Reading List

Find a small selection of recent, recommended books on New Netherland, the Dutch Atlantic world, and the Dutch influence on Colonial America below.

For a full bibliography which includes books and articles, view the New Netherland Bibliography.

General Histories of New Netherland and the Dutch Atlantic World

Jaap Jacobs, The Colony of New Netherland: A Dutch Settlement in Seventeenth Century America (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2009)

Wim Klooster, The Dutch Moment: War, Trade, and Settlement in the Seventeenth-Century Atlantic World (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2016)

Ned Landsman, Crossroads of Empire: The Middle Colonies in British North America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011)

Janny Venema, Beverwijk: A Dutch Village on the American Frontier, 1652-1664 (Albany: SUNY Press, 2003)

Religion & Religious Toleration

Evan Haefeli, New Netherland and the Dutch Origins of American Religious Liberty (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016)

D.L. Noorlander, Heaven's Wrath: The Protestant Reformation and the Dutch West India Company in the Atlantic World (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2019)

Slavery in New Netherland

Nicole Maskiell, Bound by Bondage: Slavery and the Creation of a Northern Gentry (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2022)

Andrea Mosterman, Spaces of Enslavement: A History of Slavery and Resistance in Dutch New York (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2021

 ​​​​Women in New Netherland

 Susanah Romney, New Netherland Connections: Intimate Networks and Atlantic Ties in Seventeenth Century America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2014)              

​Native Americans and New Netherland

Andrew Lipman, The Saltwater Frontier: Indians and the Contest for the American Coast (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2015)

Paul Otto, The Dutch-Munsee Encounter in America: The Struggle for Sovereignty in the Hudson Valley (New York: Berghahn  Books, 2006)

Jon Parameter, The Edge of the Woods: Iroquois, 1543-1701 (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2010)

Mark Thompson, The Contest for the Delaware Valley: Allegiance Identity and Empire in the Seventeenth Century (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2013)

Books about the Dutch in North America after 1664

Firth Fabend, A Dutch Family in the Middle Colonies, 1660-1800 (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1999)

Joyce Goodfriend, Before the Melting Pot: Society and Culture in Colonial New York City, 1664-1730 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991).

Joyce Goodfriend, Who Should Rule at Home? Confronting the Elite in British New York City (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2017)