two or more witnesses or confession of the accused, before the death penalty could be imposed.

When the Dutch recaptured New Netherland in July, 1673, and renamed it New Orange, the same rights were reiterated and upheld. After the Treaty of Westminster returned the settlement to England in November of 1674, the new governor, Edmund Andros, guaranteed that the residents of New Netherland again would have "...the same right, privilege and freedom which the said residents enjoyed before the ... war." In addition, the departing Dutch governor, Anthony Colve, got Andros to agree to eleven further articles, reasserting religious freedom and freedom from impressment, and assorted property rights for the inhabitants.

In 1683, New York representative assembly recodified the surrender documents and additions over the years into the "Charter of Libertyes and Priveleges." where for the first time the phrase "by due Course of Law" appeared. The Charter, signed by the Duke of York, was abrogated when the Duke became king as James II. But Jacob Leisler effectively reinstated them during Leisler's Rebellion or King William's War (1689-1691) as the colonial reaction to the Glorious Revolution was called. New Netherland basically had changed hands again for three years, and fell under Leisler and his Protestant rule, awaiting the triumphant blessing of William III of Orange, the Dutch Stadholder who succeeded to the English throne.

William's blessing never came, as Andros, who had fled to Britain, petitioned the new monarch to assist in an orderly return of New York/New Netherland to the crown. William did just that, not knowing that "King William's war" had been fought against the corrupt Andros, and for the Protestant William. Andros accepted the Charter's reinstatement, as did his replacement, Governor Benjamin Fletcher. King William, however, declared the laws invalid in 1697, but Fletcher's replacement, the Earl of Bellomont in 1698 brought the former supporters of Leisler back into power, and with them came adherence to the same rights and freedoms again.

In the next century, when the American Revolution's success prompted adoption of a new Constitution, it was the New York delegation, under their able, yet anti-federalist governor George Clinton, that insisted on passage of the first ten amendments, the Bill of Rights, before they would grudgingly agree to ratify the new constitution. Having spent the last century living under laws directly descended from the Stuyvesant surrender terms, the New York representatives would not tolerate anything less than the freedoms that we, today, have taken for granted.