Who was Peter Stuyvesant?
Many people are familiar with the name Peter Stuyvesant, yet relatively little is known about him and no reliable biography of him exists. He was born in all probability in 1610 in the Frisian village of Stellingwerf. He studied literature and philosophy at the University of Franeker but had to cut short his school career because of ‘an affair’ with a girl.

One of his father’s associates found him a job with the Dutch West Indian Company in Amsterdam, where he attracted attention (in the positive sense) because of his diligence. After a short period in Brazil he left for the island of Curaçao in 1638. In the period between 1640 and 1795 an estimated ninety thousand Africans passed through Curaçao, to be sold as slaves. In 1643 Stuyvesant was appointed director of the island. He was ordered by the WIC to capture the island of Sint Maarten from the Spanish, but the campaign failed. Stuyvesant lost his right leg in battle and had himself measured for a wooden prosthesis with silver fittings.

In 1644 he left Curaçao to return to Holland and recover from his injury. There he married Judith Bayard. The couple had two sons, Balthasar Lazarus in 1647 and Nicolaes Willem in 1648.

Assigned to New Netherland
After being appointed governor of the colony of New Netherland and the Antilles in 1647 he let it be known that he was someone to be reckoned with. Contemporaries describe him as a conceited, egotistical, arrogant man with little cultural refinement. It soon became evident that these characteristics would continue to influence his work. Commenting on his style of leadership, a director of the WIC wrote, ‘Our great Muscovy Duke is carrying on as usual. He’s just like a wolf whose tendency to bite increases with age.’ It was his habit during meetings to bang his wooden leg on the floor every now and then whenever he did not agree with the way things were going.

He issued a prohibition on the sale of alcohol to the Indians, and he also prohibited the sale of alcohol after nine o’clock at night. To increase the colony’s revenues he imposed an excise tax on wine and other alcoholic drinks. All furs intended for the fur trade had to be stamped in an effort to discourage smuggling, and a thirty-cent tax was levied on every fur that was sold.

Stuyvesant went to great lengths to limit religious freedom in the colony and to compel the inhabitants to attend the Dutch Reformed church. He mercilessly persecuted Lutherans, Baptists, Jews and Quakers until public opinion in the colony and the Directors in Amsterdam forced him to assume a more moderate attitude.

He attempted to bring about better economic cooperation between the Caribbean island and New Netherland. New Netherland would provide food for the islands in return for a steady supply of horses, salt and slaves. The plan ended in failure, however, because the islands discovered that it was more profitable to trade within their own region.

Conflicten aplenty
A conflict arose over a piece of land that Adriaen van der Donck had purchased from the Company. Van der Donck was an opponent of quite some stature. He was a lawyer and secretary of the Council and was more than capable of taking a stand against Stuyvesant. This he did by writing a devastating report on conditions in the colony. Back in the Republic he attempted to defend himself against Stuyvesant with his ‘Vertoogh van Nieu Nederland’ (Exposé of New Netherland), which made a deep impression. But it did nothing to solve the problem of the authoritarian governor, and Van der Donck returned to the colony disappointed.

The governor possessed unbridled energy. With great shrewdness he settled the long-standing border conflict that had existed with the English in the north and the Swedes in the south. The English were too strong to be dealt with militarily, so he drew up a treaty with the colonists of Connecticut. His approach to the problem with the Swedes on the Delaware River to the south was completely different. In 1655, after having been given permission from the WIC, he approached the Swedish settlement with six hundred soldiers in seven ships. The Swedes surrendered immediately and the colony became Dutch territory.

War with the Indians
Upon returning to New Amsterdam from his Delaware expedition, he was confronted by a fierce conflict with the local Indians. The immediate cause of the conflict was that a Dutch farmer had caught an Indian woman stealing peaches from his orchard. The farmer shot and killed the woman, and the family of the woman demanded compensation in return. At first Stuyvesant succeeded in keeping the matter under wraps, but not for long. In 1658 the so-called Peaches War broke out, in which the various Indian tribes fought side by side against the colonists.

The end of the colony
The colony grew steadily under Stuyvesant’s rule. The population increased to about nine thousand and intensive trade was carried on with the Republic, especially Amsterdam. But the pressure on New Netherland from the surrounding English colonies increased as well. More and more English colonists, armed or not, managed to penetrate Dutch territory. In the meantime, war broke out again between the two home nations on the North Sea. In August 1664 four English war ships appeared off the coast of New Amsterdam. Stuyvesant had no choice but to hand the colony over to the English.

He spent the last years of his life with his wife and married sons on his ‘bouwerij’ (farm) in the re-named colony of New York. He was buried in 1672 (some sources say 1682) in the chapel near his home. The original building burnt down in the eighteenth century and was replaced in 1799 by the present church. New Netherland’s most famous governor lies there still.