2020 Annual Hendricks Award winner


180624-julie-verlinden-new-orleans-0457.jpgThe New Netherland Institute (NNI) is pleased to announce that the manuscript, "Spaces of Enslavement and Resistance in Dutch New York," by Dr. Andrea C. Mosterman, associate professor of history at the University of New Orleans, has been awarded the 2020 Annual Hendricks Award, which is given to the best book or book-length manuscript relating to any aspect of New Netherland and the Dutch colonial experience in North America up to 1776 and its legacy.

Mosterman's manuscript will also be the second title published in the New Netherland Institute Studies series (the first was Danny Noorlander's Heaven's Wrath), a partnership between NNI and Cornell University Press that is dedicated to publishing the best scholarship on the seventeenth-century Dutch mid-Atlantic settlement of New Netherland, its colonial context, and its legacy.

The Annual Hendricks Award committee offered the following comments on Mosterman's manuscript: "Her manuscript argues against the persistent view that slavery in New Netherland and New York was a relatively benign institution or less important than in regions whose economies were more heavily dependent on enslaved labor by focusing on the more intimate experiences of slavery. Of particular significance is Mosterman's research showing the degree to which Dutch-descended colonists embraced slave ownership in areas outside the more frequently studied maritime city of New Amsterdam/New York. The focus on the realities of enslaved people in and near Dutch and Dutch-descended households is one of the particular strengths of this study. Its use of archaeology, and its discussion of architecture and the Dutch Reformed Church, carry the analysis into the period of the United States. It is clear that the influence of Dutch colonization in this as well as other realms persisted in the mid-Atlantic long after the English conquest of New Netherland. The manuscript is based on considerable research stretching over two centuries and a wide geographical area. The committee was impressed by the quality of the research and the writing. We believe it shows great promise to be a significant, original contribution to our understanding of the Dutch legacy in early America as well as the history of slavery more broadly."


About the New Netherland Institute

For over three decades, NNI has helped cast light on America's Dutch roots. In 2010, it partnered with the New York State Office of Cultural Education to establish the New Netherland Research Center, with matching funds from the State of the Netherlands. NNI is registered as a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. Contributions are tax-deductible to the extent permitted by law. More

The New Netherland Research Center

Housed in the New York State Library, the NNRC offers students, educators, scholars and researchers a vast collection of early documents and reference works on America's Dutch era. More

 

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