Possessing Albany, 16301710 The Dutch and English Experiences [Paperback]

Shows how the Dutch possessed the land, traded over it, surrendered it to the English, and then lived out their lives balancing a 'gaze' that the conquerors had for land against their own.In Possessing Albany, 16301710, Donna Merwick reconstructs the manifold ways by which Dutch people of seventeenth century New York took hold of the New World. As Merwick reminds us, the Dutch understood themselves to be republican, urban, mobile, mercantile, and amphibious; in short, properly Dutch.In Possessing Albany, 16301710, Donna Merwick reconstructs the manifold ways by which Dutch people of seventeenth century New York took hold of the New World. As Merwick reminds us, the Dutch understood themselves to be republican, urban, mobile, mercantile, and amphibious; in short, properly Dutch.This book reconstructs the manifold ways by which Dutch people of seventeenth-century New York took hold of the New World. As the author reminds us, the Dutch understood themselves to be republican, urban, mobile, mercantile, and amphibious; in short, properly Dutch. She shows how the Dutch possessed the land, traded over it, surrendered it to the English, and then lived out their lives balancing a gaze that the conquerors had for land against their own.Acknowledgments; Abbreviations; Introduction; 1. Possessing the land, 16301652; 2. Trading on the land, 16521664; 3. Surrendering the land, 1664; 4. Occupancy of land under English rule, 16741690; 5. Contesting the land, 16891691; 6. A military presence on the land, 16901710; 7. Reflections on looking at the land; Index. ...fascinating and highly original; it affords a fresh view of a timeworn subject by introducing anthropological thought into the apparatus of historiography. William N. Fenton, Ethnohistory Professor Merwick, of the University of Melbourne (Australia), has written a thought-provoking study of 17th and 18th century Albany. The New York Genealogical and Biographical Record