History of New York
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- This article is about the history of New York State.
For the history of New York before 1664 see New Netherland
For the history of New York before 1776 see Province of New York
For a history of the city see: History of New York City.
New York, the "Empire State" has been at the center of American politics, finance, industry, transportation and culture since it was created by the Dutch in the 17th century.
The western part of New York had been settled by the six nations of the Iroquois Confederacy for at least 500 years before Europeans came. The Iroquois had maintained the area between Seneca and Cayuga Lakes as a grassland prairie, which abounded in wild game including grazing American Bison herds. In colonial times, the Iroquois were prosperously growing corn, vegetables and orchards, and keeping cows and hogs; fish were also abundant.
The far-southern area around what is now New York City was long inhabited by the Lenape; Lenape in canoes met Giovanni da Verrazzano, the first European explorer to enter New York Harbor, in 1524. Giovanni da Verrazzano named this place Nouvelle Angoulême (New Angouleme) in honor of the French king François I. A French explorer and mapper, Samuel de Champlain, described his explorations through New York in 1608.
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[edit] New Netherlands
A year later Henry Hudson, an Englishman working for the Dutch, claimed the area in the name of the Netherlands. It was to be called New Amsterdam.
The Dutch, who began to establish trading posts on the Hudson River in 1613, claimed jurisdiction over the territory between the Connecticut and the Delaware Rivers, which they called New Netherlands. The government was vested in "The United New Netherland Company", chartered in 1614, and then in "The Dutch West India Company", chartered in 1622.
The Dutch were the first European settlers in the colony known as New Netherland. Fort Nassau was founded near the site of present-day Albany in 1614 and abandoned in 1618. About thirty Walloon families settled on the shores of the Hudson River now in present-day New York City and on the Delaware River around 1624, making them the first European inhabitants of the site. The Dutch also established Fort Orange near present-day Albany in 1624. New Amsterdam was established on the island of Manhattan which a year later Peter Minuit purchased from the Lenape.
In 1649, a convention of the settlers petitioned the "Lords States-General of the United Netherlands" to grant them "suitable burgher government, such as their High Mightinesses shall consider adapted to this province, and resembling somewhat the government of our Fatherland", with certain permanent privileges and exemptions, that they might pursue "the trade of our country, as well along the coast from Terra Nova to Cape Florida as to the West Indies and Europe, whenever our Lord God shall be pleased to permit."
The directors of the West India Company resented this attempt to shake their rule and wrote their director and council at New Amsterdam: "We have already connived as much as possible at the many impertinences of some restless spirits, in the hope that they might be shamed by our discreetness and benevolence, but, perceiving that all kindnesses do not avail, we must, therefore, have recourse to God to Nature and the Law. We accordingly hereby charge and command your Honors whenever you shall certainly discover any Clandestine Meetings, Conventicles or machinations against our States government or that of our country that you proceed against such malignants in proportion to their crimes."
These grants embraced all the lands between the west bank of the Connecticut River and the east bank of the Delaware River.
After the English took over in 1664, the colony was renamed New York, after the Duke of York, the future King James II.
[edit] Province of New York
In 1663 the Duke of York purchased the grant of Long Island and other islands on the New England coast made in 1635 to the Earl of Stirling. The following year, the Duke equipped an armed expedition, which took possession of New Amsterdam, which was thenceforth called Province of New York, after him.[1][2] This conquest was confirmed by the treaty of Breda, in July 1667. In July 1673, a Dutch fleet recaptured New York and held it until it was restored to the English by the treaty of Westminster in February, 1674.
The Province of New York was established by its colonial charter of 1664. The colonial charter of New York granted unlimited westward expansion, despite Native American presence in the Area. Massachusetts' charter had the same provision, causing territorial disputes between the colonies and with the Iroquois. The separate colony of New Jersey was created out of the southwestern part of New Netherlands, and the far southwestern portion given to Pennsylvania.
There lay a vast tract of land from the upper Mohawk River to Lake Erie, that was thinly occupied by the Iroquois and virtually unknown to the colonists. Since the colonial charters of both Massachusetts and New York granted unlimited westward expansion, the claim to this tract was disputed. There were also many tensions between the original Dutch settlers in the Hudson and Mohawk Valleys and the English who were rapidly arriving in Eastern New York, and the Germans were also establishing settlements in the Mohawk area.
[edit] American Revolution
The state of New York was created on July 9, 1776. Soon after, a permanent Committee for Detecting and Defeating Conspiracies was formed which passed many laws allowing the prosecution of proven or suspected enemies of the rebellion. After their civil rights were revoked and their property confiscated they were driven out of the state. (see Bill of attainder) In 1777, the state required a stringent oath of allegiance from its citizens, those who refused were exiled to occupied New York City. No other state did more to harass Loyalists within its borders.[citation needed]
During the revolution, New York was the site of the 1775 Capture of Fort Ticonderoga, the staging ground for the unsuccessful 1775 invasion of Canada, and site of the 1776 Battle of Valcour Island on Lake Champlain. The 1777 Battle of Saratoga was a major turning point in the war, preventing British forces from connecting their forces in Canada with those in New York City, and leading to support from France. The Sullivan Expedition of 1779 was in response to Indian attacks on the frontier settlements. In 1780, Benedict Arnold unsuccessfully attempted to turn West Point over to the British, a move that would have given the British control of the Hudson Valley.
During the period prior to the Revolution, a territorial dispute developed between New York and the Republic of Vermont that continued until after the war. Ultimately, the colonial counties of Cumberland and Gloucester became part of Vermont after 1777.
During the revolution, four of the Iroquois nations fought on the side of the British, with the exceptions of the Oneida and the Tuscarora. In 1779, Major General John Sullivan was sent to defeat the Iroquois. The Sullivan Expedition moved northward through the Finger Lakes and Genesee Country, burning all the Iroquois communities and destroying their crops and orchards. Refugees fled to Fort Niagara where they spent the following winter in hunger and misery. Hundreds died of exposure, hunger and disease. After the war, many moved to Canada.
[edit] Early national period: 1783-1820
Sullivan's men returned from the campaign to Pennsylvania and New England to tell of the enormous wealth of this new territory. Many of them were given land grants in gratitude for their service in the Revolution. From 1786 through 1797 several groups of wealthy land speculators entered into agreements with one another, with neighboring states, and with the Indians to obtain title to vast tracts of land in western New York. Some purchases of Iroquois lands are the subject of numerous modern-day land claims by the individual nations of the Six Nations.
For the Oneida nation's assistance in defeating the British, primarily assisting General Washington's army at Valley Forge, then President Washington while on tour of the Mohawk Valley signed the Treaty of Canandaigua. This Treaty promised the Oneidas among other things a large swath of land from Pennsylvania to Canada, forever. The Treaty was violated in the mid-1800s by New York State. This became the basis for the present land claim dispute.
After the end of the American Revolutionary War, Isaac Sears and others, in New York City, revived the Sons of Liberty. In March 1784, they rallied an enormous crowd which called for the expulsion of any remaining Loyalists from the state starting on May 1. The Sons of Liberty gained sufficient seats in the December, 1784 election to have enacted punitive Loyalist laws. These laws remained in effect until, 1786 when Loyalists not banned by name were allowed to return to the state, 1788 when confiscation of Loyalist property was stopped, and 1792 when those banned by name were allowed to return to the state provided they did not contest their previous forfeiture of their property.[citation needed]| This article's coverage of a controversial issue may be inaccurate or unbalanced in favor of certain viewpoints. Please improve the article by adding information on neglected viewpoints, or discuss the issue on the talk page. |
After a furious controversy, led by Alexander Hamilton, New York ratified the new federal United States Constitution, on July 26, 1788, and New York became the 11th state in the union with New York City being its national capital (until 1790).
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[edit] The Erie Canal
Main article: Erie Canal
Roads were poor and very slow, they were so bad that travelers often went astray, venturing into Indian camps and risking life and limb. The easiest and cheapest travel was by waterway. Ships could easily navigate up the Hudson to Albany. The Mohawk river provided a more difficult connection to the central part of the state. From 1807 there was much talk of building a canal system. Governor DeWitt Clinton became the chief sponsor, and in 1817 the first portion of a canal was begun, to connect the Hudson River with Lake Erie (and thence to the rest of the Great Lakes). The easy part was built first, a series of bypasses of rapids on the Mohawk River.
Though there was opposition, and the canal was derisively called "Clinton's Ditch" or worse, "Clinton's Folly," the canal was finally completed in 1825. Officially the event was celebrated by cannon shots along the length, and by Governor Clinton ceremonially pouring Lake Erie water into the New York Harbor in the "Wedding of the Waters." The Erie Canal proved to be a stroke of genius, as settlers now poured from New England, Eastern New York and Europe into the central and western part of the state. Others went on to Ohio and Michigan. The Canal was the first serious route for settlement west of the Appalachian Mountains, which had previously been a geographic barrier. Now upstate farms and industries could easily ship their products to the large and growing market of New York City and beyond. Had the Welland Canal, which bypassed Niagara Falls to connect Lakes Ontario and Erie, been built first, instead of in 1833, the history of North America could have been far different, with Montreal, Quebec possibly becoming the main eastern port, instead of New York City.
The Erie Canal, though no longer so important a trade route (it is supplanted by railroads and highways) still defines the central commerce belt of New York State. The port city of Buffalo, Lockport, where the canal crossed a great limestone ridge, mill-town and beautiful 'Flower City' Rochester on the Genessee, and many smaller cities owe their growth, perhaps even their existence, to the Erie. Connecting canals were also built to Lake Ontario and the larger Finger Lakes.
[edit] Settlement of Northern New York
In 1791, [Alex Bahret (1748 - 1831)|had gotten rich as a merchant in the American Revolution, bought 3,670,715 acres (14,855 km²) of northern New York at about twelve cents an acre. The tract, that ran along the St. Lawrence River and eastern Lake Ontario, including the Thousand Islands, was divided into ten large townships; the deeds for all the lands that are now included in Lewis, Jefferson, St. Lawrence and Franklin Counties, as well as portions of Herkimer and Oswego Counties are derived from this purchase. The land was divided into townships and sections for sale. See also the history of the Adirondacks.
[edit] Empire state industrializes: 1820-1920
[edit] Pre-Civil War
Upstate New York was the "Burned-Over District", a zone of intense religious and reform activity. typified by revivalist Charles Grandison Finney.
Two denominations emerged: the Seventh-day Adventist Church and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Benevolent reform movements (establishing Sunday Schools, and orphanages), temperance groups (abolishing the consumption of alcohol), antislavery societies, and women’s rights activists also found enthusiastic supporters in upstate New York between 1825 and 1860. Social experiments in communal living appeared in utopian communities at Oneida and Skaneateles; the best known are the Shaker villages near Albany. Historian Alice Felt Tyler called it a "ferment of reform."
At the same time, upstate New York was at the cutting edge of the transportation revolution, the agricultural revolution, the industrial revolution, and even the urban revolution. Turnpikes, canals, and railroads connected eastern cities with western markets. Especially important was the route from Albany to Buffalo, connected with the Seneca Turnpike (1803), Erie Canal (1825), and New York Central Railroad (1853). In agriculture, New York’s farmland, much of it former Haudenosaunee homeland, was some of the most productive in the nation. The Genesee country, from the Finger Lakes west, became known as the breadbasket of the nation for its extraordinary grain production. At key sites (such at Troy-Cohoes, the Sauquoit Creek west of Utica, Oswego, Seneca Falls, and Rochester), rapid-flowing rivers offered power for major industrial sites. In terms of urban growth, cities in New York State, along with those in the rest of the country, grew more rapidly between 1820 and 1860 than in any other period in U.S. history.
Following these expanding economic opportunities, people (including African Americans as well as European Americans of many different backgrounds) poured into upstate New York. They came from several different culture hearths—New England Yankees, Dutch and Yorkers from eastern New York, Germans and Scots Irish from Pennsylvania, and immigrants from England and Ireland. Upstate New York State became a place where people of many different backgrounds moved rapidly into the same area and created a volatile combination of voices and dramatic new movements.
[edit] Civil War
[edit] Gilded Age
Trains and local railways brought urban sprawl to rural areas surrounding cities, which were rapidly filling with immigrants. The amalgamation (politics) of these suburbs became a political issue.
[edit] Progressive Era
The governorships of Theodore Roosevelt, Charles Evans Hughes and Al Smith made New York a major factor in the Progressive Era.
[edit] Modern state: 1920-1975
[edit] Boom years: 1920-1929
[edit] Depression and war 1929-1945
WPA
[edit] Suburban growth
[edit] Politics: Smith, Lehman, Dewey, Rockefeller
[edit] Postmodern state: 1976-2006
[edit] Rustbelt economy
[edit] Service economy
[edit] Bibliography
[edit] Surveys
- Eisenstadt, Peter, Laura-Eve Moss, and Carole F. Huxley, eds. The Encyclopedia Of New York State (2005) 1900 pages of articles by experts.
- Ellis, David M., James A. Frost, Harold C. Syrett, and Harry J. Carman. A History of New York State. Rev. ed. Cornell University Press, 1967.
- Ellis, David M., James A. Frost, and William B. Fink. New York: The Empire State . 4th ed. Prentice-Hall, 1975.
- Flick, Alexander C. (ed.). History of the State of New York. 10 vol, 1933–37
- Hedrick, U.P. A History of Agriculture in the State of New York (1983)
- Jackson, Kenneth T. ed, The Encyclopedia of New York City (1995)
- Klein, Milton M., ed. The Empire State: A History of New York. Cornell University Press, 2001. the latest scholarly overview
- Thompson, J. H. ed., The Geography of New York State (rev. ed. 1977);
[edit] Pre 1820
- Becker, Carl Becker. The History of Political Parties in the Province of New York, 1760-1776. (1909).
- Bonomi, Patricia U. A Factious People: Politics and Society in Colonial New York. 1971.
- Countryman, Edward. A People In Revolution: The American Revolution and Political Society in New York, 1760-1790. 1981.
- DePauw, Linda. The Eleventh Pillar: New York State and the Federal Constitution. Cornell Univ. Press, 1966.
- Fox, Dixon Ryan. The Decline of the Aristocracy in the Politics of New York. Columbia Univ. Press, 1919.
- Kammen, Michael. Colonial New York: A History. 1975.
- Kenney, Alice P. Stubborn for Liberty: The Dutch in New York.Syracuse University Press, 1975.
- Kim, Sung Bok, Landlord and Tennant in Colonial New York: Manorial Society 1664-1775 (1978)
- McManus, Edgar J - A History of Negro Slavery in New York (1966)
- Spaulding, E. Wilder. New York in the Critical Period, 1781-1789. Columbia Univ. Press, 1932.
- Young, Alfred F. The Democratic Republicans of New York: The Origins, 1763-1797. U. of North Carolina Press, 1967.
[edit] 1820-1920
- Martin Bruegel. Farm, Shop, Landing: The Rise of a Market Society in the Hudson Valley, 1780-1860 (2002)
- Cross, Whitney R. The Burned Over District: The Social and Intellectual History of Enthusiastic Religion in Western New York, 1800-1850 (1950)
- Kaminski, John P. George Clinton: Yeoman Politician of the New Republic (1993)
- Niven, John. Martin Van Buren: The Romantic Age of American Politics (1983)
- Shaw, Ronald E. Erie Water West : a history of the Erie Canal, 1792-1854. (University of Kentucky Press, 1966)
- Van Dusen, Glyndon, William Henry Seward (1967)
- Yellowitz, Irwin. Labor and the Progressive Movement in New York State, 1897-1916. [1965].
[edit] 1920-2006
- Bellush, Bernard; Franklin D. Roosevelt as Governor of New York (1955) online
- Connery, Robert H. and Gerald Benjamin. Governing New York State: The Rockefeller Years, (1974) online.
- Davis Kenneth S. FDR: The New York Years, 1928-1933. 1979.
- Galie, Peter J.; Ordered Liberty: A Constitutional History of New York (1996)
- Gallagher, Jay. The Politics of Decline, A Chronicle of New York's Descent and What You Can Do To Save Your State (2005), conservative critique
- Ingalls, Robert P. Herbert H. Lehman and New York's Little New Deal (1975)
- Liebschutz, Sarah F., Robert W. Bailey, Jeffrey M. Stonecash, Joseph F. Zimmerman, and Jane Shapiro Zacek; New York Politics & Government: Competition and Compassion (1998) textbook online
- McClelland, Peter D., and Alan L. Magdovitz, Crisis in the Making: The Political Economy of New York State since 1945 (1981)
- McElvaine Robert S. Mario Cuomo: A Biography. 1988.
- Marlin, George J. Squandered Opportunities: New York's Pataki Years (2006) by Conservative party activist
- Moscow Warren. Politics in the Empire State. 1948.
- Munger Frank J., and Ralph A. Straitz. New York Politics. 1960.
- Mumpower, Jeryl L., and Warren F. Ilchman, New York State in the Year 2000 (1988)
- New York State Writers' Program; New York: A Guide to the Empire State (1940) famous guidebook by WPA online
- Pecorella, Robert F., and Jeffrey M. Stonecash. Governing New York State (2006)
- Slayton, Robert A. Empire Statesman: The Rise and Redemption of Al Smith (2001)
- Smith, Richard Norton. Thomas E. Dewey and His Times. 1982,
- Stonecash, Jeffrey M., John K. White, and Peter W. Colby, eds., Governing New York State (1994)
- Thompson, John Henry. The Geography of New York State (1977)
- Zeller, Belle; Pressure Politics in New York: A Study of Group Representation before the Legislature (1937) online
[edit] External links
- New York History Net
- New York State Historical Association
- New York State History, a journal sponsored by SUNY-Albany
- New York Local Histories (over 500)
- Annotated Bibliography of Selected New York State Maps: 1793-1900
- The Crooked Lake Review A New York history journal with numerous articles online
- How the Sullivan-Clinton Campaign Made the Empire State Possible
- 1911 Britannic article "New York"
- New York State Historical Literature Cornell University Library Digital Collection
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