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Oct 5, 2018 · The willpower of this complicated leader took an endangered ramshackle settlement and transformed it into a functioning city. But Mr. Stuyvesant was no angel. In part two in the Bowery Boys’ look into the history of New Amsterdam, we launch into the tale of Stuyvesant from the moment he steps foot (or peg leg, as it were) onto the shores of ...
Nov 15, 2023 · As a consequence, the Netherland-America Foundation, instrumental in erecting the statue in Stuyvesant Square, quickly changed the name of its annual fundraiser, the elegant black-tie Peter Stuyvesant Ball, to the rather anodyne “NAF Ball.”
Stuyvesant returned to the Netherlands. However, the Dutch West India Company blamed him for their misfortunes in the New World, so he returned to America. He spent the rest of his life on his farm, called the Bouwerie.
- Legacy
- Early life and education
- Early career
- Governance
- Activities
- Later life
- Assessment
- Bibliography
The last and most efficient of Dutch proconsuls in the European struggle for control of North America, Peter Stuyvesant is remembered as the stubborn, somewhat choleric governor of the Dutch West India Company's base on the mainland. A zealous Calvinist, he brought a relatively effective government to the colony, absorbed the nearby rival Swedish s...
Born at Scherpenzeel, Friesland, Stuyvesant was the son of a Calvinist Dutch Reformed minister. He attended school in Friesland, where he heard much about New Netherland and about Holland's war with Spain. He became a student at the University of Franeker but was apparently expelled, for reasons unknown, about 1629.
Patriotic, and desiring adventure, Stuyvesant entered the service of the Dutch West India Companyfirst as a clerk and then, in 1635, as a supercargo to Brazil. By 1638 he had become chief commercial officer for Curaçao; in 1643 he returned there as governor. The following year he led an unsuccessful attack against the Portuguese colony of St. Marti...
Though harsh and dictatorial, Stuyvesant introduced a number of needed reforms, particularly directed toward improving New Amsterdam's living conditions. He appointed fire wardens and ordered chimney inspections, instituted a weekly market and annual cattle fair, required bakers to use standard weights, somewhat controlled traffic and sanitation, r...
One of Stuyvesant's first official acts was to organize a naval expedition against the Spaniards operating within the limits of the West India Company's charter. A force sent against Ft. Christina in 1655 conquered Sweden's province on the Delaware River and absorbed the settlements into New Netherland. Peace was made with marauding Native American...
The governor's salary plus allowances (approximately $1, 600, all told) enabled Stuyvesant to purchase a bouwerie, or farm, of 300 acres north of the city wall and a town lot for a house with gardens beside the fort. He lived comfortably in these, and his two sons were both born in New Amsterdam. In 1664, while England and Holland were still at pea...
Henry Kessler and Eugene Rachlis, Peter Stuyvesant and His New York (1959), is the most scholarly and readable study of Stuyvesant. Informative is John Franklin Jameson, Narratives of New Netherland (1909; new ed. 1952). Bayard Tuckerman, Peter Stuyvesant (1893), although outdated, is valuable. Hendrick Willem Van Loon, Life and Times of Pieter Stu...
Picard, Hymen Willem Johannes, Peter Stuyvesant, builder of New York, Cape Town: Hollandsch Afrikaansche Uitgevers Maatschappij, 1975.
Stuyvesant was then ordered to the Netherlands, but the order was soon revoked under pressure from the States of Holland and the city of Amsterdam. Stuyvesant prepared against an attack by ordering the citizens to dig a ditch from the North River to the East River and to erect a fortification.
Among the chief reasons of the decision to surrender was the devastation observed at Rotterdam, Netherlands, which saw the death of over 900 civilians, and that the Germans had threatened to repeat such devastation against other Dutch cities.
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In August 1664, when the burghers refused to aid him, Stuyvesant was forced to surrender New Netherland to the British. According to some historians, the West India Company made him the scapegoat for what actually were defects in company policies.
