Here and There in New Netherland Studies New Amsterdam History Center Lecture
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HE NEW AMSTERDAM History Center hosted a presentation by Shaun Sayres on Mohawk-Dutch relations on Wednesday evening, February 5, 2020, at St. Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery in Manhattan. St. Mark’s church dates to 1660, when West India Company New Netherland Director-General Petrus Stuyvesant built a chapel on the site near his country farm, then two miles from the city. Although the original chapel has been replaced, Stuyvesant’s remains lie in a sealed vault at St. Mark’s. The title of Sayre’s PowerPoint presentation was “A Dangerous Liberty: Mohawk-Dutch Relations and the Colonial Gunpowder Trade, 1639–1665.” Mr. Sayres discussed how the Mohawks and Dutch engaged in cross-cultural interactions centered around the exchange of furs and gunpowder that culminated in the formation of a mutually beneficial partnership. According to Mr. Sayres, the resulting encounters and negotiations reveal a distinct arc of intertwined fates, outlining their shared rise, peak, and decline within a world embroiled in conflict. Ultimately, he suggests the Mohawks survived but the Dutch did
Legal Scholar and retired New York State Justice Albert Rosenblatt.
not, relinquishing New Netherland to the English without a shot in 1664. Mr. Sayres is a doctoral student at Clark University specializing in colonial American history, the Atlantic world, and the age of revolutions. His dissertation research focuses on intercultural encounters, exchanges, and partnerships in the Atlantic world with special attention to New Netherland and seventeenth-century North America. The lecture was followed by a lively question-and-answer period and refreshments.
Jacob Leisler Institute Receives Rosenblatt Book Collection
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ORMER NEW YORK State Supreme Court Justice and noted legal scholar Albert Rosenblatt is donating his collection of books relating to the colonial history of New York to the Jacob Leisler Institute for the Study of Early New York History. Mr. Rosenblatt is a retired judge of the New York Court of Appeals, a Judicial Fellow at New York University Law School, and former president of the Historical Society of the Courts of the State of New York. He has written extensively on the history of law in New York. His works include The Judges of the New York Court of Appeals: A Biographical History (2007) and, with his wife Julia, the critically acclaimed Opening Statements: Law, Jurisprudence, and the Legacy of Dutch New York (2013). The Jacob Leisler Institute for the Study of Early New York History is a research center devoted to colonial New York under English rule. From 1664 to 1773, New York Province’s diverse European settlements fused with American Indian and African populations into a cosmopolitan colonial territory with ties throughout the Atlantic World. The Institute focuses on this underexamined 109-year period in American history. The Institute’s library contains extensive genealogical records, original manuscripts, over 4,000 document photocopies written in Dutch, German, French, English, and Latin, microfilms, rare
Shaun Sayres speaking at the New Amsterdam History Center event in St. Mark’s in-the-Bowery. books, prints, maps, and photographic and digital materials that cover the full extent of New York Province and go well beyond the Hudson River Valley. In addition to a library and collection of material objects, the Institute contains a number of discrete collections relating to colonial New York and New Jersey. Among these collections are the papers of rebel New York governor Jacob Leisler, including administrative papers from Leisler’s government as well as family-related correspondence, Eric Nooter’s papers relating to the colonial history of Kings County, New York, the Kees-Jan Waterman Collection of materials relating to the EuropeanAmerican Indian fur trade of the colonial Hudson and Mohawk valleys, the Antonia Kolb Collection of materials relating to the Leisler family in Europe, and the Mary Hallenbeck Collection relating to colonial Claverack, New York. Judge Rosenblatt’s donation substantially adds to the Institute’s holdings of books, papers, and illustrative materials. The Jacob Leisler Institute for the Study of Early New York History is located in Hudson, New York. It is open to the public by appointment. For further information contact info@jacobleislerinstitute.org.
Winter 2019–2020
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