New Netherland: A Dutch Colony in Seventeenth-Century America (The Atlantic World) [Hardcover]

Jaap Jacobs (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 2004 | Series: Atlantic World (Book 3)

This volume covers the history of the Dutch colony New Netherland on the North American continent. Based on extensive research of archival material on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean, much of which has not been previously used, this work provides the most complete overview yet of a colony that has been generally neglected by historians. The chapters deal with themes such as patterns of immigration, government and justice, economy, religion, social structure, material culture, and mentality of the colonists. This book will be very useful not just for students of Dutch colonial history, but also for scholars in early American history.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Jaap Jacobs, Ph.D. (1999) Leiden University, is Postdoc Researcher at the Centre for the Study of the Dutch Golden Age of the University of Amsterdam. He has published extensively on the Dutch colony New Netherland and is currently preparing a biography of Petrus Stuyversant

Product Details

• Hardcover: 559 pages
• Publisher: Brill Academic Publishers (December 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 9004129065
• ISBN-13: 978-9004129061
• Product Dimensions: 9.7 x 6.5 x 1.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,388,384 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars New Netherland Described at Great Cost, May 6, 2007

By 

Roger Post (Fairbanks, Alaska) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: New Netherland: A Dutch Colony in Seventeenth-Century America (The Atlantic World) (Hardcover)

This is a very good book for those with an interest in New Netherland in general and New Amsterdam in particular. Jaap Jacobs compares and contrasts the social, economic, governmental, religious, and cultural practices and institutions of New Netherland with those of the Netherlands and describes the role of the West India Company throughout the period of Dutch governance of the colony. The author's text is thoroughly documented with source information in footnotes on nearly every page. For what is clearly a definitive work on life in New Netherland, I found the text to be very clearly written, without tedium, and surprisingly readable. Readers having ancestors among the inhabitants of New Amsterdam may be pleasantly surprised to find accounts of the doings, occupations, or legal problems of some of those ancestors. I found several such accounts and am doubtful that this information would have come to me in any other way. This is a very expensive book, however, and I subtracted a star from my rating because of its cost for an individual purchaser. I would encourage libraries with meaningful history collections or particular interest in 17th-century colonies in North America to obtain Jacobs' book for use of their patrons.

2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent., September 8, 2005

By 

Speedy Reviewer (New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: New Netherland: A Dutch Colony in Seventeenth-Century America (The Atlantic World) (Hardcover)

This is a fantastic reference book for anyone interested in the Dutch Atlantic World, specifically New Netherland (obviously). I have not purchased it yet, but the bits that I have read at the library have been most useful.

Note: It is encyclopedic!