The Island At The Centre Of The World.
£25.00
Publisher
Doubleday.
Place
London
Date
2004
Synopsis
The untold story of dutch manhattan and the founding of new york.
Item Description
FIRST EDITION. 8vo. 9.5 x 6.25 inches. xiii + [iii] + 432 pp. Bound in original blue cloth, gilt, in unclipped pictorial dust wrapper. A little foxing of edges, but otherwise a very good copy. Illustrated by 8 pages of colour and monochrome plates and by section heading vignettes. Map endpapers. Decorated by publisher's device on title page. The Dutch West India Company founded its colony of Nieuw Nederland/New Netherland, centred on the wooded island of Manhattan on the North/Hudson river and initially based their economy on trading with the indigenous inhabitants of the area. The port city of Nieuw Amsterdam was built outside the earlier Fort Amsterdam. The book relates the struggles between Peter Stuyvesant, Director of the Dutch colony and the liberal minded lawyer, Adruaen van der Donck. During the course of the Anglo-Dutch wars, the English held New Netherland, 1664-73, briefly lost it again to the Dutch, before it was definitively ceded to England in 1674, becoming the colony of New York. By US historian, Russell Shorto (b.1959).
[Stock No. 30217]
