The settlement of New Sweden by the Swedish South Company encroached on its southern flank, while its eastern border was redrawn to accommodate the English colonies of an expanding New England Confederation.

[10] In 1609, English sea captain and explorer Henry Hudson was hired by the Dutch East India Company (VOC) to find a Northeast Passage to Asia, sailing around Scandinavia and Russia.

[12] Upon returning to the Netherlands, Hudson reported that he had found fertile land and amicable people willing to engage his crew in small-scale bartering of furs, trinkets, clothes, and small manufactured goods.

In 1611–1612, the Admiralty of Amsterdam sent two covert expeditions to find a passage to China with the yachts Craen and Vos, captained by Jan Cornelisz Mey and Symon Willemsz Cat respectively.

[17] The New Netherland Company also ordered a survey of the Delaware Valley, and Cornelis Hendricksz of Monnickendam explored the Zuyd Rivier (South River) in 1616 from its bay to its northernmost navigable reaches.

The legislators preferred the formula of trading posts with small populations and a military presence to protect them, which was working in the East Indies, versus encouraging mass immigration and establishing large colonies.

The Dutch called the numerous band collectively the River Indians,[22][23] known the exonyms associated with place names as the Wecquaesgeek, Hackensacks, Raritans, Canarsee, and Tappans.

The Dutch West India Company would offer a land patent, and the recipient would be responsible for negotiating a deal with representatives of the local tribes, usually the sachem or high chief.

[22] The colonists thought that their proffer of gifts in the form of sewant or manufactured goods was a trade agreement and defense alliance, which gave them exclusive rights to farming, hunting, and fishing.

In 1613, temporary camp comprising a number of small huts was built by the crew of the "Tijger" (Tiger), a Dutch ship under the command of Captain Adriaen Block, which had caught fire while sailing on the Hudson.

[36] "[A] variable-rate myth being a contradiction in terms, the purchase price remains forever frozen at twenty-four dollars," as authors Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace remarked in their history of New York.

[40] According to the writer Nathaniel Benchley, Minuit conducted the transaction with Seyseys, chief of the Canarsee, who were willing to accept valuable merchandise in exchange for the island that was mostly controlled by the Weckquaesgeeks, a band of the Wappinger.

[41] The port city of New Amsterdam outside the fort walls became a major hub for trade between North America, the Caribbean, and Europe, and where raw materials were loaded, such as pelts, lumber, and tobacco.

[43] In the hope of encouraging immigration, the Dutch West India Company established the Charter of Freedoms and Exemptions in 1629, which gave it the power to offer vast land grants and the title of patroon to some of its invested members.

[44] The vast tracts were called patroonships, and the title came with powerful manorial rights and privileges, such as the creation of civil and criminal courts and the appointing of local officials.

Kieft thanked and disbanded them and, against their advice, ordered that groups of Tappan and Wecquaesgeek be attacked at Pavonia and Corlear's Hook, even though they had sought refuge from their more powerful Mohican enemies per their treaty understandings with the Dutch.

Within days, the surrounding tribes united and rampaged the countryside, in a unique move, forcing settlers who escaped to find safety at Fort Amsterdam.

For two years, a series of raids and reprisals raged across the province, until 1645 when Kieft's War ended with a treaty, in a large part brokered by the Hackensack sagamore Oratam.

[22] The colonists were disenchanted with Kieft, his ignorance of Indigenous peoples, and the unresponsiveness of the GWC to their rights and requests, and they submitted the Remonstrance of New Netherland to the States General.

The Esopus Wars are so named for the branch of Lenape that lived around Wiltwijck, today's Kingston, which was the Dutch settlement on the west bank of Hudson River between Beverwyk and New Amsterdam.

[52] The term New Netherland Dutch generally includes all the Europeans who came to live there,[1] but may also refer to Africans, Indo-Caribbeans, South Americans, and even the Indians who were integral to the society.

There were two test cases during Stuyvesant's governorship in which the rule prevailed: the official granting of full residency for both Ashkenazi and Sephardi Jews in New Amsterdam in 1655, and the Flushing Remonstrance involving Quakers in 1657.

Franciscus van den Enden had drawn up a charter for a utopian society that included equal education of all classes, joint ownership of property, and a democratically elected government.

[58] There initially was limited contact between New Englanders and New Netherlanders, but the two provinces engaged in direct diplomatic relations with a swelling English population and territorial disputes.

The Dutch West India Company directors concluded that the religious freedom they offered in New Netherland would dissuade English colonists from working toward their removal.

They wrote to Director-General Peter Stuyvesant: [W]e are in hopes that as the English at the north (in New Netherland) have removed mostly from old England for the causes aforesaid, they will not give us henceforth so much trouble, but prefer to live free under us at peace with their consciences than to risk getting rid of our authority and then falling again under a government from which they had formerly fled.

The Dutch recaptured New Netherland in August 1673 with a fleet of 21 ships led by Vice Admiral Cornelis Evertsen the Youngest and Commodore Jacob Binckes, then the largest ever seen in America.

[75] It was during the early British colonial period that the New Netherlanders actually developed the land and society that had an enduring impact on the Capital District, the Hudson Valley, North Jersey, western Long Island, New York City, Fairfield County, and ultimately the United States.

The Dutch Republic was a haven for many religious and intellectual refugees fleeing oppression, as well as home to the world's major ports in the newly developing global economy.

[83] Washington Irving's satirical A History of New York and its famous fictional author Diedrich Knickerbocker had a large impact on the popular view of New Netherland's legacy.