The written history of New York City begins with the arrival of the first European explorer to the area, Italian Giovanni da Verrazzano in 1524 and his brief interactions with the Indigenous Lenape. European settlement began with the Dutch in 1608 and New Amsterdam was founded with the assistance of the Lenape in 1624.
The Sons of Liberty campaigned against British authority in New York City, and the Stamp Act Congress of representatives from throughout the Thirteen Colonies met in the city in 1765 to organize resistance to Crown policies. The city's strategic location and status as a major seaport made it the prime target for British seizure in 1776. General George Washington lost a series of battles from which he narrowly escaped (with the notable exception of the Battle of Harlem Heights, his first victory of the war), and the British Army occupied New York and made it their base on the continent until late 1783, attracting Loyalist refugees.
The city served as the national capital under the Articles of Confederation from 1785 to 1789, and briefly served as the new nation's capital in 1789–1790 under the United States Constitution. Under the new government, the city hosted the inauguration of George Washington as the first President of the United States, the drafting of the United States Bill of Rights, and the first Supreme Court of the United States. The opening of the Erie Canal New York and the Great Lakes, along with coastal traffic to lower New England, making the city the preeminent port on the Atlantic Ocean as it long had been with the Beaver Pelt Trade. The arrival of rail connections to the north and west in the 1840s and 1850s strengthened its central role.
Beginning in the mid-19th century, waves of new immigrants arrived from Europe, dramatically changing the composition of the city and serving as workers in the expanding industries. Modern New York traces its development to the consolidation of the five boroughs in 1898 and an economic and building boom following the Great Depression and World War II. Throughout its history, New York has served as a main port of entry for many immigrants, and its cultural and economic influence has made it one of the most important urban areas in the United States and the world. The economy in the 1700s was based on farming, local production, fur trading, including the North American Beaver Pelt Trade, and Atlantic jobs like shipbuilding. In the 1700s, New York was sometimes referred to as a breadbasket colony, because one of its major crops was wheat. New York colony also exported other goods including iron ore as a raw material and manufactured goods such as tools, plows, nails and kitchen items such as kettles, pans and pots.
Native American settlement
Prior to the first human settlement, the area that eventually encompassed modern day New York was originally a marshland swamp, with numerous streams and creeks throughout modern day Manhattan Island. The first human Inhabitants were by the Lenape people. These groups of culturally and linguistically related Native Americans traditionally spoke an Algonquian language now referred to as Unami. Early European settlers called bands of Lenape by the Unami place name for where they lived, such as "Raritan" in Staten Island and New Jersey, "Canarsee" in Brooklyn, and "Hackensack" in New Jersey across the Hudson River from Lower Manhattan. Some modern place names such as Raritan Bay and Canarsie are derived from Lenape names. Eastern Long Island neighbors were culturally and linguistically more closely related to the Mohegan-Pequot peoples of New England who spoke the Mohegan-Montauk-Narragansett language.Herbert C. Kraft, The Lenape: Archaeology, history, and ethnography (New Jersey Historical Society v 21, 1986)
The modern name "Manhattan" is also derived from Lenape languages, with many possible variations in the exact definition and origin. The most commonly known original name for the island of Manhattan is "Manahatta", meaning "island of many hills", or "place for gathering wood to make bows". This name has been seen on maps and in letters, with spelling variations including "Manahata", "Manahatin", and "Manna-hatta". An early story from a Moravian Missionary claimed the Dutch gave alcohol to Indigenous Delaware, or Lenape as they called themselves, people upon their arrival, resulting in the Delaware calling the island "Mannahachtanink", meaning "the island or place of general intoxication". This story has however been largely disproved due to linguistic studies of the Unami, Munsee and German languages.
Along with assistance from Albert Seqaqkind Anthony, a member of the Delaware Delegation from the Six Nations Reserve who was fluent in the Munsee language and linguistic studies of Munsee, Algonquin, Unami, and Delaware languages, the name can be defined as "the place where we get more bows". While it has been difficult to determine and fully confirm the original meaning of the name "Manhattan", it is certain that all possible definitions come from indigenous names for the island's usage.
These peoples made use of the abundant waterways in the New York region for fishing, hunting trips, trade, and occasionally war. Many paths created by the indigenous peoples are now main thoroughfares, such as Broadway in Manhattan, the Bronx, and Westchester. The Lenape developed sophisticated techniques of hunting and managing their resources. By the time of the arrival of Europeans, they were cultivating fields of vegetation through the slash and burn technique, which extended the productive life of planted fields. They also harvested vast quantities of fish and shellfish from the bay.Mark Kurlansky, The Big Oyster: History on the Half Shell, New York: Ballantine Books, 2006. Historians estimate that at the time of European settlement, approximately 5,000 Lenape lived in 80 settlements around the region."Gotham Center for New York City History" Timeline 1700–1800
European exploration and settlement New Angoulême
The first European visitor to the area was Giovanni da Verrazzano, an Italian in command of the French ship La Dauphine in 1524. It is believed he sailed into Upper New York Bay, where he encountered native Lenape, returned through the Narrows, where he anchored the night of April 17, and left to continue his voyage. He named the area New Angoulême (La Nouvelle-Angoulême) "Ce site unique, entrevu par Verrazano dès 1524 et baptisé par lui Nouvelle-Angoulême en l'honneur de François Ier, fut acheté un siècle plus tard aux Indiens par les Hollandais, et s'appela Nieuwe Amsterdam, avant d'arrriver enfin, en 1665..." (p. 184) in honor of Francis I, King of France of the royal house of Valois-Angoulême and who had been Count of Angoulême from 1496 until his coronation in 1515. The name refers to the town of Angoulême, in the Charente département of France. For the next century, the area was occasionally visited by fur traders or explorers, such as by Esteban Gomez in 1525.
European exploration continued on September 2, 1609, when the Englishman Henry Hudson, in the employ of the Dutch East India Company, sailed the Half Moon through the Narrows into Upper New York Bay. Like Christopher Columbus, Hudson was looking for a westerly passage to Asia. He never found one, but he did take note of the abundant beaver population. Beaver pelts were in fashion in Europe, fueling a lucrative business. Hudson's report on the regional beaver population served as the impetus for the founding of Dutch trading colonies in the New World. The beaver's importance in New York's history is reflected by its use on the city's official seal.Burrows, Edwin G.; Wallace, Mike (1998). Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. p. 11. ISBN 9780199729104.
Dutch settlement
The first Dutch fur trading posts and settlements were in 1614 near present-day Albany, New York, the same year that New Netherland first appeared on maps. In May 1624 the Dutch West India Company landed a number of families at Noten Eylant (today's Governors Island) off the southern tip of Manhattan at the mouth of the North River (today's Hudson River). Soon thereafter, most likely in 1626, construction of Fort Amsterdam began. Later, the Dutch West Indies Company imported African slaves to serve as laborers; they were forced to build the wall that defended the town against English and Indian attacks. Early directors included Willem Verhulst and Peter Minuit. Willem Kieft became director in 1638 but five years later was embroiled in Kieft's War against the Native Americans. The Pavonia Massacre, across the Hudson River in present-day Jersey City, resulted in the death of 80 natives in February 1643. Following the massacre, Algonquian tribes joined forces and nearly defeated the Dutch. Holland sent additional forces to the aid of Kieft, leading to the overwhelming defeat of the Native Americans and a peace treaty on August 29, 1645.
On May 27, 1647, Peter Stuyvesant was inaugurated as director general upon his arrival and ruled as a member of the Dutch Reformed Church. The colony was granted self-government in 1652, and New Amsterdam was incorporated as a city on February 2, 1653.Ellis (1966), p. 57. The first mayors (burgemeesters) of New Amsterdam, Arent van Hattem and Martin Cregier, were appointed in that year.Scheltema, Gajus and Westerhuijs, Heleen (eds.),Exploring Historic Dutch New York. Museum of the City of New York/Dover Publications, New York 2011. By the early 1660s, the population consisted of approximately 1500 Europeans, only about half of whom were Dutch, and 375 Africans, 300 of whom were slaves.
A few of the original Dutch place names have been retained, most notably Flushing (after the Dutch town of Vlissingen), Harlem (after Haarlem), and Brooklyn (after Breukelen). Few buildings, however, remain from the 17th century. The oldest recorded house still in existence in New York, the Pieter Claesen Wyckoff House in Brooklyn, dates from 1652.
Peter Minuit is most commonly known for the story of his purchase of Manhattan. The story says that Manhattan, a part of the larger Lenape territory called Lenapehoking, was traded for goods given by Minuit to the Indigenous people living there at the time, the Lenape. This story has been accepted for years as a legitimate purchase allowing the Dutch to create colonial settlements on the island. It has recently been recognized that the Indigenous people would not have understood the idea of land purchase and land ownership in the same way that the colonial settlers would have. Typically, Lenape people viewed land not as something that could be traditionally purchased or permanently owned by any one person or group, rather with the concept of land ownership shifting with use and season. The Lenape living in this area assisted the settlers in hunting and creating early settlements before and after this "purchase", this assisted the colony's initial development and continued ability to grow and survive.
The Beaver Pelt Trade
In 1610, the fur trade between Dutch colonists and Indigenous people began. The New Netherland colony founded by the Dutch grew from continued usage of the new abundance of resources available to the colonists and exploitation of the "soft gold", beaver pelts, of the area. The fur trade largely consisted of Indigenous people providing beaver pelts in exchange for tools or goods from the colonists. The North American fur trade was spurred by the popularity of fur in Europe, previously only able to be acquired from Russia, which led to the large-scale hunting in North America when this unexploited population was found by the colonists.