New Amsterdam: The Island at the Center of the World

Four hundred years ago the Englishman Henry Hudson set sail on his ship the Halve Maen (Half Moon) in a westward direction. He had been hired by the Dutch East India Company to find a northern passage to Asia. Nowadays, traveling is a common occurrence and a round trip to New York is no longer anything special, and so it is almost impossible to imagine just how much courage, drive and adventurousness it took for those hardy individuals to undertake such a journey back then. To be sure, the existence of America and the traveling distance to the new land were known, but it was totally unclear just how large this continent was, who inhabited it and what its waterways were. And then there were the risks of the journey itself: storms, powerful and treacherous currents, cold and damp, illness, and the discontent of the crew. On the other hand, the unenviable uncertainty of those who stayed behind must have been considerable: they waited months, sometimes years, for news.….

It is a remarkable fact that an Englishman chartered by a Dutch trading company traveled to the New World, where he laid the foundations for today’s great metropolis, New York City. The English and the Dutch would encounter each other quite a few more times in the following years! Once the New Amsterdam settlement had taken shape and become economically and strategically significant, the colony became a plaything of the Dutch and the English. More than half a century after Hudson’s arrival, New Netherland was ceded to the English and Dutch rule came to an end.

The history of the Dutch colonization of present-day New York comes most distinctly alive in the archives. The old documents and maps provide surprisingly rich and vivid insight into the time in which Henry Hudson, Adriaen van der Donck, Pieter Minuit and Petrus Stuyvesant lived. Through careful study of the original sources preserved and spirited storytelling, historians can flesh out the past of New Amsterdam and New Netherland for us in the twenty-first century.

Pulling from archival collections, like letters, books, maps and nautical charts, New Amsterdam:, The Island at the Center of the World. The Exhibition reveals the Dutch origins of New York City. It illustrates the political, commercial and cultural development of the Dutch West India Company’s trade outpost New Amsterdam. In the colony, sheer courage and drive proved decisive. At the same time, the very existence of the settlement on Manhattan was threatened by disputes, opportunism and favoritism. Throughout the exhibition are personal stories of New Amsterdammers whose diversity, vision, passion and grit set the foundation for this Island at the Center of the World.