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The Island at the Center of the World: The Epic Story of Dutch Manhattan and the Forgotten Colony That Shaped America Paperback – April 12, 2005
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"Astonishing . . . A book that will permanently alter the way we regard our collective past." --The New York Times
When the British wrested New Amsterdam from the Dutch in 1664, the truth about its thriving, polyglot society began to disappear into myths about an island purchased for 24 dollars and a cartoonish peg-legged governor. But the story of the Dutch colony of New Netherland was merely lost, not destroyed: 12,000 pages of its records–recently declared a national treasure–are now being translated. Russell Shorto draws on this remarkable archive in The Island at the Center of the World, which has been hailed by The New York Times as “a book that will permanently alter the way we regard our collective past.”
The Dutch colony pre-dated the “original” thirteen colonies, yet it seems strikingly familiar. Its capital was cosmopolitan and multi-ethnic, and its citizens valued free trade, individual rights, and religious freedom. Their champion was a progressive, young lawyer named Adriaen van der Donck, who emerges in these pages as a forgotten American patriot and whose political vision brought him into conflict with Peter Stuyvesant, the autocratic director of the Dutch colony. The struggle between these two strong-willed men laid the foundation for New York City and helped shape American culture. The Island at the Center of the World uncovers a lost world and offers a surprising new perspective on our own.
- Print length416 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherVintage
- Publication dateApril 12, 2005
- Dimensions5.2 x 0.86 x 7.94 inches
- ISBN-101400078679
- ISBN-13978-1400078677
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Get to know this book
Popular highlight
Upward mobility was part of the Dutch character: if you worked hard and were smart, you rose in stature. Today that is a byword of a healthy society; in the seventeenth century it was weird.593 Kindle readers highlighted thisPopular highlight
The Dutch were growing in might right alongside the English, and would peak sooner, giving the world Rembrandt, Vermeer, the microscope, the tulip, the stock exchange, and the modern notion of home as a private, intimate place.464 Kindle readers highlighted thisPopular highlight
It was the Dutch of this era who invented the idea of the home as a personal, intimate space; one might say they invented coziness.390 Kindle readers highlighted this
Editorial Reviews
Review
“A tour de force. . . . The dramatic story of New York’s origins is splendidly told. . . . A masterpiece of storytelling and first-rate intellectual history.” --The Wall Street Journal
“As readable as a finely written novel. . . . social history in the Barbara Tuchman tradition.” --San Jose Mercury News
“Literary alchemy. . . . Shorto’s exhaustively researched and highly readable book is a stirring re-examination. . . . Brilliant and magisterial narrative history” —Chicago Tribune
“Masterly . . . A new foundation myth . . .Shorto writes at all times with passion, verve, nuance and considerable humor.” —The New York Times Book Review
“Rattlingly well told–a terrific popular history about a past that beautifully illuminates the present.” —The Sunday Times [London]
“A dramatic, kaleidoscopic and, on the whole, quite wonderful book. . . . This is one of those rare books in the picked-over field of colonial history, a whole new picture, a thrown-open window. . . . [A] full-blooded resurrection of an unfamiliar American patriot.” –The New York Observer
“Deserves to be a bestseller . . .narratively irresistible, intellectually provocative, historically invaluable” –The Guardian
“A spry, informative history. . . . Shorto supplies lucid, comprehensive contexts in which to see the colony’s promise and turmoil. . . . [D]elivers the goods with clarity, color and zest.” –The Seattle Times
“As Russell Shorto demonstrates in this mesmerizing volume, the story we don’t know is even more fascinating than the one we do . . .Historians must now seriously rethink what they previously understand about New York’s origins . . .” –The New York Post
“Russell Shorto fires a powerful salvo on the war of words over America’s origins . . . he mounts a convincing case [that], in Shorto’s words, ‘Manhattan is where America began.’ Readers . . find themselves absorbed in what can only be described as a plot, revolving around two strong men with conflicting visions of the future of Dutch North America.” –America: The National Catholic Weekly
“Fascinating. . . . A richly nuanced portrait set against events on the world stage.” --Time Out New York
“Shorto brings this . . . deeply influential chapter in the city’s history to vivid, breathtaking life [with] a talent for enlivening meticulous research and painting on a broad canvas. . . . In elegant, erudite prose, he manages to capture the lives of disparate historical characters, from kings to prostitutes.” –Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
“Remarkable. . . . [C]ompulsively interesting. . . . . Shorto argues that during the brief decades of its Dutch colonial existence Manhattan had already found, once and for all, its tumultuously eclectic soul.” –New Statesman
“Shorto delineates the characters in this nonfiction drama convincingly and compellingly.” –Fort Worth Star-Telegram
“[An] absorbing, sensual, sometimes bawdy narrative featuring whores, pirates, explorers and scholars. With clarity and panache, Shorto briskly conveys the complex history of the age of exploration.” –Times Literary Supplement
“Shorto’s book makes a convincing case that the Dutch did not merely influence the relatively open, tolerant and multicultural society that became the United States; they made the first and most significant contribution.” –American History
“Shorto’s prose is deliciously rich and witty, and the story he tells–drawing heavily on sources that have only recently come to light–brings one surprise after another. His rediscovery of Adriaen van der Donck, Peter Stuyvesant’s nemesis, is fascinating.” –Edward G. Burrows, coauthor of Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898, winner of the Pulitzer Prize in History
“A landmark work . . .Shorto paints the emotions and attitudes of his characters with a sure hand, and bestows on each a believable, living presence.” –The Times (London)
“A triumph of scholarship and a rollicking narrative . . . an exciting drama about the roots of America’s freedoms.” –Walter Isaacson, author of Benjamin Franklin: An American Life
From the Back Cover
The Dutch colony pre-dated the "original" thirteen colonies, yet it seems strikingly familiar. Its capital was cosmopolitan and multi-ethnic, and its citizens valued free trade, individual rights, and religious freedom. Their champion was a progressive, young lawyer named Adriaen van der Donck, who emerges in these pages as a forgotten American patriot and whose political vision brought him into conflict with Peter Stuyvesant, the autocratic director of the Dutch colony. The struggle between these two strong-willed men laid the foundation for New York City and helped shape American culture. The Island at the Center of the World uncovers a lost world and offers a surprising new perspective on our own.
About the Author
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
THE MEASURE OF THINGS
On a late summer's day in the year 1608, a gentleman of London made his way across that city. He was a man of ambition, intellect, arrogance, and drive--in short, a man of his age. Like our own, his was an era of expanding horizons and a rapidly shrinking world, in which the pursuit of individual dreams led to new discoveries, which in turn led to newer and bigger dreams. His complicated personality--including periodic fits of brooding passivity that all but incapacitated him--was built around an impressive self-confidence, and at this moment he was almost certainly convinced that the meeting he was headed toward would be of historic importance.
He walked west, in the direction of St. Paul's Cathedral, which then, as now, dominated the skyline. But the structure in the distance was not the St. Paul's of today, the serene, imperial building that signifies order and human reason, with the spirit of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment shining from its proud dome. His St. Paul's had a hunkering tower in place of a dome (the steeple that had originally risen from the tower had been struck by lightning almost half a century before and hadn't been replaced); it was a dark, medieval church, which suited the medieval market town that London still was in the early seventeenth century. The streets through which he walked were narrow, shadowy, claustrophobic, sloping toward central sewer ditches. The houses that lined them were built of timber and walled with wattle and daub--it was a city made chiefly of wood.
Since we know his destination and have some notion of the whereabouts of his house, it is possible to trace a likely route that Henry Hudson, ship's captain, would have taken on that summer day, on his way to meet with the directors of the Muscovy Company, funders of voyages of exploration and discovery. The widest thoroughfare from Tower Street Ward toward Cordwainer Street Ward was Tower Street. He would have passed first through a neighborhood that, despite being within sight of the scaffold and gallows of the Tower itself, was an area of relatively new, "divers fair and large houses," as John Stow, a contemporary chronicler, described, several of them owned by prominent noblemen.
On his left then came the dominating church of St. Dunstan in the East, and a reminder of his heritage. The Muscovy Company had not only funded at least two of Henry Hudson's previous sea voyages; going back through its history of half a century, it contained several Hudsons on its rolls. Among its charter members in 1555 was another Henry Hudson, who rose from a humble "skinner," or tanner, to become a wealthy member of society and an alderman of the City of London, and who may have been the explorer's grandfather. So our Henry Hudson was presumably born to the sea and to the company both, and inside the church he was now passing, his Muscovy Company namesake lay, beneath a gilded alabaster stone inscribed:
Here lyeth Henry Heardsons corps,
Within this Tombe of Stone:
His Soule (through faith in Christ's death,)
to God in Heaven is gone.
Whiles that he lived an Alderman,
And Skinner was his state:
To Vertue bare hee all his love,
To vice he bare his hate.
If in his walk the seaman chose to detour down the hill past the church, he would have come to the open expanse of the Thames, where the view west downriver was dominated by the span of London Bridge with its twenty stone arches, houses perched precariously along both sides of its course. Directly across the river, beckoning lowly and enticingly, lay Southwark, a wild outland and thus also the entertainment district, with brothels tucked into its alleys and, visible from here, the "bear bayting" arena, which provided one of the most popular distractions for the masses. Beyond it stood the rounded wooden structure of the Globe Theater in its original incarnation. Indeed, somewhere over on the Southwark side at this very moment, amid the tradesmen, whores, "sturdye Beggers," and "Common Players in Enterludes" that populated the borough, Shakespeare himself--at forty-four a near-exact contemporary of Hudson, then at the height of his powers and fame as the leading dramatist of the day--was likely going about his business, sleeping off a night of sack at the Mermaid with his actor friends Richard Burbage and John Heminge, maybe, or brooding over the foolscap sheets of Coriolanus, which was written about this time and which, coming on the heels of the great tragedies, may have felt a bit hollow.
Tower Street became Little Eastcheap, which in turn merged into Candlewick and then Budge Row. Hudson's business lay here, in an imposing building called Muscovy House, home of the Muscovy Company. The medieval look of the London of 1608 belied the fact that England's rise to global empire was under way, and one of the forces behind that rise lay through these doors. From the bravado of its formal name--the "Merchants Adventurers of England for the Discovery of Lands, Territories, Iles, Dominions, and Seigniories Unknown"--one might be excused for thinking it had been founded out of sheer, unstoppable exuberance. The original band of merchants and aristocrats who had formed it more than half a century earlier included many of the most distinguished men in London in the middle of the sixteenth century--the Lord High Treasurer, the Steward of the Queen's Household, the Keeper of the Privy Seal, the Lord High Admiral--as well as sundry other knights and gentlemen. But while global exploration, the great intellectual and business opportunity of the day, had brought them all together, no one considered the undertaking a swashbuckling adventure. It was desperation that drove them toward new horizons. The England of the 1540s had been a backwater, economically depressed, inward-looking, deep in the shadows of the great maritime empires of Spain and Portugal. Wool was the country's chief commodity, but English traders had been blocked from access to major European markets for more than a century. Economic stagnation was bound up with intellectual stagnation: while the Renaissance was in full flower on the Continent, English interest in the wider world was slim, and the few long voyages of exploration England had mounted were mostly led by foreigners, such as the Venetian John Cabot (ne Giovanni Cabotto). When it came to sea voyages, the English declined.
History traditionally links the rise of England in the period with the elevation of Queen Elizabeth to the throne in 1558. But one could trace it to 1547, when an intellectually voracious twenty-year-old named John Dee did something countless students since have done: spent his summer abroad and returned flush with new knowledge and insights. After an academic career at Cambridge in which he proved to be something of a mathematical genius, Dee traveled to the University of Louvain in what is today Belgium. The rich summer sun of the Brabant region might have been revelation enough, but Dee soon found himself in a lecture hall gazing at an object that was, to him, transcendent. The teacher was Gemma Frisius, a Flemish mathematician and charter of the heavens, and what Dee saw was a map astonishing in its level of detail, in the new lands it portrayed, even in its lettering. The Low Countries, he discovered, were miles ahead of his island in new learning.
Dee spent long candle-lit nights poring over Frisius's maps with a Flemish scholar named Gerhard Kremer. Kremer, an engraver by training, had, under the academic pen name of Mercator, begun to make a name for himself ten years earlier by creating a map of Palestine that rendered the Holy Land with greater accuracy than had ever been achieved. Mercator was a genuine Renaissance man--a master cartographer, an engineer of telescopes, sextants, surveying equipment, and other highly sensitive measuring devices, the author of a gospel concordance, promoter of the new italic typeface that made map print more legible--and in him Dee found a soul mate. In 1569, Mercator would publish the map that would give him his immortality, which rendered latitude and longitude as straight lines, the meridians of longitude evenly spaced and the distance between the parallels of latitude increasing in size as one approached the poles. It would solve a cumbersome problem of navigating at sea because with it sailors could plot and follow a straight course rather than have to constantly recalculate their position. (The Mercator projection is still a feature of navigational maps, although, even at that time, some mariners were as confused as later generations of schoolchildren would be by the distortions in size it caused.)
In a nice foreshadowing of the complicated intermingling between the Low Countries and the British Isles that would shape the next century, when Dee returned to London he brought with him maps, measuring instruments, and globes, created by Mercator and Frisius, that would help spark England's rise to global prominence. What Dee's English colleagues found most intriguing about the maps and globes was an area most people would ignore: the top, the Arctic Circle. Frisius's map, oriented as if looking down from the north star, showed a distinct open channel cutting across the Arctic, which was self-confidently labeled in Latin Fretum trium fratrum. The sight of the boldly indicated Strait of the Three Brothers must have made Dee's English friends gasp. The Holy Grail for all learned and adventuresome minds was the discovery of a short passage to the riches of Asia. Finding it would repay investors many times over; for the English, it would vault their economy out of the Middle Ages and into the European vanguard. The legend of the Strait of the Three Brothers was confused even at that time, but it appears to have been based on the adventures of the Corte Real brothers, Portuguese mariners who explored the area around Newfoundland at the beginning of the sixteenth century, and who, in the minds of some, sighted, or perhaps even sailed, the fabled passage to Asia before two of them vanished into Arctic oblivion. (Ironically, the Spanish also had a theory about this mythical strait, only they called it the Englishmen's Strait.) Now there it was on Frisius's map, thanks apparently to Frisius's contacts with Portuguese mariners. It was on Mercator's globe as well, labeled simply fretum arcticum, arctic strait. As with most people in any endeavor, seeing the thing in print, seeing its coasts and coves delicately but decisively rendered, confirmed its reality.
Fate, it seemed, had brought together the men, the means, and the time. The solution to England's twin crises of economy and spirit was out there. So the nation's leaders formed a business circle, chipping in twenty-five pounds per share and raising a total of six thousand pounds.
With the principals lined up and funds ready, it only remained to choose the likeliest route--either the one indicated on Frisius's map or one of several others that were now being put forth with equal confidence. The point was to find a northern passage both because such a shortcut would render obsolete the Spanish and Portuguese monopoly on the Southern Hemisphere and because any northern peoples encountered along the way would be more likely buyers for English wool. That an Arctic sea route existed was beyond anyone's doubt. The universal belief among the intelligentsia in something we know to be a physical impossibility in wooden sailing vessels rested on several arguments, such as the one put forth by the Dutch minister and geographer Peter Plancius that "near the pole the sun shines for five months continually; and although his rays are weak, yet on account of the long time they continue, they have sufficient strength to warm the ground, to render it temperate, to accommodate it for the habitation of men, and to produce grass for the nourishment of animals."
The name by which the company became known gives away what happened on the first voyage it financed. A doughty mariner named Richard Chancellor took the northeast route, and while he failed to discover a passage to the Orient, he became the first Englishman of the era to make landfall at Russia. The so-called Muscovy trade that ensued--in which the English found a ready market for their wool, and imported hemp, sperm oil, and furs from the realm of Ivan the Terrible--was so profitable that the search for a northern route to Asia was largely abandoned.
The company expanded, and the nation with it. Elizabeth ascended to the throne; Drake circumnavigated the globe; Shakespeare wrote. When, in 1588, Philip II of Spain launched an invasion fleet toward England, intending to bring the island into his empire and win its people back to Roman Catholicism, the undersized English navy shocked the world by crushing the Armada. The aftermath of the victory was one of those moments when a nation suddenly realizes it has entered a new era. Theirs wasn't a dark and chilly island after all, the English public was informed by their great poet, but a "precious stone set in the silver sea."
By the early 1600s, however, the wheel had taken another turn. The queen was dead, and the Russia trade had fallen off. Faced once again with financial crisis, the company's directors made a decision to return to their original purpose. They would resurrect the Renaissance dream, commit themselves anew to discovering a northern passage to Asia.
The man they now turned to to renew the quest is not the protagonist of this story, but the forerunner, the one who would make it possible. In the ranks of legendary explorers, Henry Hudson has been slighted: not celebrated in his time by the English public as Francis Drake or Martin Frobisher or John Cabot had been, not given nearly the amount of ink that history has devoted to Columbus or Magellan. There is a logic of personality in this: Drake had defined manhood for an era, and the Italian Cabot had a feckless charm (he was in the habit, after his celebrated return from the New World, of promising people he met in taverns that he would name islands for them), but when we come to Henry Hudson it is a dark and moody figure hovering behind the records, one seemingly more comfortable in the shadows of history. A new appreciation for the Dutch colony in North America, however, compels a reappraisal of the man whose fitful decision-making rerouted the flow of history.
Nothing is known of his early career, but the fact that he was a ship's captain indicates that he had had a lengthy one by the time we encounter him in 1608. It's reasonable to assume that he had served in the defeat of the Armada twenty years earlier, though we have no information on this. The Muscovy Company tended to start apprentices as boys and have them work through one or more aspects of the business: bureaucrat, "factor" (i.e., agent), or sailor. Thus, one Christopher Hudson, who rose to the position of governor of the company from 1601 to 1607 and whom some historians have thought was most likely Henry Hudson's uncle, had worked his way up in the sales and marketing line, serving as a company representative in Germany in his youth. Henry Hudson was in his forties when he stepped into the light of history, a seasoned mariner, a man with a strong and resourceful wife and three sons, a man born and raised not only to the sea but to the quest for a northern passage to Asia, who, weaned from infancy on the legends of his predecessors, probably couldn't help but be obsessed by it.
Product details
- Publisher : Vintage (April 12, 2005)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 416 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1400078679
- ISBN-13 : 978-1400078677
- Item Weight : 2.31 pounds
- Dimensions : 5.2 x 0.86 x 7.94 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #29,936 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #4 in Amsterdam Travel Guides
- #26 in U.S. Colonial Period History
- #193 in U.S. State & Local History
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
![Russell Shorto](https://cdn.statically.io/img/m.media-amazon.com/images/S/amzn-author-media-prod/f8ikf5h220gglqicqe13a0crvj._SY600_.jpg)
Russell Shorto is the author of eight books of narrative history, including the international bestseller THE ISLAND AT THE CENTER OF THE WORLD. His new book, coming in March 2025, is TAKING MANHATTAN. He is the director of the New Amsterdam Project at the New-York Historical Society and Senior Scholar at the New Netherland Institute. In 2009 he was awarded a knighthood from the Dutch government for his work in increasing historical understanding between the Netherlands and the United States. (author photo: Izzy Watson)
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Customers find the writing style well-written and rich. They also appreciate the intellectually honest approach and unexpected speculations.
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Customers find the book's content wonderful, informative, and detailed. They also appreciate the intellectually honest approach and the Dutch origins of many aspects of the city. Readers also say the book is the best non-fiction they've read and unexpected.
"Great history. Surprisingly little know by the Anglo centric history community...." Read more
"...The book is really a triumph of non-fiction historical narrative...." Read more
"...It is also great to discover the Dutch origins of many aspects of the City, such as Yonkers, Bronx, Broadway, the Bowery, Wall Street, etc., etc...." Read more
"...Well researched and the narration ties the facts together in a very linear and logical way." Read more
Customers find the writing style very well written, interesting, and adventure-like. They also say the author's voice is very present.
"...Reads like a novel. Highly recommended!" Read more
"...To be fair, however, the book does tell a story effectively, and it does have an impressive bibliography...." Read more
"This book is well written. A page turner if you're into history and looking for a nice summer read...." Read more
"...It is a riveting small essay on great good fortune...." Read more
Customers find the book beautiful, colorful, detailed, and readable. They also say the author creates vivid pictures of history.
"...It does a wonderful job painting the 17th century world when the Dutch founded New Netherland's the first European colony in what would become New..." Read more
"...version (as in my local University library), it comes with a beautiful sepia-toned, double-page map gracing the endpapers." Read more
"...I liked the way the author was not ponderous and created vivid pictures of history...." Read more
"...The New Netherlands, its raw beauty and fascinating characters come to life." Read more
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Top reviews from the United States
There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.
He is maybe a little too harsh on the English occasionally as he is trying to prove how the Dutch are just as worthy of praise for American founding as the English, but he does a very good job comparing the Dutch and Early New Netherlands.
The book is really a triumph of non-fiction historical narrative. It really is the story of the Dutch founding of New Netherlands told in a compelling way with several main characters like Van Der Donck and Director Kieft.
I loved the small details that let you imagine how different the 17th century world was even from that of the 18th century. He mentions armour several times and Pikes (long spears) that were used in the 17th century as relics of the Middle Ages. Details of the colonies early Forts and houses is also interesting. He also includes Dutch European history at the time and their war with the Spanish which is pretty crucial to the story.
Anyone interested in 17th century colonization should give this a read. His argument that the Dutch broader idea of tolerance affected America just as much as the Puritans is interesting and even if you don't 100% agree it's still a wonderful read and paints Early New York in a way no other book I've read before does.
In short, he writes like a tabloid newspaper writer who must now write a serious piece. It is very annoying that he constantly uses artistic license to recreate possible conversations and occurrences. Furthermore, it is clear that his perspective on the early history of New York (New Netherlands) and the rest of the world lacks depth. The book reads, but I was always wondering what I might have been missing.
To be fair, however, the book does tell a story effectively, and it does have an impressive bibliography. And when he just sticks to the facts the book gets even more interesting and believable. It is also great to discover the Dutch origins of many aspects of the City, such as Yonkers, Bronx, Broadway, the Bowery, Wall Street, etc., etc. It is also great to get an idea of who Stuyvesant was, but learning about the other founders, Van der Donck and Kieft, was just as fascinating.
Learning about how the British selfishly and forcibly stole the settlement from the Dutch futher opened my eyes. Furthermore, Shorto also opened my eyes to Sweden's pioneering colonial involvement in what is now the state of Delaware.
I just wonder how others would have written this story. It seems like most of the story came from sources other than this newly discovered cache of Dutch documents.
As an aside, after reading this book, you will be titilated by reading Washington Irving's Rip Van Winkel and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and other stories he wrote that take place in Old Dutch settlement here. In the early 1800's, when Irving wrote, he was extremely popular.
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I have the hardcover edition. I found it fascinating, and as a NYC person I understand a bit better the small world I live in... HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
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