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The Island at the Center of the World: The Epic Story of Dutch Manhattan and the Forgotten Colony that Shaped America | 
 enlarge | Author: Russell Shorto
Publisher: Doubleday
Category: Book
List Price: $29.95
Buy Used: $5.90
You Save: $24.05 (80%)
Rating:  51 reviews
Sales Rank: 83735
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Pages: 384
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.6
Dimensions (in): 9.5 x 6.5 x 1.2
ISBN: 0385503490
Dewey Decimal Number: 974.7102
EAN: 9780385503495
ASIN: 0385503490
Publication Date: March 16, 2004
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
In a landmark work of history, Russell Shorto presents astonishing information on the founding of our nation and reveals in riveting detail the crucial role of the Dutch in making America what it is today.
In the late 1960s, an archivist in the New York State Library made an astounding discovery: 12,000 pages of centuries-old correspondence, court cases, legal contracts, and reports from a forgotten society: the Dutch colony centered on Manhattan, which predated the thirteen “original” American colonies. For the past thirty years scholar Charles Gehring has been translating this trove, which was recently declared a national treasure. Now, Russell Shorto has made use of this vital material to construct a sweeping narrative of Manhattan’s founding that gives a startling, fresh perspective on how America began.
In an account that blends a novelist’s grasp of storytelling with cutting-edge scholarship, The Island at the Center of the World strips Manhattan of its asphalt, bringing us back to a wilderness island—a hunting ground for Indians, populated by wolves and bears—that became a prize in the global power struggle between the English and the Dutch. Indeed, Russell Shorto shows that America’s founding was not the work of English settlers alone but a result of the clashing of these two seventeenth century powers. In fact, it was Amsterdam—Europe’s most liberal city, with an unusual policy of tolerance and a polyglot society dedicated to free trade—that became the model for the city of New Amsterdam on Manhattan. While the Puritans of New England were founding a society based on intolerance, on Manhattan the Dutch created a free-trade, upwardly-mobile melting pot that would help shape not only New York, but America.
The story moves from the halls of power in London and The Hague to bloody naval encounters on the high seas. The characters in the saga—the men and women who played a part in Manhattan’s founding—range from the philosopher Rene Descartes to James, the Duke of York, to prostitutes and smugglers. At the heart of the story is a bitter power struggle between two men: Peter Stuyvesant, the autocratic director of the Dutch colony, and a forgotten American hero named Adriaen van der Donck, a maverick, liberal-minded lawyer whose brilliant political gamesmanship, commitment to individual freedom, and exuberant love of his new country would have a lasting impact on the history of this nation.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 46 more reviews...
 Another Window on the New World August 4, 2008
William J. Marsden Jr. (Wilmington, DE USA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
There is no doubt that the victors write the histories and, as a consequence, the contributions of the Dutch settlement at New Amsterdam to the development of New York City as a world commercial hub, and of the United States as a haven for diverse oppressed and ambitious peoples of the world, is overlooked. This carefully researched and entertainly written book draws on recently re-discovered and translated records of the colony. It makes a compelling case that the multi-cultural and commercially centered settlement at New Amsterdam made at least as significant a contribution to the character of the nation that was later formed here as the English settlements in Massachusetts and Virginia. A great read for anyone who enjoys early American history.
The Island of the center of the world: outstanding! May 20, 2008
T. A. Van Kampen (Amsterdam, the Netherlands)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
As a Dutchman married to an American national from New Jersey I have a special interest in the book that so wonderfully descibes the Dutch influence on the US. Written in very accesible and uplifting prose, Russell Shorto knows to captivate the reader and develops an atmosphere that almost makes you feel you were there.
In between the lines he surprises us with unknown facts about the Dutch influence, such as the word 'cookie' comes from the Dutch word 'koekie', the word 'boss' comes from the word 'baas' and so on.
Highly recommended for anyone interested in the Dutch and US history.
The Dutch Roots of Liberty in America January 7, 2008
David Vanderveen
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Russell Short has done an amazing job of creating a compelling narrative from the recently translated historical documents of New Amsterdam (Manhatten, NYC) that shows what may be considered the true classical liberal roots of the American colonies.
Similar to Barbara Tuchman's book, THE FIRST SALUTE, ISLAND AT THE CENTER OF THE WORLD shows the reader the connection between personal liberty and uniquely American concepts that did not develop in Puritan American colonies or the failed Massachusetts Bay Colony. It also reminds the reader that The Netherland's own declaration of independence from Spain in the early 1500's was nearly identical to the 13 Colonies' own Declaration of Independence more than 200 years later. Shorto shows that when the British annexed New Amsterdam by force, the Dutch did not leave, they simply changed flags and brands but kept the core, cultural roots of liberty that made New York (and later, the United States) the melting pot of tolerance and classical liberal attitudes that many people around the world have historically associated with the USA.
The cities of Amsterdam and New York are currently working on a 400-year celebration of the Dutch-American connection. For those interested in the classical liberal history of Europe and America, these books are a must-read.
In addition to Russell Shorto's excellent work, I would also encourage buying a copy of Barbara Tuchman's excellent histical novel, The First Salute.First Salute
Important but unknown history December 31, 2007
This book gives a detailed view of one of the most fascinating periods of American history, when the Netherlands had established trading settlements on the East Coast of the United States from Chesapeake Bay to Albany. Of course, New Amsterdam was the most important. The detailed domestic history of that settlement and trading post is taken from previously unknown original documents from the administration and courts of the period. Readable, exciting and informative!
The Island at The Center of The World, September 14, 2007
Terence Clarke (San Francisco, CA United States)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
We all grew up in our American history classes with the image of peg-legged old Peter Stuyvesant ruling chaotically over the short-lived Dutch colony of New Amsterdam. They were a sorry lot, these Dutch, who didn't understand what they had on Manhattan, an island that awaited the organizational verve of the English to finally get under way toward its present greatness.
Would you believe that this view of the Dutch is a lot of poppycock? According to author Russell Shorto, it is that and worse. His book THE ISLAND AT THE CENTER OF THE WORLD, published by Doubleday, tells the story of the Dutch colonization of Manhattan and large portions of the land around that island in the seventeenth century. Because the actual Dutch records of that colonization have only recently been unearthed from libraries, we've more or less accepted the view of Dutch incompetence that has been foisted upon us by history. That is, by English history. As Winston Churchill famously remarked, history is written by the victors, and in this case, the English won the day when they laid a naval blockade on Manhattan in 1664 and took over the colony. According to Shorto, that triumph resulted in a very skewed and inaccurate presentation of what the Dutch achieved in Manhattan, and therefore of what American culture owes them.
The main character is, of course, Peter Stuyvesant, the man who surrendered to the English. When he arrived in New Amsterdam in 1647, the town had just a few hundred citizens and was located at the very southern tip of Manhattan Island, around the area of present-day Battery Park. It was low, rude and dirty. Stuyvesant was the representative of the Dutch West India Company, which had founded the colony. Subject to very poor leadership, the town was in need of a clear-headed, strong-minded leader, and Stuyvesant certainly was both of those. He was also a company man, and the idea of the citizens ruling themselves in any sort of way was simply beneath Stuyvesant's notice. It would be madness, the antithesis to the seventeenth century idea that God grants the right to lead only to the right sort of person and that all the rest should follow. The leveling sentiments of the American Revolution were one hundred thirty years away in the unforeseeable future.
But there were a few others in New Amsterdam who viewed themselves as viable contenders to lead the colony, and one of these was Adrian Van der Donck. An educated attorney who had taken full advantage of the new liberalisms of thought offered in Dutch universities by such as Descartes, Grotius and Spinoza, he had arrived in the colony some years before. The Dutch were already known for their tolerance of modes of thought and behavior other than their own. A great trading people, a people of the sea, the Dutch had for centuries been aware of the diversity of peoples elsewhere in the world. Amsterdam itself was noted for its polyglot, diverse culture, and Van der Donck had seen all this.
Van der Donck is the second protagonist of this remarkable book, and it is the ongoing struggle between these two men that fills its pages. Van der Donck and some others plagued Stuyvesant for years by pleading the case before him, and then before the Dutch Estates General in Amsterdam, that the Dutch West India Company's rule was stifling to the citizens of the colony and, worse, lousy for business. Stuyvesant, in their view, ruled badly with an iron-hand. Commerce was stifled by his authoritarian rigidity. The rising English and Swedish power in the region, based in the sizable colonies that those two countries had established nearby, was a continuing threat. Van der Donck and his friends presented brief after brief to the Estates in an attempt to break the Dutch West India Company's autocratic hold over Manhattan and to replace it with a more republican-style government devoted to open trade.
They made remarkable progress with this idea and indeed the Dutch government had arrived at the moment of voiding the West India Company's contract in the colony. But ultimately these efforts failed because of England's Oliver Cromwell and his wish to break up the Dutch influence on the seas. It began as a trade war and then became a real one when the First Anglo-Dutch War broke out in July, 1652. Van der Donck and the Dutch West India Company suddenly changed in the eyes of the Dutch government. War made the company's seeming stability in the colony appear all-important. It also made them think that Van der Donck perhaps was not really the progressive man of brilliant ideas for commerce and governance, but rather a dangerous agent of change who could ruin The Netherlands' efforts to defend its own territory.
Stuyvesant was back in charge. Van der Donck was out in the cold.
But the long-term effects of his efforts lasted beyond the war and beyond the Dutch colony itself. They resulted in much that became very important to the development of the American colonies and, finally, the United States. "Van der Donck's dream became real in a way he never imagined," Shorto writes. "The structure he helped win for the place grounded it in Dutch tolerance and diversity, just as he hoped it would, which in turn touched off the island's rapid growth and increased the influx of settlers from around Europe, just as he predicted. What he didn't predict was that the English would appreciate this fact, and maintain the structure, and that it would support a future culture of unprecedented energy and vitality and creativity."
One of the most interesting stories in this book is that of what happened to the documents that were kept by the Dutch colony and its officers. This trove of papers that go so far in explaining the complexity of the issues of New Netherland lay unnoticed for a few hundred years in various libraries. Only in the 1970's, when the translation of the papers to English finally began, did the importance of the Dutch influence in New York begin to get truly clarified.
The last chapter of THE ISLAND AT THE CENTER OF THE WORLD is a little coda in which Shorto tells of the journey of the records of the colony over two and a half centuries, in the New World and the Old, always out of the public eye.
It is a riveting small essay on great good fortune. If you do not value librarians and those who care about the written record, you should read this chapter. It will certainly set you straight because these New Netherland papers survived through swashbuckling derring-do and because of a deep concern for history on the part of a very few individuals over the centuries.
The records were neglected, subject to mould, fire, wars and general indifference. But they remain more or less intact now because of the lucky interest of the few individuals that seemed to understand what they had in hand. Without them, the records would have perished, this book wouldn't have been written and the ongoing revelations of the true importance of the Dutch Manhattan colony would have been lost to us.
For those interested in why New York is New York, and why the United States developed the way it did, those efforts - and this book - are invaluable.
Terence Clarke is a novelist, journalist and film maker who writes about the arts at [...]
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