New Amsterdam - City of Guyana

New Amsterdam was a 17th-century Dutch colonial settlement that later became New York City.

The town developed outside of Fort Amsterdam on Manhattan Island in the New Netherland territory which was situated between 38 and 42 degrees latitude as a provincial extension of the Dutch Republic as of 1624. Provincial possession of the territory was accomplished with the first settlement which was established on Governors Island in 1624. A year later, in 1625, construction of a citadel comprising Fort Amsterdam was commenced on the southern tip of Manhattan and the first settlers were moved there from Governors Island.

The town was founded in 1625 by New Netherland's second director, Willem Verhulst who, together with his council, selected Manhattan Island as the optimal place for permanent settlement by the Dutch West India Company. That year, military engineer and surveyor Krijn Frederiksz laid out a citadel with Fort Amsterdam as centerpiece. To secure the settlers' property and its surroundings according to Dutch law, Peter Minuit created a deed with the Manhattan Indians in 1626 which signified legal possession of Manhattan. He was appointed New Netherland's third director by the local council after Willem Verhulst was recalled to patria and sailed away in November 1626.


The first recorded exploration by the Dutch of the area around what is now called New York Bay was in 1609 with the voyage of the ship Halve Maen or "Half Moon", captained by Henry Hudson, in the service of the Dutch Republic, as the emissary of Holland's stadholder Maurits. Hudson named the river the Mauritius River and was covertly attempting to find the Northwest Passage for the Dutch East India Company. Instead, he brought back news about the possibility of exploitation of beaver pelts in the area, leading to private commercial interest by the Dutch who sent commercial, private missions to the area the following years.

The territory of New Netherland, comprising the Northeast's largest rivers with access to the beaver trade, was provisionally a private, profit-making commercial enterprise focusing on cementing alliances and conducting trade with the diverse Indian tribes. They enabled the serendipitous surveying and exploration of the region as a prelude to anticipated official settlement by the Dutch Republic which occurred in 1624.

The potential threat of attack from other interloping European colonial powers prompted the Directors of the Dutch West India Company to formulate a plan to protect the entrance to the Hudson River, and to consolidate the trading operations and the bulk of the settlers into the vicinity of a new fort. In 1625, most of the cattle and some settlers were moved from Noten Eylant, since 1784 named Governors Island, to Manhattan Island where a citadel to contain Fort Amsterdam was being laid out by Cryn Frederickz van Lobbrecht at the direction of Willem Verhulst who had been empowered by the Dutch West India Company to make that decision in his and his council's best judgment.