(We all know the one-word explanation for why nobody can stand us Americans right now.) The “us” I’m referring to are New Yorkers.
Oh, we knew what you were thinking about us, even before social media. We see you every day, you non-New Yorkers, walking around the city looking overwhelmed, uneasy and/or hostile.
We’re confusing, apparently. There are so many of us and every one of us looks, is and sounds different. It’s called multiculturism and/or multiethnicity. It’s why we’re graced with restaurants offering cuisines from pretty much everywhere on the planet.
How did we get this way? It started a long, long time ago, when we were Dutch.
Everything I learned about how New York City, particularly Manhattan, became what it is today can be found in Russell Shorto’s wondrous history, The Island at the Center of the World: The epic story of Dutch Manhattan and the forgotten colony that shaped America.
I remain amazed how the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam, in no more than 60 years, managed to drive aspects of its culture into the bedrock and soul of Manhattan.
Here’s my take on what the oddball colony of New Amsterdam gave the future:
Disinterest about particularized religious observations. This freedom from one religion opened the island to…
Immigrants from many other countries who braved the Atlantic to settle here, bringing their languages, skills, gifts, beliefs and culture to construct new lives in the center of the world. That is, diversity. Which soon led to a small revolution…
Led by a young Dutch lawyer who initiated a seminal form of democratic governance and a radical vision of law concerned with human rights. This came about when the Dutch bosses, last of whom was Peter Stuyvesant, ignored the tiny and untidy civilization’s demands for some law and order, because it was a distraction from the single purpose for which the Netherlands had planted itself onto Manhattan: making money…
Partly for which venal purpose the people of New Amsterdam constructed a wall, fairly insufficient for temporal protection but eternally powerful as a symbol for another thing they brought with them and planted here: capitalism.
All that is good stuff, isn’t it? The auspicious beginnings of our American dichotomy, government by and for the people v. capitalism. So why did the English, who had been grabbing up swathes of New World territory hate our small Dutch island?
Shorto wrote what follows in his historical sequel to The Island at the Center of the World, incisively and wittily titled, Taking Manhattan, which is what the British did in 1664. I think it’s a timeless answer to the question in my title:
Palpable in the complaints the New Englanders vented toward the Dutch was what could only be called jealousy. Nobody in Boston or elsewhere in America seemed to be able to match New Amsterdam’s shipping and trade prowess, and nobody could figure out how the place, with its confusing mix of languages and religions, functioned. Outsiders had a hard time fathoming that a multiethnic population could be a strength. New Amsterdam was a trading center whose inhabitants had family and business ties in far-flung places. Those same inhabitants also engaged in what we would call capitalism, personally investing their savings in voyages in hopes of future profits. What seems commonplace to us today was bewildering to the English of the time. It didn’t seem to make sense, but it worked, and the English couldn’t stand it.