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FACTION IN NEW AMSTERDAM
AN ESSAY CONCERNING THE INFLUENCE OF FACTION ON THE FALL OF NEW NETHERLAND
BY
PIRMIN OLDE WEGHUIS
S1879316
SPECIAL TOPIC IIB
FAILED COLONIES
LAX026B10
DR. M.L. Thompson
JUNE 16, 2011
2622 words
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FACTION IN NEW AMSTERDAM
AN ESSAY CONCERNING THE INFLUENCE OF FACTION ON THE FALL OF NEW NETHERLAND
In the seventeenth century the people of the most densely populated area in Europe would become
the leading nation in the world. The Dutch Golden Age brought Flemings, Walloons and immigrants
in the Dutch Republic enormous wealth and prosperity. At first the East India Company brought the
Dutch the valuable commodities from the Eastern hemisphere. To expand this success the West India
Company was founded and chartered by the States General to make a claim in the Americas and
regulate slave trade in Africa. The Dutch colonies at the Delaware, Connecticut and Hudson rivers
were quite prosperous and flourished under free trade. This essay will focus on the Dutch colony of
New Amsterdam which is now widely known as New York City. When between 1624 and 1626 the
Hudson River valley was taken by the Dutch, Deacon Pierre Minuit founded New Amsterdam at the
estuary of the Hudson at Manhattan. New Amsterdam was intended to become, as a part of New
Netherland, a mere reflection of the mother country in terms of trade, religion and the state. This
essay will go into the structures of which the Dutch Republic’s colony consisted and will then examine the conflict between the magistrates, the clergy and the settlers in New Amsterdam. In the seventeenth century the colony was trapped between an economic worldview and the word of God
which undoubtedly caused faction in New Amsterdam. Faction, being one of the biggest dangers society has, causes a lack of social cohesion and will eventually lead society to destruction. James
Madison also struggled with the problem of faction more than a century later. In Federalist no. 10 he
went into the problem and tried to remove the causes of faction: “There are again two methods of
removing the causes of faction: the one, by destroying the liberty which is essential to its existence;
the other, by giving to every citizen the same opinions, the same passions, and the same interests.”
Madison was confronted by the problem of faction in a young American republic, but the Dutch in
New Amsterdam were also confronted by the problem of faction between groups in society. The
claim to be tolerant towards all religions made New Amsterdam a melting pot of religions, but by
means of the Dutch Reformed Church there was no real freedom of religion in the colony. The domi-
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nant power expressed by the Dutch Reformed Church eventually led to faction in New Amsterdam
and made the colony prey for foreign domination.
The Dutch Republic was of a diverse character and society consisted of many religions and
other ethnic subgroups. It inhabited many Protestant dissenters from all over Europe and offered a
place to live for a Jewish as well as a Catholic community. Religion took a prominent place in the Republic, but as they all had to live together they needed a sphere of tolerance towards each other. The
main factor for the existence of this quite unique multiform religious society was the mutual beneficial trade and commerce. The Dutch formed a merchant republic in which central legislation took a
minor role and the different provinces all send a delegation of representatives to the States General.
The main governance was still done by the independent provinces and “only during a military crisis
could the prince of Orange mobilize the Dutch Reformed clergy and impose something like Calvinist
orthodoxy, even on the cities.” Religion and politics were not separated but quite intertwined in the
‘Republiek der Zeven Verenigde Nederlanden’, something that would lead to various conflicts between the clergy, the Republic’s magistrates and the colonists.
Minuit and the first Walloon families in 1624 that crossed the Atlantic in order to establish a
colony were not only driven by religious motives. Among the early settlers there were Protestant
refugees from the southern Netherlands who were driven to the colony because of their faith, but
not until the early 1660s migration was out of religious motives. Although religion was not at the center, the first Dutch Reformed Church in New Amsterdam was already founded in 1628 by Jonas
Michaëlius. In the letters from Michaëlius that he wrote from Manhattan Island he says: “through
the Lord’s mercy we have begun to found a Christian Church here.” The Dutch Reformed Church had
a monopoly on clerical matters in the colony which mend that no other religion could create of house
of God. However the West Indian Company has no reverence in her charter to religion, and therefore
she does not, as a company, have a purpose of spreading faith. In the Provisional Order of 1624 to
the first colonists of New Netherland the settlers were not allowed to confess any other religion than
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the reformed religion as practiced in the Netherlands, but it explicitly said that no one could be on
trial for his religion. It made a provision that everyone should have freedom of consciousness.
In the seventeenth century there were a lot of critical voices towards religious tolerance, because a lot of colonial magistrates feared that the colony could fall apart. The growth of the colony
was in their eyes something that could only happen in peace and quiet., On July 5, 1610 the Classis of
Amsterdam had already objections to the growing influence of other religions. They send a letter to
the ‘burgemeesters’ of Amsterdam in response to the faction displayed throughout the provinces,
“begging them to do all in their power to remedy the situation.” In the colonies Dutch magistrates
were officially quite tolerant, but the Dutch Reformed Church provoked a lot of discontent with the
magistrates. Therefore the leaders of New Netherland lacked a core of inhabitants that supported
them, because not by far was the entire group of colonists uniformly Dutch Reformed. The Dutch
Reformed Church had though a steady grip on the colony and its administration, and conflicts between the magistrates the Dutch Reformed Church and other churches were common. From 1643
onwards there were more and more Lutheran immigrants who wanted to confess their own religion.
The Lutherans petitioned director-general Peter Stuyvesant with a request to allow a minister to establish a church in New Amsterdam. Stuyvesant did not allow their request, because Dutch reformed
ministers feared for all kinds of religious sects if the Lutheran initiative was set precedent. When
eventually minister Gutwasser entered the colony there was a lot of resistance especially from the
clerical institutions in New Amsterdam. Stuyvesant took the opportunity to deport Gutwasser back to
the Netherlands and under enormous pressure from the Dutch Reformed Church the higher magistrates in the Dutch Republic had no choice, but to approve it. The incident with the Lutheran church
shows that although there was a kind of religious tolerance the Dutch Reformed Church had a steady
grip on the colony. We can say that the other inhabitants had no real advantage of tolerance and
would have welcomed a ruler who did guarantee freedom of religious expression. The strongest connections that held the colony together were a flourishing economy and the steady grip from the
Dutch Reformed Church on the government of the colony.
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One of these binding factors was also under pressure within ten years after the erection of the
Dutch Reformed Church. Conflict between the clergy and the magistrates was a returning event especially around the election of a new minister. The clergy could bring forth a candidate, but the magistrates had to approve the appointment of a new minister. This often led to conflict because of the
costs, but in 1637 a personal conflict got into the spotlights. The founder of the Dutch Reformed
Church Jonas Michaëlius was the candidate for the office of clergyman of New Netherland, but his
led to great resistance from the government of the colony. In his position as minister from Manhattan Michaëlius got involved in a conflict between Pieter Minuit and Jan van Remunde. In his second
letter to Van Foreest in 1630 Michaëlius bemoaned that although “the beginning of my work seemed
to promise something great,” it turned out that this promising start “gradually vanished through a
nefarious enterprise of wicked men, who have created serious tragedies among is.” Minuit ignored in
many instances the advice neither asked for the consent of Michaëlius and the latter therefore describes the governor as an offender of morality. The minister accused Minuit of abuse of power “to
silence me and make me hated,” and “to eject me out of this place, branded with a mark of shame.”
His accusations made himself very unpopular with the magistrates who would never appoint him as
minister of New Netherland. The whole controversy between Minuit and Michaëlius symbolizes the
different views in the colony. Minuit was merely occupied with making a good profit as a merchant
and on the contrary Michaëlius tried to establish a strong clergy in New Amsterdam. The doctrine of
the Reformed Church implied a strong bond between government and the clergy, but in a profit
driven society this was destined to fail. The Dutch Reformed Church’s attempt to give “every citizen
the same opinions, the same passions, and the same interests,” by forcing them to confess to one
uniform religion, turned out to be a utopia.
Peter Stuyvesant was perhaps the most acceptable director-general to the Dutch Reformed
Church. Stuyvesant was devoted to the church and had to manage the colony in times that diversity
in religion and nationality grew. In the uproar concerning the Lutheran request for a minister Stuyvesant openly defended the Dutch Reformed position. Stuyvesant may have been devoted to the
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church, but he had another unreligious motive for his opposition against other religions. New England outnumbered New Netherland by ten to one and more and more British settled in and around
New Amsterdam. The settlers with British roots enjoyed most of the time the same rights as the
Dutch citizens, but the directors in Amsterdam told Stuyvesant that they “cannot however consent to
give them a preeminence in the council, for [they] consider that dangerous.” The allegiance of the
British settlers was doubted by Stuyvesant although they swore to be obedient to the Dutch Republic
and the Dutch Reformed Church., In the end Stuyvesant proved to be right, because the colony fell in
1664 into the hands of the English. In the colony there was a huge problem to motivate the colonists
to defend the Dutch Republic in New Amsterdam. In his Report on the Surrender of New Netherland
Stuyvesant described his problem of assembling a militia for the defense of the colony. “This dissatisfaction and unwillingness on the part of burgher and farmer were called… [mainly] forth by sending
proclamations and open letters containing promises in the King’s name, to burgher and farmer, of
free and peaceable possession of their property, unobstructed trade and navigation, not only to the
King’s dominions, but also to the Netherlands with their own ships and people.” The second safeguard for the colony, economic prosperity, was also guaranteed by the English Crown. In order to act
on possible revolt the King assured that the colonists could still confess their religion. Together with
the dissatisfaction of large groups of colonists concerning the position of the Dutch Reformed Church
the morale of the settlers was almost completely depleted. Stuyvesant had lost the unconditional
support from the colonists, because of an incoherent society which liberties were suppressed by the
Dutch Reformed Church.
The Provisional Order by the Dutch West India Company gave the first settlers freedom of consciousness in order to provide a tolerant climate in which trade could flourish. This brought a lot of
different groups into the colony all with different religions. The trouble for New Netherlands was
however that as religious groups were growing they demanded a more open freedom of religion. The
Lutheran example proved that the Dutch Reformed Church had, at first, the strength to deny such
requests as the Lutherans did, by means of influencing the Director-General. The strive for a homoge-
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nous society came forth out of a Dutch Reformed tradition as Jonas Michaëlius tried to impose on
the colony’s administration. The conflicts between the magistrates and the clergy led to distrust between them. Commercial interests and clerical interests did not operate that well together and magistrates did not hesitate to deny the advice or consent from the minister of the church. Settlers, the
Government and the clergy all had problems with each other in some way and so it came that faction
rose. In Federalist no.10 Madison described faction as one of the biggest threats to society. The
Dutch Reformed Church tried both of the solutions Madison gave to remove the causes of faction.
They tried to create a uniform society under the church, but this med resistance in the colony. Eventually they destroyed the liberty itself in their mission to achieve hegemony. Liberty leads to faction if
there is no unifying and binding factor in play, which is why James Madison advocated in favor of a
constitution. Distrust between colonists, the government and the clergy created in New Amsterdam
a divided colony merely based on a common economic interest rather than social binding. When the
British threatened the colony the allegiance of the colonists was not with the Dutch Republic nor was
it with the Dutch Reformed Church. When the British Crown safeguarded the rights of the colonists in
New Netherlands they had no interest left in defending the colony for the Dutch Republic. The faction that came with liberty was not properly addressed by the Dutch and it would eventually shape
the conditions for the surrender of the colony to the King of England.
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