(Ebook) Explorers, Fortunes and Love Letters : A Window on New Netherland by New Netherland Institute ISBN 9781438430041, 1438430043

(Ebook) Explorers, Fortunes and Love Letters : A Window on New Netherland by New Netherland Institute ISBN 9781438430041, 1438430043

When Henry Hudson, sailing on the Half Moon for the Dutch East India Company, first laid eyes on the entrance to the Hudson River in 1609, a world of seemingly infinite possibilities lay before him and his crew. In 1624 the Dutch would take advantage of these opportunities and create the colony of New Netherland, building homes and communities that stretched from the Delaware Bay up along the Hudson River Valley to present-day Albany, New York. The story of New Netherland is often overlooked in tales of the founding of America. The essays in Explorers, Fortunes and Love Letters: A Window on New Netherland offer a new perspective that takes the spotlight off the Puritans of New England and the settlers of Jamestown, Virginia, and instead offers striking arguments for casting the Dutch as central players in the American narrative. These twelve essays, written by preeminent historians of New Netherland, pull from diverse perspectives--social, cultural, intellectual, economic, and political--to weave together the dynamic and diverse history of the Dutch in America. These scholars explore all aspects of Dutch life, ranging from sailing methods to factional politics to written expressions of love. The authors discuss how settlers retained traditions from the Netherlands, such as the baking of bread, and how these traditions changed over time and became engrained in American culture--including the transformation of the Dutch St. Nicholas into today's Santa Claus. The New Netherland Institute is a not-for-profit organization whose purpose is to enhance the understanding of the Dutch history of colonial America by supporting the translation and publication of early Dutch documents through the New Netherland Project and to increase public awareness of the influence of Dutch heritage on American institutions and culture through academic collaboration, seminars, conferences, publications, internships, lectures, and research assistance.