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The settlement of New Netherland was an expansion of trade and the result of the geographic location of the Netherlands and some of the conditions of the surrounding countries. Situated midway between the Baltic and the Meditteranean, the Dutch people had from an early date carried on an extensive trade between the countries of north and south Europe. | |
The war with Spain temporarily interrupted trade but with the destruction of the Spanish Armada in 1588, the chief danger to Dutch shipping was removed and a new era of commerical development commenced. The fall of Antwerp in 1585 forced thousands of its most industrious citizens to seek a refuge in the northern provinces and cause the world trade of that ancient city to be transferred to Amsterdam. The seizure in the same yeare of all Dutch ships in the harbors of Spain and Portugal, compelled Dutch merchants to seek out new routes and trade, among the Cape Verde islands, coasts of Africa and Brazil. Dutch merchants rapidly supplanted the English in Muscovy trade; large quantities were imported from Norway.
The Dutch East India Company, chartered in 1602, was the first of three great Dutch trading companies which engaged Henry Hudson to seek a passage around the north of Nova Zembla and across the polar region to India and China. In 1609, He doubled the North Cape of Norway, destined for the north coast of Nova Zembla, finding a sea full of ice, turned westward toward America where he anchored in a harbor on the coast of Maine and then sailed southward as far as Chesapeake Bay, then passed northward along the coast to Sandy Hook and finally entered the Hudson River. When the yacht called the Half Moon passed out to the sea, she arrived at Dartmouth England, where Hudson then went to Holland. Later Dutch merchants sent out vessels to secure the advantages of the fur trade, in 1614, led to the formation of the New Netherland Company.
| It is in May 1624 that the "Nieu Nederlandt", a ship chartered by the West India Company, arrived in sight of Manhattan Island. The vessel carried about thirty Belgian families: most of them were Walloons accompanied by a few Flemings. The excesses of the Inquisition leaded to a massive emigration of Walloons and Flemings to the North of the Netherlands, Sweden, England and Germany, to the Gueux rebellion, and to the secession of the Northern Provinces, which took the name of United-Provinces. The southern Provinces stayed under the yoke of the Spaniards and continued to undergo the pangs of war. In the sixteenth century, the Netherlands covered a part of North of France and Lorraine, Belgium, Luxembourg and the present Netherlands. Its inhabitants were called the Belgians. |
The nation of Belgium, its ancestors and their companions played in 1624 as settlers of what was to become New York. In a continuing publication entitled, "Belgium At the Heart of Europe", much attention is given to the Walloons who left to seek sanctuary from religious persecution, the benefits to Holland derived from these Walloons, and the circumstances of settling New Amsterdam. They first petitioned England for transportation, land and human rights as freemen to the colony of Virginia. Then with the West India Company to settle in New Amsterdam. Although the Dutch West India Co. explored and began to settle the New York area as early as 1614, the principal occupation of the area did not occur until 1624 when Dutch settlers arrived at Governors Island and then spread to other areas in the region. In 1626, as we all remember from our early history lessons, Peter Minuit arrived on Manhattan Island and, with other Dutch settlers, bought the island from the local Indians for 60 gilders (24.) worth of goods. The settlement and fort on the island became known as New Amsterdam which eventually became the City of New York. The Dutch holdings in the area were collectively called New Netherlands and included areas of what is now New Jersey. New Amsterdam was granted self government and incorporated by the Dutch in 1653.
In the late 16th and early 17th centuries, many Protestants from the Southern Low Countries (present-day Belguim) sought refuge in the Northern Provinces of the Netherlands. As these provinces had broken away from Spain, the Reformed Religion could be freely practiced there. A party of Walloons belonging to the Reformed Church, coming from the Avesnes-Valenciennes-Lille region in the Counties of Hainaut and Flanders, settled in Leyden around this time. Their homeland was later to be separated from our provinces by the Treaty of the Pyrenees (1659), that of Aix-la-Chapelle (1658) and the Treaty of Nijmegen (1678). The first settlers who left in 1624 to found a colony in the State of New York were for the most part Walloons who had originally come from our ancient Belgian princedoms, who had settled in Leyden, and who had been recruited by Jesse de Forest.