LYCOS RETRIEVER 
New Amsterdam: Dutch New Amsterdam
built 630 days ago
New Amsterdam (Nieuw Amsterdam in Dutch), located in the East Berbice-Corentyne Region, 62 miles from the capital, Georgetown, is one of the largest towns in Guyana. It is located four miles upriver from the Atlantic Ocean mouth of the Berbice River, on its eastern bank, immediately south of the Canje River (
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The settlement of New Amsterdam followed the explorations of Henry Hudson for the Dutch (approx. 100 years after Cabot explored the coast from Nova Scotia to Virginia for the British), and the subsequent purchase by Peter Minuit of Manhattan Island in 1626.
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New Amsterdam serves as a port and has a government-run hospital. The town has many old colonial buildings, some dating back to the time of Dutch colonisation. Mission Chapel has been designated a National Heritage Site. New Amsterdam had some of the best bathrooms at that time in America.
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In 1654, 23 refugee men, women and children fleeing from the former Dutch colony of Recife, Brazil, landed in New Amsterdam. These Brazilian Jews were the descendants of perhaps 5,000 Jews who had been living in Recife, most of them secretly, since the mid-1500s. The Dutch captured portions of Brazil from the Portuguese in 1624, and some neo-Christians openly returned to the practice of their Jewish faith. When Portugal recaptured Brazil in 1654, these Jews feared the introduction of the Inquisition and fled. They were probably on their way back to Amsterdam after a stop in Jamaica when their ship was attacked by a Spanish privateer who stripped them of their valuables. A return to Europe was now out of the question.
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Their primary adversary was the Dutch West India Company, whose officers envisioned Africans born in New Amsterdam as a fresh and continuously available source of labor. Such children would make especially desirable slaves, since they would be acculturated and would have roots in the city. With their kinfolk nearby, they would not pose a risk of flight. Company administrators did not hesitate to exert their authority over these youngsters.
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Soon, English Puritans emigrated from New England to New Amsterdam. The industrious Puritans quickly gained political and economic power and imposed strict rules upon the population including fines for singing and public whippings for more serious "offenses". After a series of natural disasters and phenomena struck such as a meteor, an earthquake, and unusually warm weather through the winter of 1663, the Dutch handed New Amsterdam over to the British when Charles II declared that all lands between the Delaware and Connecticut Rivers belonged to his brother James, the Duke of York. The Dutch, totally unprepared for war, immediately surrendered (signed the Anglo-Dutch Treaty) when the English fleet entered the harbor to take the city. New Amsterdam, henceforth became New York.
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Dutch New Amsterdam