Slavery in New Netherland

In June 2015 Mayor Bill De Brasio announced plaque at Lower Manhattan in commemoration of the 18th century slave market which was open at the foot of Wall Street. Together with the African cemetery monument (about 10 blocks north of Wall Street), these markers remind the few public slavery in the area. A monument is rare, but the history of slavery in cities and provinces ranged from 1626 to 200 years. In fact, helped enslave men, women, and children build the foundations of cities and nations.

In the past 200 years, the slavery system in New York has undergone a major change. The life of the enslaved population of New Holland is quite different from that of men, women and children traded in the slave market of Wall Street in the 1st century. Manuel de Gerrit de Reus, Sijmon Congo, Paulo Angola was the first slave man living in New Holland. After the first Europeans settled in this area they were only taken one or two years as colonial slaves of the company and they helped to lay the initial foundation of the colony. The new Dutch slavery population is often living near the free white settlers, working and worshiping. Unlike their counterparts in the 18th century, some of these enslaved people received payment at the Netherlands Reformed Church, possessed property, married their babies, baptized, conditional freedom I got farmland in Manhattan.

Because the enslaved group of New Holland did not leave any written record, their story is often unknown. Fortunately, trial records, land borrowing, church records, and official correspondence mention Manuel de Gerrit de Reus, Sijmon Congo, Paulo Angola, and many of their slavery Africans It is. We can at least be part of their story. Like Lower Manhattan's plaques and monuments, this exhibition hopes to attract attention to this important part of New York's history that is often forgotten.

The exhibition was developed by Andrea Mos Taman, Associate Professor of Atlantic History at the University of New Orleans.

I especially thank Dr. Dennis Maika for his editorial help and Steve McErleane's technical skills and support.

The West Indian company in the Netherlands introduced slavery in New Holland in 1625. When colonies fell to the UK, the company released all slaves and built the core of free Africans northeast. In an early attempt to encourage European solutions, the New Jersey Parliament imposed a prohibition tariff on imported slaves and backed European contractual enslavement. Quaker opposed slavery, but by 1730 the settlers took 4,000 slaves to Pennsylvania. The gradual abolition of the Pennsylvania State Act of 1780 is the first attempt to abolish colonial slavery and will become the United States.

The last country to end slavery in western countries was Brazil in 1888. Two years before the end of the American Civil War, the Netherlands abolished colonial slavery. To help lay the foundation for the Brussels conference in 1890, the repression of European slave trade really ended it in most parts of the world. After Mr. Lee's death, many people in the south created the illusion of martyrs and "causes of failure". A monument was built, and the war formed a myth that it is not slavery, but about "principles" which can not be explained. Lee became a symbol, and this symbol is now called a real symbol by a civil rights activist. Caucasian superiorists try to rewrite the history of their images

When the Dutch West India Company founded New Holland as a trading place in 1626, it was not particularly eager to encourage the importation of slaves, but that is a common labor problem of all rich colonies It turned into slavery as soon as a means to solve it. The first crisis was the lack of agricultural labor and could not be cultivated in the fertile land of the Hudson Valley. The majority of colonies in the early 18th century was black. In the years before the American Revolutionary War, the decline in the percentage of blacks in the New York population did not indicate a reduction in the number of blacks in blacks.