Colin Ross, "Unser Amerika", Chapter 10

 10.

A German Founds Holland's and Sweden's American Colonies

The dark storm cloud which for years and decades had been gathering ever more threateningly over Germany had burst, the great religious war had broken out. Thus the German people were paralyzed at the very moment when a new world was opening up and the earth was being divided. Nevertheless, the Thirty Years' War is not in itself a sufficient explanation why Germany fell so far behind in the distribution of the world. After all, it was not only a German war, but a general European war; Sweden and Poland, Denmark and Holland, England, France and Spain were more or less involved in it. However, this did not prevent the others, especially the Western powers, from nevertheless securing the largest colonial empires for themselves; indeed, the English one actually only came into being under constant battles against European opponents. The religious discord was not limited to Germany either, and the Huguenot wars in France were hardly less bloody than the religious struggles in Germany.

Nevertheless, in the others we see a strong national power emerging from all the struggles and turmoil, whether it be royalty in France or its adversary in England; in Germany, however, the national idea did not prove strong enough on any side to finally triumph over religious discord, neither among the Catholic emperor nor among the Protestant princes and cities.

Yet there was a moment in the course of the great war when it looked as if a power might emerge from it that could spill over to the sea and the land beyond. That was in 1626, when Tilly had defeated the Danes at Lutter am Barenberge and Wallenstein had subsequently thrown them out of Holstein and Jutland, when Friedländer stood with his victorious troops on the edge of the Baltic Sea and was unable to follow the Danes to their islands. Then the thought flashed in his brain, to create a German fleet.

The moment was not unfavorable. The war had come to a certain standstill and formally ended three years later in the Peace of Lübeck. Had the emperor and the princes stood at the height of their national task at that time, we might have been spared all the misery that has subsequently befallen the German people and continues to have an effect to this day. With the Peace of Lübeck the imperial power was so strengthened that henceforth a strong imperial policy would have been possible. The Hanseatic cities would have had the ships as well as the crew available for an imperial German war fleet. The way into the world would have been open to the German people, not as servants, beggars and refugees - as in the following - but as masters.

The Habsburgs, however, were at that time already first Catholics and then Germans; first came their domestic power and then perhaps the German Empire. Thus the emperor issued the Edict of Restitution at a moment when everything would have depended on extending a hand of reconciliation to the Protestants. With this violent act of Catholic reaction, of course, no peace between the confessions was possible, and the outbreak of war again, which then began so dramatically with Gustavus Adolphus' landing in Pomerania, was only a question of time. Even an Imperial German fleet was now, of course, out of the question. The city of Lübeck, with which Wallenstein, as a suburb of the Hansa, had negotiated on this matter, broke off the negotiations. Like the other German maritime cities, it rightly feared for its Protestantism.

What world-political possibilities would have arisen at that time, if the confessional quarrel had been put behind the national thought, is shown by a look at the simultaneous events of the year 1626 in America.

In that year, Virginia was still a little-extended colony, and the Pilgrim Fathers had hardly got beyond Plymouth Rock. The great Puritan emigration did not begin until about 1630. Between these two British settlements stretched a wide, masterless coast; for about this time Spain had abandoned all claims north of Florida, and the French confined themselves to advancing from the St. Lawrence across the Great Lakes. A few Dutch trading posts and fur hunters' cabins still lay on the Hudson. The great British explorer, after whom the river is named, had sailed it on Dutch commission, in search of the Northwest Passage. Since then, the Netherlands made a claim to this area. But the Dutch were primarily traders, and so it was not until the Dutch West India Company, which was in charge of trade and shipping on the entire African as well as American coast, sent a German as a plenipotentiary to the mouth of the Hudson and appointed him governor of the Dutch-American colony he had founded.

This Peter Minnewit from Wesel is one of the most important German colonial pioneers. He shows that there were colonial leaders among the Germans of those days. If this leader had been joined by the emigrants who later crossed the Atlantic in droves, and if there had been only one prince, only one imperial city in Germany, who had recognized the importance of securing a piece of the New World for Germans in time, so many millions of German comrades would not have had to be cultural fertilizer for other peoples.

If the Peace of Lübeck could have been kept for a few years instead of only a few months, everything might have turned out differently. American colonization plans were also in the air in Germany at that time. In the same year 1626, when Peter Minnewit bought the Manhattan peninsula, where the skyscrapers of New York stand today, from the Indians for ribbons and beads worth about fifty marks, an American colonization society was also founded in Sweden.

The main partner of this company was the king himself. A merchant from Antwerp, Wilhelm Usselinx, had pointed out to Gustav Adolf the unlimited possibilities of an American colonial empire. In the same year in which the Peace of Lübeck was concluded in Germany, the Swedish-Polish Armistice of Altmark came into being. It secured Swedish supremacy in the Baltic Sea area and freed Gustav Adolf's hands for his planned overseas adventures. He himself had subscribed 400,000 thalers. From the outset, he had in mind Swedish-German cooperation. In the German maritime cities, the plans of the Swedish king were eagerly accepted. Both Stettin and Stralsund declared their participation, as did the Duke of Pomerania. Emden was particularly eager to expand its trade and sought a seat and voice in the leadership of the planned society. Livonia, with its strong German population, offered to participate with 150,000 talers, and even more so, of course, was the rich Danzig.

A massive German-Swedish colonization and trade plan began to take firm shape. Then the reactionary zeal of the Catholic Habsburgs brought about the Edict of Restitution; Protestant freedom was threatened. To secure it, Gustavus Adolphus intervened in the German religious controversy, and instead of entering new American territory, he led his Swedes onto German soil, into the most terrible war ever to ravage our native soil.

While the great war raged in Germany, the German Minnewit built his colony on the banks of the Hudson. He built a fort at the end of the peninsula, which is still called Battery Place, and secured the settlement by a rampart, after which Wall Street, leading in its place, is named. Once the area, which Minnewit named New Amsterdam, was thus secured, it began to develop rapidly. Within a few years, the New Amsterdamers had beaten the Pilgrims in the fur trade. As early as 1628, when the colony was only two years old, the total trade was 56,000 guilders. Three years later it increased to 130,000.

Above all, however, the German governor was interested in the creation of settlements. He saw to it that cattle and horses came over, but above all people who were able and willing to cultivate the land. Everyone who landed in New Amsterdam was allotted as much land as he could cultivate.

Minnewit had recognized from the start how important it was to secure the young colony politically and militarily. So he not only built fort and rampart, but also laid the foundation for his own navy. Under his direction, the "New Netherland" was built, a ship that was 600, even according to some reports, 800 tons in size. In any case, it carried thirty cannons and was one of the largest ships afloat at that time.

Nevertheless, the military resources of New Amsterdam were still so limited that it was vital to maintain good relations with the British neighbors, but without abandoning the Dutch claims. Minnewit had to proceed with the utmost tact and diplomatic skill, since the English were basically making claims to the entire coast. But at first they were too occupied by the war against Spain and the internal religious disputes to assert them. In the meantime, the colony had to be made so strong that it could no longer be taken without further ado.

This would have required, in the first place, people who would have seen in the American soil their new native soil and, consequently, would have been willing and ready to defend it with arms. Unfortunately, however, the West India Company changed the land distribution system established by Minnewit. It set aside all land for the company and introduced what was known as the patronage system. Each partner who brought over fifty settlers at his own expense received an area of sixteen miles of shoreline on the Hudson, extending inward as far "as circumstances designed."

Understandably, one estate was soon lined up with another along the Hudson. The workers on them, however, were little more than serfs, subject to the full police and judicial power of the landowner. It is not surprising that thereupon the influx of colonists slowed down and, moreover, an endless chain of disputes began, which finally led to the recall of the German governor.

Minnewit had led the colony he had founded for six years and left it in flourishing condition. Under his successor, Wouter van Twiller, mismanagement set in, and after five years the company had to give up not only the patronage system, but also the fur trade monopoly.

The colony was now open to members of all nations. They rushed in from all sides, from New England and Virginia as well as from all the countries of Europe. Already in 1643, eighteen different languages were spoken in New Amsterdam. At that time the city, which after the English conquest was given the name of New York, acquired the international character which it has never since lost. Should a unified American nation ever come into being, the New Yorkers will be the last to be absorbed into it.

Still another characteristic clings to New York today from the days of its Dutch rule: its merchant spirit. In those days, when the Atlantic coast of America was being settled, the main impetus for emigration was the desire for religious freedom. Both the New England states, such as Pennsylvania or Maryland, were settled almost exclusively by people of faith who came over to the New World primarily for the sake of their ideal goals. But those who crossed over to New Amsterdam did so to do business. The system of large properties introduced by the Dutch against the wishes and advice of their German governor also had an effect. To this the old New York families trace their wealth, the van Rensselaers, the Schuylers and the Livingstones. Up to the year 1852 rent still had to be paid, which went back to these old land rights. Even after the courts put an end to this mischief, the mischief of the patronage system continues to this day, dividing the people into omnipotent masters and impotent serfs who must pay rent for them. To see this for oneself, one need only take the elevated train from Battery Place through New York and then to the Hudson. On the way to the billionaires' mansions, one will see such horrible misery that it will take a while to get over the impression.

It was for the sake of this merchant spirit and social injustice that New Amsterdam was lost to the Dutch. When the British sent a fleet to conquer the Dutch colony during the Anglo-Dutch War of 1664, not a hand was raised in its defense. Its governor had to surrender it without firing a shot. The same spirit lived at the time of the War of Independence, when the citizens of New York did business with both parties, and fathers had no qualms about taking English gold while their sons might be marching in rags in Washington's armies.

And today? Standing on the looming castles of finance capital, towering high above all the human misery on which they were built, thinking of the cold-hearted monetary policy that has its headquarters here, one would like to exclaim, like Jugurtha on leaving Rome, "O urbem venalern!" "O venal city," in which there is nothing that cannot be had for money and that is not betrayed and given away for money.

The German Peter Minnewit, however, did not experience the inner decline of his creation while outwardly flourishing. He went to Holland to seek his rights there. When he did not find it, he did not lose heart. He believed in America and its future. So he remembered the German-Swedish plan of founding a great American trade and colonization enterprise and went to Stockholm.

When he arrived there in 1636, of course, much had changed from a decade ago when Gustav Adolf conceived the plan. The great king himself was dead, an underage child sat on Sweden's throne, and his armies were roaming Germany in a hopelessly muddled war that was being fought only for the sake of war. German cities had other concerns than participation in an American colonial venture. Nevertheless, Peter Minnewit's tenacious energy managed to regain interest in Sweden for his American plans. By the winter of 1687, he was ready to set sail for the New World coast on a Swedish warship carrying fifty colonists.

There, in the meantime, the space still available had become smaller. The experienced old "American," however, knew where he could still fit in with his modest means and few men without arousing too much ill will and suspicion on the part of the old colonial powers, especially England. He steered his little ship to the mouth of the Delaware, where he built a fort. In honor of the little girl on Sweden's throne, he named it Fort Christina. It was thanks to Minnewit's diplomatic skills that he saved the new colony from English and Dutch encroachment, and to his economic foresight that it flourished in an astonishingly short time. Peter Minnewit understood the fur trade like no other, and already in the first year he had taken furs away from the Dutch trade for 30,000 guilders. At the call of the German governor, well known in America, settlers came from all sides to the banks of the Delaware, including Germans from the Baltic Sea towns.

As long as Peter Minnewit lived, the little colony flourished, and no enemy dared to attack it. He died at his post and was buried at Fort Christina. By all accounts, his successor was also a German, Johann Printz von Buchan, who had served in the Swedish army under Gustav Adolf. Johann Printz administered New Sweden until 1653, when two years later it fell into the hands of the Dutch, who had set out from New Amsterdam with seven ships and six hundred men to conquer it.