Russell Shorto: Taking Manhattan

The extraordinary events that created New York and shaped America

Buy Tickets

It is August 1664, and the blue-gray waters of Manhattan’s harbor glisten in the late summer sun. A wind stirs, and the lookout cries, while the citizens of New Amsterdam rush to the waterfront, where white sails are appearing on the horizon. The hulls of four ships come into view, flying the British colors. Commander …

It is August 1664, and the blue-gray waters of Manhattan’s harbor glisten in the late summer sun. A wind stirs, and the lookout cries, while the citizens of New Amsterdam rush to the waterfront, where white sails are appearing on the horizon. The hulls of four ships come into view, flying the British colors. Commander Richard Nicolls has come to take New Amsterdam from the Dutch, be it by diplomacy or force. Waiting behind the settlement’s barricades, Governor Peter Stuyvesant and his West-India Company soldiers have banded together with the colony’s citizens.

What happens next shapes the course of history.

From Russell Shorto, author of Amsterdam and The Island at the Center of the World comes his latest book, Taking Manhattan. Tracing the events from the ‘purchase’ of Manhattan by the Dutch West-India Company to the fated takeover by the British, Shorto paints a picture of a diverse, innovative and hardy city forging its own path. The fledgling settlement represented something new: a multiethnic capitalist society pioneered by the Dutch, then swept up into the power structure of the British empire.

In a narrative that features kings and captains as well as Indigenous leaders and free and enslaved Africans, Shorto dives into the archives, working with new, recently translated material. The result is a narrative that informs and entertains, brimming with insights and lives lived that he has written back into popular history.

The events in Taking Manhattan are of central importance not only to the history of New York—a city that has left an indelible mark on the world—but also to the character of United States. The paradox of New York’s origins, of boundless opportunity coupled with subjugation and displacement, reflect America’s promises and failures, right up to the present.

Program information

Russell Shorto is the bestselling author of Smalltime, Revolution Song, Amsterdam, and The Island at the Center of the World. He is the director of the New Amsterdam Project at the New York Historical Society, and past director of the John Adams Institute.

Andrew Makkinga is a Dutch journalist, radio host and DJ. He is one of the presenters of the NTR radio program Kunststof and regularly moderates and hosts events on a wide range of topics, from American culture and politics to literature and jazz.

Elyzabeth Gorman is the co-founder of Badass Tours, an Amsterdam-based historical storytelling organization that highlights the city’s hidden figures. Gorman will bring the past to life with a storytelling performance about one of New Amsterdam’s prominent female residents from August 1664, on the eve of the British takeover.

Program in collaboration with De Rode Hoed, with special thanks to John Adams sponsors Wolters Kluwer. Dutch translation provided by publishing house Uitgeverij Ambo | Anthos.

Read, Watch, Listen: Looking for background information in advance of the event? Read Jill Lepore’s – New York Burning; Liberty, Slavery, and Conspiracy in Eighteenth Century Manhattan (2005). Watch American Native (2014). Listen to Bruce Springsteen’s – New York City Serenade.

Moderator: Andrew Makkinga

 


If you like our past program, take a look at our upcoming speakers.