Bigger House! Better Economy!!

          In the Mid-Eighteen Century New York’s cultural and social life made a complete change. Houses became larger and more luxurious. Cynthia G. Falk states that, just a couple of years after the Seven Year’s War, Nicholas Herkimer and his first wife, built a house in the south bank of the Mohawk River. The house consisted of four stories, all of the livable. In addition, it stood out from the other houses of the region. This new change in architecture did not only mean a cultural change in the colony, it also had a significant economic impact in New York.[1]

          The Herkimers, according to Falk, made their fortune “by taking advantage of natural resources, geography, contacts, and human labor, [2]which I find not to be very different from how most people make their fortunes in this modern society. Nicholas also continued some of his father unfinished business, portaging goods, leading money, renting real estate, gridding grain, and selling liquor. This made him a prominent citizen and a leader of his community.  He, like other few families from New York (very few families) had everything money and power. [3]

          According to Cynthia Falk, Nicholas’ father fortune can be considered as a major turning point in New York’s economy and its urban planning. His control of the land also made a significant impact to the success of the Herkimers in the Mohawk River valley and this success was transferred to his son. The amount of property that Nicholas controlled, gave him the necessary tools to be an influencial political figure in the colony.  Due to the large control of property, used to generate income to other citizens, many of his workers had a complete dependency on Nicholas Herkimer economic success. [4]

          However, this was not the most common economic conditions of the residents of New York at the time. During the Seven Year’s War it was accounted that only twenty houses existed along the Mohawk River, yet only three were significant enough.[5]  

To be continued…

           

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                [1] Cynthia G. Falk, "Forts, Rum, Slaves, and the Herkimers' Rise to Power in the Mohawk Valley," New York History Summer 2008  <http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/nyh/89.3/falk.html> (7 Nov. 2011).

                [2] Ibid.

                [3] Ibid.

                [4] Ibid.

                [5]Ibid.  

     When the Dutch arrived to what is now present-day New York they had already experience the colonization of other colonies. The first African brought to the colony came only a few years after the Dutch West Indian Company settled in New Amsterdam. The work that they had to fulfill at the beginning was maintaining the fort, unloading the ships and other types of maintenance work for the company. The usually had criminal working with them as punishment for their mistakes. This helps to have an understanding of how harsh and cruel their working experience may have been.   Many of these slaves were freed by their owner and became landowners themselves. Most of these slaves were taken from the Portuguese during the voyage from Angola to Africa and since the Portuguese had established the plantation system in Angola from quite some time, they (the Africans) were already Catholics. After being freed these slaves were given a piece of land and but still were require to pay some retributions and fees to their previous owners.
Thornton, John K. "Blacks in New Amsterdam." Footsteps Jan.-Feb. 2006: 8+. General OneFile. Web. 8 Oct. 2011.
Swan, Robert J. “The Other Fort Amsterdam: New Light on Aspects of Slavery in New Netherland.”Afro-Americans in New York Life and History 22, no.2 (July 1998):1-19.

Fight, Fight, Fight...

               During the time of Dutch settlement in New Netherlands there were no major land conflicts between the Dutch and the different Indian tribes. This was due to no significant population expansion until New Netherlands had already become an English colony. Ft. Orange was one of the most important trade posts of the colony and for the same there were friendly relationships between the whites and the Indians as well as in the Delaware River Valley. But like every rule there is always an exception. The Algonquian tribes lost most of their fur trade significant that they had and this brought conflicts between them and the Dutch. Disputes were for different causes: because both (the Dutch and the Algonquian) were agrarian societies, the dispute for land was very common. When the Dutch arrived to the New World they recognized prior Indian ownership, but this was just in paper.  Abuses for the fur trade, alcohol and armament were also very common frictions. After New Netherlands became New York there was no major colonist- Indian conflicts, this was because the Dutch had already established that the Europeans were the major power.

                Now, let’s talk about how the Dutch set up the concept of European supremacy in the colony. There were three major Indian Wars fought by the Dutch. The major one of them was Governor Willem Kieft’s war of 1643-1645. The Dutch were the victorious side in the conflict, the surrounded about 11 Indian bands. The beginning of this conflict is not quite clear yet, just like the Peach War of 1655, but in the last one it seems possible that the whites were the ones provoking the hostilities. The Usopus Wars motive is perhaps most clear. It was the Indian resentment at white settlers for taking over their lands. It has to be noted that all of these conflicts took place during the second phase of the Dutch colonization of New Netherlands, when immigration became even greater and the ethnicities of the colonies even more diverse.            

B: Trelease, Allen W. "Indian-White Contacts in Eastern North America: The Dutch in New Netherlands." Ethnohistory 9, no. 2 (1962): 137-144.

How delicious!

        What better to remind us of our culture and background that our folkloric cuisine? What better to bring you closer to an ethic group than food? When we think of Mexican culture the first thing that comes to our mind is perhaps “tacos”, and what about when we think about Italian culture? I bet you were thinking about their delicious pasta and wine. Food is an important element that shapes our culture and our customs. As an outsider you always crave your own food and the ways your people used to make it and always try to adapt it to the conditions of the place and time. Well for the Dutch was no different if something is true is that they brought their liberal and progressive mind to the new world. And something that they packed as well was their recipes’ book.

Since the beginning of colonial Dutch New York the colony was based on tolerance, profit and liberties. The town of what is today Manhattan was controversial since is early stage. Despite the fact that New Netherland was multicultural, the colony was predominantly a Dutch society. This could explain why the colony remained with a strong Dutch cultural influence after the English annexation.[1] This blog is going to focus on the demand for Dutch food after the Dutch came to what is now New York.

In the 1600s the Republic of the Netherlands, as an independent nation from the Spanish Kingdom, became a world power. Their economic success in the World economic allowed Dutch merchants to sent European products such as wine, brandy, oil and salt to what is now the Baltic Countries in exchange for wood, timber and iron. They also imported wheat from Poland and Russia for their own personal consumption and also to export it to southern Europe. This was what the Dutch diet consisted of: alcohol, such as wine, beer and milk and fish, meat and most importantly bread and all of this products required a long a complicated way of preparation.[2]Some of these delicious products can be seen in Dutch art which shows the presence of wine and different fruits.

But what was the Dutch- American food? Did it consisted of the same products and cooking methods that those of the Netherlands? Well in my opinion nevertheless it had to be accustomed to the new necessities that existed in the colony, it remain the same. Chicken, rabbits, turkeys, geese, and ducks were some of the animals that were brought from Europe to the colonies. The Dutch also found plenty of fish and shellfish along the east coast of North America. In the kitchen garden some Indian products as well as Dutch products were found. European grain such as wheat and rye were commonly planted in the colonies’ soil and sometimes provided plenty of harvest. One grain that the Europeans took from the Indians was maize. Maize had the advantage that could be planted on all kinds of soil and it had higher yield than any other grain. They also used their good trading skill to trade with other colonies like Virginia for different product like beef, wheat, pork and butter.[3]

The law also had some influence on preventing other from taking advantages of people’s desires for their home food. For example one law prohibited the sale of fancy products in a bakery unless the baker also was able to provide plain bread. Bread was one of the items that experience the greatest amount of law; this was perhaps because like in the Netherlands, bread was the single most important product of the colony.[4] I personally as a food lover, and specially bread, find this extremely well thought and democratic. Like in everything in life we should own the privilege to make our own choices and decision. Well I hope that you enjoyed this blog and hopefully it will make you wanting to taste how great the Dutch cuisine is. Bon appetit!

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[1] Meta F. Janowitz, “Indian Corn and Dutch Pots: Seventeenth-Century Foodways in New Amsterdam/New York,” Historical Archeology 27, no. 2 (1993):6

[2] Ibid., 7-8.

[3] Ibid., 12-13.

[4] Ibid., 13.

Now if you are more interested in New Netherlands history perhaps this video could help you to answer some of the questions that you may have.

Surviving

Two years after the English established the colony of Jamestown, in 1609, the Dutch East Indian Company hired an English sailor to find a northeast passage to the lands of India. After an unsuccessful search Henry Hudson, the English sailor sailed across the Atlantic Ocean and reached up to present day Albany. Hudson then went back to Europe and declared the entire Hudson River for him and his employers. After a few failed attempts of colonization the Dutch Parliament declared the Dutch East Indian Company a national company with this some Dutch families established the settlement on what is today Manhattan. Like the English colonist in Virginia the Dutch did not pay much attention to the benefits of agriculture and instead focused their economy on fur-trade. This was perhaps because of the roughness of the soil and the harsh conditions of the weather which made quite the difficult for the profiting of agriculture. It has to be noted that unlike the English in Virginia the Dutch did not took the settlement of Manhattan but instead purchased from the Indians of the area. The settlement did, indeed, grew at a slower pace than other English settlements but settlers eventually made their way up the Hudson River.     

The slow expansion of the settlement was perhaps, one of the major causes of dispute between the Dutch, the English, and some Indian tribes. In order to their fur trade business the Dutch had to keep peace with the Indians of the Area that way they could still make business with them but corruption and lax trading policy only increased hostilities between the two. With the English was a little different, as the Dutch moved slowly up the Hudson River, the English had already made some claims of the area and forced the Dutch to retrieve to what they already owned. In 1640 the Dutch opened their trade monopoly to other areas. This new policy benefited Amsterdam to a great degree but it was the beginning to even greater disputes between Native Americans and Europeans settlers.

Wyltwyck was the second largest Dutch settlement in the area and unlike Manhattan, it grew quicker. This economic success although it brought great profits to the Dutch it was the spark that set further disputes between the Dutch and others Europeans settlers. The Dutch lost the colony of New Netherlands to the English during the Anglo-Dutch War of 1664 only some years after the founding of Wyltwyck.
Sources I used:  

http://www.nps.gov/nr/travel/kingston/colonization.htm

Pre- Colonial Population

                In order to understand others’ cultures and believes we must first see them by what they are, people, just like us. The New Netherlands was a Dutch settlement in the north east side of the United States, a part of the former Mid-Atlantic States. Much is known about the Indians. The Algonkians which settled in the eastern part of the state spoke similar dialects. They were comprised by Mahicans, Delawares, Wappinger, Montauks, and many others. The insufficiency of food and aggressions forced other tribes to migrate north looking for new hunting grounds. These were the Iroquoian Indians of the Mid- Mississippi Valley and by 1570 more or less these tribes coalesced forming the League of the Five Nations. The purposed of this League was ultimately to achieve peace among them.  Their societies were matriarchal and matrilineal. The role of the sexes was well defined; men were hunters while the women were cultivators. The families were composed of clans or groups and they were encouraged to married outside of these tribes.  [1]

                These tribes were not technological equal to the Europeans and their culture was to no doubt, different, but still some similarities existed within the two. All of them were commercially oriented. Went the Indians began to expose themselves to the Europeans goods, such as alcohol, and guns, they began to collected fur and other crops desirable to the Europeans in order to exchange them for their products. This brought disputes within the Indian tribes who began to conquer other tribes and territories with the only purpose of controlling the fur trade.[2]

                Dutch tolerance and attitude towards the Indians were somewhat shaped with the same ideals of liberties and toleration towards others’ religion and culture. The Dutch focus in their new colonies was necessarily one of seeking religious freedom or expanding their religion but instead one of making profit. On the other hand, this did not mean that there were not prejudices against the Indians. The Dutch, like the English and the Spaniards, saw the Indians morally and culturally inferior to them. [3]  

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[1] Kammen, Michael G. 1975. Colonial New York: a history. New York: Scribner. 10

[2] Ibid, 16

[3] Ibid, 18