The Island at the Center of the World - The Epic Story of Dutch Manhattan, the Forgotten Colony That Shaped America (Hardcover, 1st ed)

In the late 1960s, an archivist in Albany made a remarkable discovery: twelve thousand pages of centuries-old correspondence, court cases, legal contracts, and government reports from a forgotten society, the Dutch colony of Manhattan, which was founded only three years after the Pilgrims landed at Cape Cod. This was one of the most significant discoveries of historical American documents ever and, for the past thirty years, a scholar named Charles Gehring has been translating them. Russell Shorto’s brilliant narrative brings these astonishing discoveries to light, for the dramatic story these papers tell is nothing less than a complete revision of early American history.

Generations of schoolchildren have been taught that the intrepid Puritans of New England were the progenitors of America, but THE ISLAND AT THE CENTER OF THE WORLD clarifies they were not alone. Russell Shorto brings this extraordinary society to life, and illustrates how so many of the characteristics we think of as American—ethnic diversity, an instinct for trade, a certain exuberance, and a moral laxity—come not from the intolerant Pilgrims of Massachusetts but from the forgotten Dutch colony, America’s first melting pot.

Manhattan was a rich prize for England and the Dutch Republic—the rival superpowers of the seventeenth century–and they vied for control of the island and its environs. THE ISLAND AT THE CENTER OF THE WORLD is thus a story of political intrigue and international warfare, set against the uncertainties and glories of the age of European expansion. More than that, it is the story of a power struggle between two men: Peter Stuyvesant, the peg-legged impassioned governor sent from Holland to rein in the miscreant New Amsterdamers; and Adriaen Van der Donck, whose brilliant political gamesmanship, commitment to individual freedom, and exuberant love of his new country set the foundation for the culture of the city we now call New York, and a political society grounded in a uniquely American freedom.