A Social Legacy

The rapid economic growth of cities in the Netherlands during the late Middle Ages attracted an enormous number of immigrants. As a result, ethnically diverse commercial interests dominated these cities and their overseas enterprises. The Dutch West India Company’s settlement of New Netherland reflected the heterogeneous society of the Dutch Republic’s largest province, Holland. As in Holland, the Company’s directors allowed various nationalities to settle in discrete communities under its auspices. By the time of the English conquest, New Netherland contained ethnically diverse populations coexisting in a patchwork of communities that mirrored Holland’s metropolitan culture. The tolerant yet assimilative culture that the Dutch established continues to echo in the Mid-Atlantic American states today.

In the early modern Netherlands, towns dominated the countryside, and merchant elites known as regents dominated the towns. The Dutch brought this urban tradition with them to the New World. The West India Company’s grant of local governing rights to Beverwijck (Albany) in 1652 and municipal rights to New Amsterdam (New York City) in 1653, resulted in the re-creation of a familiar Old World social structure. As an individual acquired wealth through trade, the community elevated his or her social and political standing.[1] An indication of the status of merchants is in their prominence as church officers, and in their appointment as magistrates and to positions of militia commands.[2] The result was the emergence of a middle-class (burgerlijke) urban patrician class that gained social and political dominance after 1664.[3] New York’s mercantile urban culture particularly flourished, albeit in Dutch fashion, following Englandʼs incorporation of New Netherland into its colonial world.