Possessing Albany, 1630-1710: The Dutch and English Experiences

by Donna Merwick

Overview

This book reconstructs the manifold ways by which Dutch people of seventeenth-century New York took hold of the New World. As the author reminds us, the Dutch understood themselves to be republican, urban, mobile, mercantile, and amphibious; in short, properly Dutch. She shows how the Dutch possessed the land, traded over it, surrendered it to the English, and then lived out their lives balancing a "gaze" that the conquerors had for land against their own.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521373869
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	05/25/1990
Pages:	328
Product dimensions:	5.98(w) x 9.02(h) x 0.87(d)

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments; Abbreviations; Introduction; 1. Possessing the land, 1630–1652; 2. Trading on the land, 1652–1664; 3. Surrendering the land, 1664; 4. Occupancy of land under English rule, 1674–1690; 5. Contesting the land, 1689–1691; 6. A military presence on the land, 1690–1710; 7. Reflections on looking at the land; Index.

Editorial Reviews

"...fascinating and highly original; it affords a fresh view of a timeworn subject by introducing anthropological thought into the apparatus of historiography." William N. Fenton, Ethnohistory

"Professor Merwick, of the University of Melbourne (Australia), has written a thought-provoking study of 17th and 18th century Albany." The New York Genealogical and Biographical Record

From the Publisher