Map of the original grants of village lots from the Dutch West India Company to the inhabitants of New-Amsterdam (now New-York) lying below the present line of Wall Street : Grants commencing A.D. 1642

In the late sixteenth century, French, English and Dutch merchant and privateer ships began attacking Spanish and Portuguese in West Indies coastal areas. They had bases in the places the Spanish could not conquer, such as the Lesser Antilles, the northern coast of South America, the mouth of the Orinoco, and the Atlantic Coast of Central America. They managed to establish their foot on St Kitts in 1624 and Barbados in 1626. When the Sugar Revolution took off, they brought in thousands of African slaves to work the fields and mills. English, Dutch, French and Spanish colonists, and in many cases their slaves from Africa first entered and then occupied the coast of The Guianas. The Dutch, allied with the Caribs of the Orinoco carried the fight against Spanish in all South America. The English of Jamaica established alliances with the Miskito Kingdom of modern-day Nicaragua and Honduras, and began logging on the coast of modern-day Belize. These interconnected commercial and diplomatic relations made up the Western Caribbean Zone which was in place in the early eighteenth century. West Indies gave names to several West India companies of the 17th and 18th centuries, including the Danish West India Company, the Dutch West India Company, the French West India Company, and the Swedish West India Company.

The City History Collection. Predominantly Manhattan Views.

In May 1624, the first settlers in New Netherland arrived on Noten Eylandt (Nut or Nutten Island, now Governors Island) aboard the ship New Netherland. Dutch West India Company wanted to protect the entrance to the Hudson River and sponsored 30 families to move from Nut Island to Manhattan Island, where a citadel to contain Fort Amsterdam was being laid out. By the end of 1625, the site had been staked out and by 1628, a small fort was built with walls containing a mixture of clay and sand. The fort also served as the center of trading activity. In the 1630s and 1640s, New Amsterdam had a population of about 270 people. Settlers built mills and in 1642 a stone church was built within the fort. New Amsterdam received municipal rights on February 2, 1653. On August 27, 1664, while England and the Dutch Republic were at peace, four English frigates sailed into New Amsterdam's harbor and demanded New Netherland's surrender. This was swiftly followed by the Second Anglo-Dutch War and in 1665, New Amsterdam was reincorporated under English law as New York City, named after the Duke of York (later King James II). He was the brother of the English King Charles II, who had been granted the lands. In July 1673, during the Third Anglo-Dutch War, the Dutch briefly and quickly occupied New York City and renamed it New Orange. In 1674, the city was relinquished to the English and the name reverted to "New York".

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