Customer Reviews

The Island at the Center of the World: The Epic Story of Dutch Manhattan, the Forgotten Colony that Shaped America

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Shorto's book is uneven. For people who know little about early colonial history, it provides some interesting information about New Amsterdam and the politics of colonization. The most dynamic part of the book is the tension between Stuyvesant, the director of New Amsterdam, and van der Donck, attorney, activist, and reformer who sought to give the colonists some voice in the West India Company's control over the town's governance. Although Shorto promises to provide new and vital information about New Amsterdam based on the recent translation of heretofore unavailable (in English) records, the promise is not really fulfilled. The new information consists, essentially, of accounts of law suits, brawls, and mismanagement. I would encourage readers to overlook this unfulfilled promise as typical publishing hype. Harder to overlook is Shorto's own political agenda. At every opportunity, Shorto insists on telling readers that New Amsterdam was a diverse community where blacks, Indians, and Jews were "tolerated" and that New Amsterdam laid the foundation for contemporary America's embrace of diversity and multiculturalism. This sort of redundancy is tremendously annoying--even somewhat insulting. Moreover, it reflects a lack of critical vision that is unacceptable in a history book. The mantra of "strength in diversity" is largely wishful thinking, and there are any number of examples that illustrate how unrestrained diversity weakens society. Consider the rise of identity politics over the last two decades and the fate of public education owing to the huge number of non-English-speaking students in our classes. Shorto would have produced a better book if he had stuck to history and left his political editorializing at home.

My last name is, as you can see, Blauvelt -- no relation to the pirate in the book, more's the pity -- but from the branch that migrated from New Amsterdam into northern NJ and Orange County, where, indeed, is the town named Blauvelt. And the saying above is a bumper sticker my father gave me. But, onto this book. The premise: that it is forgotten history, is a surprise to one raised on much of the lore recounted here, but I suspect that once outside the environs, or, as some reviewers of age (I think) state, outside the NY regents exam system, it may actually be forgotten or never learned history. In any event, as a Dutch descendant of those days, it is great to read this history so wonderfully woven and described. Lore that was warp and woof of my growing up: that "planks", now political platforms, were first Dutch references to staking out parts of private investment/ownership in a ship. Or, that the "dollar" is from a Dutch word, and so forth. Shorto brings the whole Dutch colonization experience to life as I have never read -- in the pages of a book -- for those uninitiated. The Dutch, like it or not, had a profound effect on the tenor and direction of this unique nation. Shorto, given my steeping in Dutch lore, does not exaggerate or assume -- he tells it like it was. And, given the historic sources he is using, it is high time the formerly unknown van der Donck was given his due. An endearing and interesting character who takes on, in a David and Goliath struggle, the better known, if not admired or admirable, Peter Stuyvesant. Thank you, Russell Shorto.

Modern histoical narratives concerning Dutch New Amsterdam are few and far between. Ones that are amusing and informative reads are even more rare. The Island at the Center of the World is valuable for being both.

Centered on the history of New Amsterdam and its original Dutch environs, it is also written with a good sense of humor that this reader appreciated very much. Russell Shorto's descriptions are also great, even if he has no way of proving that the scenes he is describing are 100% hisotircally accurate.

His expansion of the thesis that Dutch multiculturalism eventually led to American multiculturialism may be a bit cunvoluted for some readers, but even if you don't fully agree with Shorto's history, the images that he presents in support of his ideas make for great reading along the way.

New Yorkers who love their own history will quickly devour this book.

I have lived in Manhattan for more than 30 years. But until I read this book, I assumed that the character of New York-commercial, contentious, tolerant, and multi-ethnic-was the product of European mass migrations starting, I suppose, with the Irish in the mid-nineteenth century. But, Shorto argues persuasively that this personality took hold much earlier. In fact, he shows how New York's character descends directly from the tolerant and litigious culture of the Dutch, a mighty commercial power in early 1600's, who founded a trading post and village on Manhattan in 1623. I, for one, am convinced.

I also enjoyed this book for its resurrection of Peter Stuyvesant, who, to most New Yorkers, is simply the Dutch governor with a peg leg who retired to what is now the Lower East Side. Thankfully, Shorto fills out this picture and shows Stuyvesant as an autocrat who opposed democratic reforms. These bubbled up from the colony's earliest settlers, who believed such reforms might prevent the misrule that, in one case, lead to a bloody war with indigenous Americans. A good read and highly recommended.

Being both a native Manhattan-ite, and of Dutch descent, I'd have to say that in the NYC public school system of the 30's and 40's, good as it was, the origins of New Netherland were scarcely covered. Certainly the additional information contained in this book (which perhaps to an historical scholar may be too 'readable' and occasionally repetitious ) is a worthwhile addition to understanding how the Dutch influenced the future character of Manhattan. The documents which are currently being translated and on which most of Shorto's book is based, will surely become part and parcel of a more balanced view of Manhattan's earliest history.

I don't know if this person is just a bad author or if or if they just can't write this type of book but this book is horrible. I'm not quite done it yet and I don't know if I'll bother finishing. While this is a story that needs to be told it deserves a better person to do so.

Ever since I became a resident of Manhattan, I have become more and more interested in the City's history. I've also always been interested in what a place is like before modern civilization comes in and creates what we see every day. With this look at Manhattan in the time of the Dutch, Mr. Shorto give us a rural glimpse at this most urban of islands.

Every schoolchild knows that Manhattan was originally settled by the Dutch and that New York City was originally New Amsterdam. In fact, that the entire region between the English settlements in Virginia & Massachusetts was New Holland. And yet, we are also so brought up on the idea of the thirteen original "English" colonies that it is easy to forget the powerful influence the Dutch had on the formation of these American colonies. By digging into the newly translated records of the Dutch colony, Mr. Shorto is able to open our eyes to more than just a few place names (Harleem becomes Harlem, the "Jonker" becomes Yonkers, etc.) and the bad memory of Peter Stuyvesant. He shows the lasting cultural influence that the Dutch inroads into the Hudson Valley had on the American nation.

It is impossible to relate all of the eye-opening information that Mr. Shorto reveals in this book. Needless to say, there is a lot here. I was particularly interested in the story of "the Jonker" Adriaen van der Donck, the young Dutch lawyer whose liberal interpretation of Dutch law helped bring many of the freedoms we now hold dear to the American psyche. And I loved being able to image this island as a land of villages (both Indian & European) with farms and vast tracks of unspoilt land. Mr. Shorto is really able to bring this world to life.

In brief, if you have any interest at all in the history of Manhattan, you would be foolish to miss this book. Even someone interested in American history in general will want to read this book, I think. As Mr. Shorto makes pains to point out, this island was the center of a multicultural community from day one that stretched its melting pot ideals deep into the heart of America. It is a fascinating story.

It is hard to picture Manhattan as the Dutch first saw it. It is hard to picture the Dutch here at all, as a matter of fact. Colonial history has always had such a strong Anglo bias that the Dutch (and New York, itself) never make much impact in the histories of America in the seventeenth century, focusing as it does so often on the Puritans and Pilgrims of New England. The Island at the Center of the World by Russell Shorto is a successful attempt to correct that for a pop history reading public. He makes a strong case for the importance of the early Dutch settlers as a harbinger of the future of New York (and hence America) as a multicultural nation that values individual liberties and respect religious freedoms, not values shared by the Puritans farther up north. His case is frequently overstated and not always backed up with the stongest evidence (cole slaw is mentioned a number of times as a prime example of Dutch influence) but the story he tells of this early colony is a fascinating one that deserves telling. By the end of the book, it is no longer quite so difficult to picture Manhattan as the Dutch first saw it and fought for it, with the natives, with the English, but, mostly, with each other. A wonderful slice of New York history.

What a missed opportunity! With the use of recently revealed material Shorto, with much publicity, presents us with what is billed as a new and exciting history of early Dutch settlement in America. The main problem is that it is not popular history, but historical fiction. In an effort to create a narrative story, Shorto informs us of dialogue, weather, the color of the sky, and specifics of peoples' clothes in specific circumstances throughout, information totally a creation of the author's imagination. One is tempted to say that the work is direly in need of an editor to clean up the mis-spellings, incorrect use of pronouns, clumsy repetitions, etc., but even that would not solve the main problem with this book: the author has taken new and fascinating information and made it boring.
My only hope is that there is room for another effort to present this material to us, one which does justice to the material and our intelligence. This book does neither.

Up to now the preponderant view held by many historians is that Dutch contribution to American history and particularly to that of New York has been one of irrelevancy. As we no doubt realize, the winners write history, and unfortunately, whatever the losers may have contributed, it seems to be lost or forgotten in the shuffle.

Fortunately, during the past thirty years and thanks to the translation of many Dutch records that have been recently discovered pertaining to the early colony of New Netherlands, a different picture has emerged.
It is this new perspective that author Russell Shorto has vividly and brilliantly captured in his latest gem of a book entitled, The Island at the Center of the World.

Shorto devotes considerable ink in defending his thesis that the success of Manhattan as a commercial center, or New York, as it was renamed after the British takeover, did not begin with the English but rather had very deep roots in the early Dutch community. It was in fact in the late 1640s that the city of New Amsterdam under Dutch rule began its rise to become North American's shipping hub.
Furthermore, one of the key actors who played a pivotal role in the community was, up to now, a long forgotten visionary, Adriaen van der Donck, who often found himself, locked in a power- struggle with Peter Stuyvesant. The latter has always been more recognizable than the former, particularly due to the fact that it was he who surrendered the Dutch colony to the British.

What was very little publicized up to now was that van der Donck had being heavily influenced by the more progressive thinking of some of Europe's most enlightened thinkers as Descartes, Grotius, and Spinoza. It is the freedoms espoused by these thinkers that van der Donck believed in. Eventually, they would find root in the Dutch colony, ultimately becoming the foundation of many of the democratic principles forming the basis of the American cultural, economic and sociological psyche.
On the other hand, Stuyvesant, who lacked the same formal education as van der Donck, was stuck in his old tyrannical concepts and narrow- minded prejudices, which effect was to stifle the aspirations of the inhabitants of the Dutch colony. It is fortunate for the USA that the theories and beliefs of van der Donck won out.

As a side note and to indicate the extent of the Dutch influence on American culture, Shorto also reveals such interesting tidbits as what settlers emigrating to the Dutch colony would bring along with them, the derivation of words such as cookies, cole slaw and Santa Claus, that can all trace their roots to the Dutch colony of New Netherlands.
We also have an overview and some fascinating insights as to what actually transpired between the Dutch and the English at the time the latter took possession of New Nederland.

Shorto's animated characterizations of individuals and events is consistently enlightening entertaining, informative and balanced, all of which make for a powerful analysis of events that have had an unbelievable influence on American culture, political and economic institutions.