New York City was founded by the Dutch as New Amsterdam 400 years ago

🗽 It's exactly 400 years ago this month that New York City was founded:

As a Dutch person I have to insufferably keep reminding everyone that New York City used to be New Amsterdam

🇳🇱 It was discovered and founded by the Dutch in May of 1624, so about this time 400 years ago the Dutch ships sailed into its bay

🏢 The lower part of Manhattan in the Financial District is pretty much the entire original town of New Amsterdam and its kept the same street/block structure as 400 years ago. Even the names are roughly the same:

Brede weg (wide road) -> Broadway
Bouwerij (farm) -> Bowery
Waal straat -> Wall Street

All around New York there's lots more that's Dutch, like these districts:

Breukelen (a tiny village near Utrecht) -> Brooklyn
Haarlem (a suburb of Amsterdam) -> Harlem
Vlissingen (a sea town) -> Flushing
Konijnen eiland (rabbit island) -> Coney Island
Lange eiland -> Long Island
Peter Stuveysant (Dutch officer) -> Bedford-Stuyvesant (aka Bed-Stuy)

The Hudson river was named after Henry Hudson who was a Brit who worked for the Dutch, a bit ironic because later the Dutch lost it to the Brits in 1664 who renamed it to New York

The street pictured below is de Herengracht (gentlemen's canal) which later became Broad Street and was extended a bit as NYC added 2 blocks of land in the sea, I tried to put the images in roughly the same perspective

🇺🇸 American culture is strongly influenced by New York City culture: entrepreneurship, freedom of expression, freedom of religion, free trade and of course the banking and finance sector

🟧 And I would argue a lot of that in turn is influenced by the original New Amsterdam culture brought by the Dutch of 400 years ago who held the same values back then

All over Europe people would flock to the Netherlands to live in freedom of persecution

Why?

Because generally in the Netherlands, the only thing back then people cared about was making money from trade, so they couldn't care less how you looked, what God you prayed to, or what your opinions were, it was about money. Not always good either (see the horrors of slavery and colonization) but at least it was more free than the rest of Europe

That spirit is still alive: people all over the world flock to America for the same reasons nowadays, freedom of persecution, and freedom of enterprise. The freedom to build a business and get rewarded (and celebrated) for it! It's not perfect and has its problems but at least people from all over the world come there to build stuff without much interference

I'd argue that the original Dutch free spirit that may have laid the foundations for America's free spirit has sadly died centuries ago in the Netherlands

🇪🇺 The current Dutch (and European!) culture to me feels not risk seeking but risk averse, not fearless but fearful and not ambitious but complacent. Which from my other posts you know I criticize because I'd love to see it reverse!

Happy birthday New York (or as I prefer to call it New Amsterdam 😝) 🗽🇺🇸

Originally posted on X