A Portrait of New York City , 1679
It was a menacing Spector. As dawn broke on the morning of August 30, 1664, the inhabitants of the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam awoke to the sight of four English war ships anchored off the shore of their colonial outpost on the southern tip of the island of Manhattan. The English and the Dutch were at war on the European continent. The rising sun revealed to the residents of New Amsterdam that the conflict had reached their doorstep in the New World.
An envoy from the hostile armada soon arrived ashore with the demand that the island be surrendered immediately. After a few days of deliberation, Peter Stuyvesant, Governor of the outpost, wisely complied. Thus, the colonial outpost that the Dutch had established in 1613, to exploit the lucrative European market for furs (see Living Among the Mohawks, 1644), became an English possession.
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