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off the Royal Charles, pride of His Majesty’s navy. This blow, falling less than a year after the Great Fire that destroyed much of London, prompted Charles II to sue for peace. In the negotiations that ensued, the States-General agreed to let the English keep New Netherland in exchange for Surinam (Dutch Guiana), whose slaves and sugar plantations were more highly valued by the West India Company. Aware that his quarrel with the company was now moot, Stuyvesant returned to Manhattan in the spring of 1668. He, Judith, their children, and their slaves lived quietly on his beloved bouwerie until his death in February 1672.

PART TWO

BRITISH NEW YORK (1664-1783)

Plan of the City of New York, 1767-1774. (I. N. Phelps Stokes Collection. Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs. The New York Public Library. Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations)

6

Empire and Oligarchy

The surrender of New Amsterdam didn’t, strictly speaking, mean a shift from Dutch to English rule but from that of the Dutch West India Company to that of James Stuart, the duke of York. As its proprietor, the duke of York wielded greater power in his new province than his brother the king did over England. His charter gave him personal title to all its “lands, islands, soils, rivers, harbors, mines, minerals, quarries, woods, marshes, waters, lakes, fishings, hawking, hunting and fowling.” He had “full and absolute power and authority to correct, punish, pardon, govern, and rule” its inhabitants—with no duty to establish a representative assembly and subject only to the requirement that his “statutes, ordinances, and proceedings” conform as nearly as possible to those of England. Landholders in the colony would be his tenants, obliged to pay him an annual quitrent in lieu of personal service. He decided who could trade with his colony, and he could impose duties on its imports and exports. Nowhere else in British America were the rights and privileges of colonists so limited, or those of government so vast.

The harshness of these provisions was mitigated, however, by the Articles of Capitulation, which were the essence of moderation, conciliation, and even compassion. There would be no punitive expulsion of Dutch settlers, no expropriation of Dutch property (including slaves), no assaults on Dutch culture. Dutch settlers could stay or freely leave, with all of their possessions, as they pleased. Those who stayed, providing they took an oath to the king, wouldn’t be deprived of their ships, goods, houses, or land, nor would they be compelled to take up arms against the United Provinces in the future. They wouldn’t have to change their religion, language, or inheritance customs. Contracts between them would continue to be enforced “according to the manner of the Dutch,” and the Reformed Church could still collect taxes, run schools, and hold services in Dutch.

In negotiating the Articles with Stuyvesant, Nicolls had been generous because both he and the duke knew that no useful purpose would be served by acting “rigorous and scrutinous.” With few English merchants as yet residing in New York, and with taxes and customs duties expected to supply the bulk of ducal revenues, the oppression of the colony’s Dutch inhabitants and the disruption of established commercial interests could well ruin the proprietary and leave the duke with little or nothing to show for his efforts. It would certainly damage the fur trade, which depended on satisfying the Indian demand for cheap Dutch duffel (a coarse woolen cloth). Religious toleration, too, made sense if someday the duke wanted to make New York a haven for English Catholics.

The Dutch seemed prepared to cooperate. Not only did few of them leave, but the town’s former Dutch magistrates thanked the duke for sending “so gentle, wise, and intelligent a gentlemen” as Nicolls to be their governor and expressed the hope that he would make New York “bloom and grow like the Cedars on Lebanon.” Johannes van Brugh, an affluent merchant and son-in-law of Annetje Jans, hosted a dinner where Nicolls