Nieuw Amsterdam / New Amsterdam

View of New Amsterdam (New York). Original title: Nieuw Amsterdam ofte nue Nieuw Iorx opt 'teijlant Man [hattan]. Author: Johannes Vingboons (1616-1670). Source Nationaal Archief, Netherlands (National Library of the Netherlands). Illustration created in 1664, the year when the City would swop "ownership" and become New York.

Below, enlargement of the center of the image. The Reformed Dutch Church inside the fort was built in 1642.

New York was, from the beginning, established as a strategic trading post. In 1664, the English renamed the colony New York, after James, the Duke of York, who had received a charter to the territory from his brother King Charles II. On June 12, 1665, Thomas Willett was appointed Mayor of New York. The city grew northward and remained the largest and most important city in the Province of New York. The Dutch regained control of the city in 1673, then traded it away to the English in 1674 in the Treaty of Westminster ending the Third Anglo-Dutch War.

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