Print

The Middle, Chesapeake, and Southern Colonies

New York and New Jersey

The primary motive for establishing the middle, or mid-Atlantic colonies of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware was to develop profitable trading centers. The Dutch were some of the first to settle in this area. In the late sixteenth century, with the help of Protestant England, the people of the Netherlands won their independence from Spain. The Netherlands evolved into a major commercial and naval power and challenged its former benefactor, England, on several occasions during the seventeenth century.

With this newfound power, the Dutch became a leading colonial presence, especially in the East Indies. Like the English, the Dutch developed colonies by authorizing joint-stock companies to go forth and establish trading outposts and commerce. The Dutch East India Company established a trading empire that was profitable for over three hundred years. Seeking greater riches and a passageway around America to China, the Dutch East India Company hired Henry Hudson, an English explorer. Hudson sailed along the upper coast of North America, and in 1609 he encountered Delaware Bay and the river named for him, the Hudson River. He filed a claim to all of this land for the Dutch.

The Dutch West India Company was also influential, but operated primarily in the Caribbean, where it was more interested in raiding than trading. By 1624, based on Hudson’s earlier claim to the Hudson Valley, the Dutch West India Company permanently settled New Netherland, in the Hudson River area, as a fur trading port. In 1626, the Dutch bought Manhattan Island from the Indians for pennies an acre, and they started trading posts at New Amsterdam, later called New York, and upriver at Fort Orange, later called Albany.

The New Netherland colony was highly aristocratic, with large feudal estates along the Hudson River. These grand estates, called patroonships, were granted to stockholders who promised to have fifty adults living on the estate within four years. This approach to colonization met with little luck because volunteers for serfdom were hard to find.

New Netherland experienced difficulties from the outset. The shareholders demanded dividends even at the expense of the colony’s welfare. The New England colonies to the north regarded them as intruders. Although not as strict as the Puritans, the Dutch Company ran the colony in the interests of the stockholders and with little tolerance for free speech, religion, or democratic government. Peter Stuyvesant, the governor sent by the Dutch West India Company, was in absolute control of the colony’s government. However, the inhabitants showed nearly total indifference to his leadership.

The relationship between Holland and England alternated from alliance against nations such as Spain, to conflict as they both sought to become the dominant trading empire. During a time when the two countries were experiencing hostilities, James, the Duke of York and brother to King Charles II, felt that the New Netherland colony could easily be conquered. Precipitating a conflict, King Charles II granted his brother a charter for the region between Maryland and Connecticut, which included New Netherland.

As was the case for the New Netherland area, many of the original thirteen colonies were settled as proprietorships. The crown granted individuals or a group of partners a charter to develop these proprietary colonies. In contrast, Virginia and the New England colonies were essentially corporate ventures, sponsored by joint-stock companies that funded the settlements as investments.

An English fleet soon set sail to seize the Dutch colony, and in 1664, they threatened to take over New Netherland. Governor Stuyvesant could not get anyone to defend the colony and the Dutch surrendered without firing a shot. New Netherland was now an English possession, but the Dutch continued to exercise an important social and economic influence on the land and language, contributing such words as cookie, crib, and Santa Claus. Their merchants also gave Manhattan much of its original bustling, commercial atmosphere having developed such places as Wall Street and Broadway.

New Amsterdam was renamed New York in honor of the Duke of York. The English now ruled a stretch of land that ran from Maine to the Carolinas. Out of all of the English colonies, the settlers in the middle colonies came from the most varied backgrounds. By 1664, the city of New York best illustrated these varied backgrounds with inhabitants that included Scots, French, Dutch, Swedes, Germans, Norwegians, Irish, Poles, Portuguese, and Italians who were the forerunners of millions to come.

Soon after the Duke of York conquered New Netherland, he granted the land between the Hudson and the Delaware Rivers to two of his friends, Sir George Carteret and Lord John Berkeley. The new territory was named New Jersey in honor of Carteret’s native island of Jersey. To attract settlers the two men offered land on easy terms and established freedom of religion and a relatively democratic government. The new colony grew rapidly. Several of the migrants were New England colonists who were leaving the already overworked soil of their own colonies.

The two proprietors split New Jersey with a diagonal line into East and West New Jersey—Carteret taking the east side. In 1674, Berkeley sold West New Jersey to a group of Quakers who were trying to escape persecution. The Quakers, a group formally known as the Religious Society of Friends, were a religious movement founded by George Fox. Dismayed by the struggles among Calvinists, Anglicans, and Catholics in England, Fox preached that spirituality was rooted in an individual’s personal relationship with God. This religious view left little room for clergy, liturgy, or hierarchy, and rejected doctrines such as predestination. Fox’s followers were called “Quakers,” which was originally meant as an insult, because they “trembled at the name of the Lord.”

Quakers were deeply devoted to their beliefs. They opposed warfare and resorted to passive resistance whenever confronted. English authorities felt the Quakers were especially insulting dissenters because they believed that they could communicate directly with God. They also refused to pay taxes to support the Church of England, were unwilling to bow before any person of higher authority, and refused to surrender their right to worship as they pleased. These practices appeared treasonous and heretical to most English officials.

Quakers in England were being persecuted, killed, and imprisoned for their beliefs. As with the Puritans, however, the English government was willing to put up with colonies of Quakers in the Americas so long as they expanded the English presence on the Atlantic Coast. The Quakers eventually acquired East New Jersey in 1680 when Carteret died. The acquisition of New Jersey gave the Quakers a place where they could practice their religion in peace. Then in 1702, the crown reclaimed and combined East and West New Jersey into a single royal colony.