Trade and Exchange in New Amsterdam

MUSEUM OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK

Maeve Kane | she/her

@MaeveKane
MKANE2@ALBANY.EDU
MAEVEKANE.NET/MCNY

OUTLINE

  • social and political background
  • reading images
  • reading objects
  • reading maps

INDIGENOUS BACKGROUND

  • Indigenous preferable to Indian, specific nation best
  • "settler" is anyone not Indigenous
  • "race" emerged in the 18th century - many different Indigenous nations
  • Lenape, Munsee, and others farmed AND moved seasonally
  • land acknowledgements and Indigenous Peoples' Day are first steps, not end goals
  • Indigenous nations and people are still here

DUTCH BACKGROUND

  • private commercial venture of the Dutch West India Company
  • governed by appointed director and council
  • large investors paid for the right to buy land from Indigenous nations but had to negotiate for it; individual settlers rented from large investors
  • less than 1000 Europeans in Manhattan in 1650
  • approx 200 free and enslaved African people

TRADE

  • Indigenous trade networks spanned Mexico, California, and Canada before contact
  • Dutch manufactured items traded for Indigenous corn and animal pelts
  • Dutch reliant on Indigenous people for food and profit
  • trade was mutually beneficial
  • Indigenous trade for cloth, pots, and knives saved labor, NOT because of technological superiority

Reading images

  • Who made this?
  • Who is the assumed audience?
  • Where did they get their information?
  • What argument is made?
"John Guy's Encounter with the Beothuks, 1612," Mattheus Merian, 1628 https://collections.mun.ca/digital/collection/cns_images/id/35/

Reading objects

  • Who made this?
  • Who is the assumed audience?
  • How was this used and who was it used by?
  • What did it convey about the wearer or user?
combs 17th century Haudenosaunee combs. "Antler Hair Combs," Deyohahá:ge:- Indigenous Knowledge Centre

Reading an object

  • combs created for personal decoration
  • visible to community
  • Indigenous people unmarked, "normal," Dutch exotic but not supernatural
  • Dutch marked with buttons and hatchets, objects of trade
  • Dutch known as "cloth people"

Reading maps

  • Who was the assumed audience?
  • Why was the coast oriented that way? Where was the "reader" of this map standing?
  • What was pictured? How were Indigenous communities shown?
  • Who controlled this territory?
US Northeast 2022
google
Google Maps
NOVA BELGICA ET ANGLIA NOVA, 1635
nova belgica
Blaeu, Willem Janszoon, Cartographer. Nova Belgica et Anglia Nova. [Amsterdam: Willem Janszoon Blaeu, ?, 1630] Map. https://www.loc.gov/item/2017585967/.
Who was the audience?
audience
"New Netherland and New England"
Where was the reader standing? What was labeled?
animals
"Canoe made from bark and from the hollowed out trunk of a tree"
How were Indigenous communities shown?
houses
"Method of protecting themselves from the Mahican"
Who controlled this territory?
habitation
Nieu Amsterdam = Manhattan, Fort Orange = Albany
NOVA BELGICA ET ANGLIA NOVA, 1655
nova belgica
Visscher, Nicolaes Jansz, Cartographer. Nova Belgica et Anglia Nova. https://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/search/object/nmah_1029406.

READING A MAP

  • original created for navigation; printed for promotion and advertising
  • main navigation via rivers; little direct knowledge of interior
  • main profit concern for the colony requires Indigenous trade
  • Indigenous presence and ownership acknowledged
  • maps can be both descriptive and aspirational

Resources

thank you!

@MaeveKane