The extraordinary events that created New York and shaped America
It is August 1664, and the blue-gray waters of Manhattan��s harbor glisten in the late summer sun. A wind stirs, and the lookout cries, while the citizens of New Amsterdam rush to the waterfront, where white sails are appearing on the horizon. The hulls of four ships come into view, flying the British colors. Commander Richard Nicolls has come to take New Amsterdam from the Dutch, be it by diplomacy or force. Waiting behind the settlement’s barricades, Governor Peter Stuyvesant and his West-India Company soldiers have banded together with the colony’s citizens.
What happens next shapes the course of history.
From Russell Shorto, author of 'Amsterdam' and 'The Island at the Center of the World' comes his latest book, 'Taking Manhattan'. Tracing the events from the ‘purchase’ of Manhattan by the Dutch West-India Company to the fated takeover by the British, Shorto paints a picture of a diverse, innovative and hardy city forging its own path. The fledgling settlement represented something new: a multiethnic capitalist society pioneered by the Dutch, then swept up into the power structure of the British empire.
In a narrative that features kings and captains as well as Indigenous leaders and free and enslaved Africans, Shorto dives into the archives, working with new, recently translated material. The result is a narrative that informs and entertains, brimming with insights and lives lived that he has written back into popular history.
The events in 'Taking Manhattan' are of central importance not only to the history of New York—a city that has left an indelible mark on the world—but also to the character of United States. The paradox of New York’s origins, of boundless opportunity coupled with subjugation and displacement, reflect America�����s promises and failures, right up to the present.
