[This article appeared in the program of the Peter Stuyvesant Ball in 1995]

When New Amsterdam was beset by four English warships in 1664, Governor Peter Stuyvesant was reluctant to capitulate. The usual practice in those times was pillage and depredation by the victors, and Stuyvesant, at first, vowed to resist. He even tore up the original papers, some say without reading them, but the burghers pieced them back together and prevailed upon him to surrender.

Governor Peter Stuyvesant

Why such generosity? Maybe because the English attacked in peacetime (the first Anglo-Dutch war ended ten years earlier), or possibly because the English had but 300 soldiers to pit against thousands of Dutch burghers, or most likely because the Duke of York wanted to keep the colony intact, retaining its value to the British Crown. In any event, if Peter Stuyvesant surrendered, the settlers would be treated with exceptional benevolence.

The surrender terms Stuyvesant accepted served the English well, for nine years later, during the third Anglo-Dutch war, two future Dutch Admirals would turn things around. Commander Cornelis Evertsen, a renowned Zeelander known to the English as Kiss the Devil (Kees de Duivel), combined his fleet with one out of Amsterdam under Captain Jacob Benckes. Together they raided English and French Caribbean ports and captured or destroyed most of the Virginia tobacco fleet in the Chesapeake. By the time they anchored off Sandy Hook, their warships and captured armed merchantmen numbered 21 ships, by far the largest fleet ever assembled in North American waters in the 1600s.

English capitulation was swift. After cannon shots were exchanged, a 600 man landing party, augmented by at least as many armed townspeople, marched up to the fort, and New York was renamed "New Orange." Albany surrendered within two weeks, after a Dutch warship, the "Zeehond" (Seal, or Sea Dog), sailed upriver to add some persuasion. The same surrender terms that Stuyvesant agreed to were imposed again, but this time upon the English. Most important, life, liberty, and property, were again respected, and Dutch civil authority restored.

When the treaty of Westminster's terms took effect 15 months later, and New Orange became New York for the second time, Peter Stuyvesant's example was followed again, and the transfer was orderly and without incident. And in 1689, in the wake of the Glorious Revolution, when Jacob Leisler took control of New Netherland on (so he believed) behalf of William of Orange, life liberty, and property were again respected. Two years later , English authority was restored for the last time, and with the exception of Leisler, under the same conditions.

Five times in 27 years the New Netherland region changed hands, and each time the legacy of Peter Stuyvesant held true. Without looting, burning or any of the usual acts of plunder associated with power transfers in those times, the need to repair and rebuild was eliminated. Thus kept intact, Dutch-English cooperation lasted, and the New York region continued to grow and prosper, rapidly becoming the economic engine of the free world.