One of the more generous descriptions we’ve read of 17th-century Dutch colonist Peter Stuyvesant is that he was “a my-way-or-the-highway kind of leader.” Less forgiving historians have characterized him as an intolerant, overbearing despot. Those epithets aren’t entirely unfair. During his 17 years as governor of New Amsterdam (later known as New York City), Stuyvesant treated the native Lenape population cruelly; outlawed religious worship by Quakers, Baptists, Lutherans, and Jews; and imported hundreds of African slaves, of whom he personally owned more than 40.
Posterity has judged him harshly for those actions, and rightly so. Unfortunately, some of Stuyvesant’s critics have themselves allowed prejudice to cloud their perceptions, by suggesting that his imperious nature was partly caused by the physical and psychic pain he suffered as an amputee. (He lost his right leg below the knee in a 1645 battle.) That’s a classic ableist trope, casting disability as a monstrous distortion of humanity. And it’s demonstrably untrue in Stuyvesant’s case.
In Taking Manhattan: The Extraordinary Events That Created New York and Shaped America, acclaimed historian Russell Shorto depicts Stuyvesant’s virtues alongside his many vices. In the process, he obliterates the lazy stereotype of Stuyvesant as a twisted, PLP-addled madman. Instead, Shorto shows him to be a creative strategist, a savvy capitalist, and above all a flexible administrator who was skilled at adapting and problem-solving. Like every amputee who ever lived.
The book centers on the pivotal years of the 1660s, when rival English colonists directly threatened to seize New Amsterdam for King Charles II. Stuyvesant had by then been in command for more than a decade, and in that time he’d transformed his colony from a chaotic, poorly defended trading post into a well-run commercial port—an attractive place to make a fortune. Thousands of Europeans came for that reason, jelling into a multiethnic cosmopolis in which business was transacted day and night in more than a dozen languages—not all that different from the vibe Manhattan gives off today. In Shorto’s words: “New York was New York even before it was New York.”
By the same token, Wall Street became Wall Street before it was Wall Street. That happened in 1653, when Stuyvesant ordered slave laborers to build a high defensive fortification (the eponymous wall of the future street) at the southern tip of the island. The English, who by then had settlements in present-day Connecticut and Long Island, were already eyeing Manhattan and its attractive harbor. Their gaze intensified throughout the 1650s, as New Amsterdam quadrupled in size and extended its trade network into the North American interior, the Caribbean, and South America.
England and The Netherlands were skirmishing for colonial supremacy at various other points on the globe, so Stuyvesant expected the cannons to come for him eventually. He begged the Dutch for more troops and weapons on multiple occasions, but without success. So he was in a tough spot when, in 1664, an English force led by Col. Richard Nicolls sailed into the harbor and demanded that Stuyvesant surrender the city.
He refused, and the antagonists feinted and bluffed over the next two weeks. Somewhat miraculously, no shots were ever fired. Instead, Stuyvesant put his genius for adaptation to work, piecing together an imaginative solution that kept the peace, satisfied England’s demands, and preserved his citizens’ hard-won wealth. Under the agreement, England added New Amsterdam to its colonial portfolio, gained the right to install its own governor, and renamed the colony to honor the Duke of York. Local traders were allowed to keep their homes, businesses, shipping rights, and other economic interests. Of note, Stuyvesant made sure the pact guaranteed citizens’ freedom of religious worship, a right he routinely curtailed in his own administration. Everything else essentially stayed the same.
According to Shorto, the document “reads more like a corporate merger than a treaty of surrender.” Instead of waging a battle that—win or lose—would have destroyed everything he’d built, Stuyvesant opted to keep his city intact under new ownership. He persuaded Nicolls that England would profit most by staying out of the way and letting the colony keep doing its thing. And he ensured that New Amsterdam’s unique personality—ambitious, aggressive, cosmopolitan, endlessly energetic—would continue to evolve.
New York today is vastly more inclusive and humanistic than Peter Stuyvesant ever was. Even so, if he could visit the city today, he’d surely find it reminiscent of the enterprising 17th-century colony he presided over.
