The Island at the Center of the World

The subtitle of The Island at the Center of the World, by Russell Shorto, 2004, is The Epic Story of Dutch Manhattan and the Forgotten Colony That Shaped America, which is a good description of the book.

The history of the beginning of the American colonies usually focuses on the settlements by the English: the Puritans of New England, the Pilgrims at Plymouth Plantation, the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and Jamestown, Virginia. This is the history I learned in school. The earlier settlement by the Dutch in Manhattan was briefly taught with the characters Peter Minuit, who supposedly bought the island of Manhattan from the local Indian tribe for $24 worth of wampum, and Peter Stuyvesant, the peg-legged governor of “New Amsterdam” who lost the settlement to the English. It is said that history is written by the victors, and it seems to be the case with the history of Manhattan. Shorto debunks this history by presenting a fascinating story of what early Manhattan and the surrounding Dutch territory was like, the characters who developed it, and how it influenced the character of the city that it would eventually become.

This book is my choice for the category Islands for the 2025 Nonfiction Reader Challenge.

It was clear to both the early settlers, as well as the Indian tribes that hunted there, that the island of Manhattan had many positive attributes. As Shorto writes:

“It was large enough to support a population, small enough that a fort located on its southernmost tip could be defended. Its forests were rich in game; it had flatlands that could be farmed and freshwater streams. It was situated at the mouth of the river to which Indian fur-traders came from hundreds of miles around, and which connected to other waterways that penetrated deep into the interior. It was also at the entrance to the bay, located in a wide and inviting harbor that seemed not to freeze over in winter. It was, in short, a natural fulcrum between the densely civilized continent of Europe and the tantalizingly wild continent of North America. It was the perfect island.”

Shorto explains how the Dutch came to settle the island and the area extending in all directions, and the real story of the sale of Manhattan, which was, rather, a type of rental agreement as understood by both the Dutch settlers and the Indian groups who inhabited the areas around the bay. But, for me, the most interesting parts of the book focus on the many characters who influenced the growth of the settlement, and the story of that growth.

To put this information into context, Shorto also includes a lot of information about the Netherlands at the time, particularly Amsterdam, and what the Dutch as a people were like. The Dutch were unusually tolerant for their time, and their cities as well as their colonies welcomed people of all backgrounds, cultures, and faiths. This is why persecuted people from other countries came to live in the Dutch provinces.

But, Shorto indicates that “… it’s something of a misnomer to think of “Dutch” in this era as an ethnic signifier. The Dutch provinces in the seventeenth century were the melting pot of Europe. As English, French, German, Swedish, and Jewish immigrants came and settled, they adopted the language, “Batavianized” their names (e.g., Bridges became Van Brugge), and, in time, adopted a basic framework for looking at the world one of the main features of which was the need to accommodate others. As the “Dutch” emigrated to the New World colony, then, they brought with them not only a ready-made mix of cultures but a tolerance of differences, the prescription for a multicultural society. In its very seeding, Manhattan was a melting pot.”

So the Dutch founding of New Amsterdam influenced the culture of acceptance of all immigrants, foreigners, and newcomers that New York City would eventually become famous for. Early Manhattan’s influence on the future of the United States is also “Because of its geography, its population, and the fact that it was under the control of the Dutch (even then its parent city, Amsterdam, was the most liberal in Europe), this island city would become the first multiethnic, upwardly mobile society on America’s shores, a prototype of the kind of society that would be duplicated throughout the country and around the world.”

A character that had a lot to do with furthering the culture of acceptance and even the introduction of the unconventional ideas of self-government and individual liberty was Adriaen van der Donck. I had never heard of him, but Shorto refers to him as a man “who has been forgotten by history but who emerges as the hero of the story and who, I think, deserves to be ranked as an early American prophet, a forerunner of the Revolutionary generation.” Much of the book relates van der Donck’s story.

What is also very interesting is that after the English took over the Dutch territory, renaming it New York, they kept the style of government and way of life. Shorto indicates that this decision was because of how successful the management was.

“One has to keep in mind what an oddity the new city of New York was to people of the seventeenth century, with its variety of skin tones and languages and prayer styles coexisting side by side. The English leaders in Whitehall Palace were surely aware of this unusual characteristic of the island across the water, and they may have been confused by it, but at the same time they understood that it was part of what made the place function.”

Considering how influential the Dutch were in the history of New York, it seems odd that so little of that history is known today. Shorto explains in detail how and why this history was lost and how it was eventually found centuries later. His research is extensive and detailed, with a long list of both primary and secondary sources as references. The epilogue (The Paper Trail) details the work that was done and is still being done by translators and historians to bring this history to light. He gives particular credit to the work of the New Netherland Project, based at the New York State Library in Albany. The organization’s website is www.nnp.org, where readers can find information about the colony and take a virtual tour of New Netherland, written by Shorto.