New York City (Atlantic History)

Introduction

When the English conquered New Amsterdam in 1664, the city was already a polyglot commercial community of some 1,500 inhabitants, 8 percent of whom were enslaved. As it was founded initially as a trading post under the aegis of the Dutch West India Company, trade and heterogeneity were part of the city’s makeup from its founding. When the Duke of York (later James II) sent four hundred troops to claim the city in the months leading to the second Anglo-Dutch war (1665–1667), the governor turned over the city without firing a shot. Even after this peaceful turnover, and possibly reinforced by a brief return to Dutch control in 1674, Dutch language and customs coexisted with the English for another century. The Dutch emphases on Atlantic trade, religious tolerance, and slavery never disappeared from British New York. English traders married into or absorbed earlier Dutch trading networks, consolidating New York’s economy as an Atlantic hub. Female New Yorkers likewise continued earlier trading practices in which Dutch women were active participants. The proliferation of religious and cultural communities fostered a dynamic and diverse culture with little top-down authority from either the state or churches. The result was a political scene marked by pervasive and unending conflict among political elites, which also offered opportunities for new political ideologies and alliances across class. It also set the stage for diverse coalitions of Loyalists and Whigs once the British army occupied the city during the American Revolution. Furthermore, the combination of a vibrant Atlantic market and a relatively weak state tended to encourage smuggling, illegal trafficking, and the development of an informal economy outside the purview of state regulation. Ideas and people as well as goods traveled along New York’s Atlantic networks. Political practices, theories of law, and conceptions of the natural world all came to New York via transatlantic pamphlets, newspapers, and technologies. Other Atlantic pathways brought slaves from Africa, the West Indies, and the Spanish shipping lanes. The city’s enslaved population grew at a much faster rate than the white population, reaching close to 15 percent by the middle of the 18th century. It was the largest black population north of the Chesapeake. Like other elements of its social, legal, and political structure, slavery and freedom in New York were categories defined by fluid and contradictory practices. Several slave uprisings, both real and imagined, revealed white New Yorkers’ fears over living with such a large enslaved population. At the same time, the demands of Atlantic maritime trading and labor practices sometimes offered opportunities for slaves that included partnerships with whites.

General Overviews

There are two excellent overviews that focus solely on English New York. Kammen 1975 focuses on the 17th and 18th centuries, examining political change and ethnic conflict. More recently, Burrows and Wallace 1999 put New York in a more Atlantic context, with an emphasis on the lives of ordinary New Yorkers. Landsman 2010 offers a synthetic overview of the middle colonies with an explicit comparison of New York City and Philadelphia.

Burrows, Edwin G, and Mike Wallace. Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.
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Impressive Pulitzer Prize–winning synthesis that locates hundreds of stories of individual New Yorkers of all sorts in a larger story of New York’s developing place in an Atlantic economy.
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Kammen, Michael G. Colonial New York: A History. A History of the American Colonies. New York: Scribner, 1975.
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Fundamental one-volume account of the colony that emphasizes its commercial, contentious, and heterogeneous nature. Focuses on political and economic white elites.
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Landsman, Ned C. Crossroads of Empire: The Middle Colonies in British North America. Regional Perspectives on Early America. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010.
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An overview of the mid-Atlantic colonies (Pennsylvania and New Jersey as well as New York) that locates them in both a continental and Atlantic context. Argues for a coherent regional identity of the area based on their interconnected pluralism, commerce, and importance to the British Atlantic empire.
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Primary Sources

Many sources for the history of New York were destroyed in a fire in the New York State Archives in 1911. Nonetheless, rich sources and collections, particularly for economic and political history, remain. O’Callaghan and Fernow 1853–1887 is a fine collection of official correspondence within which is hidden much other material. Stokes 1967 is a stunning and unusual collection of visual materials deposited in the New York Public Library. Colden 1918–1937 offers a perspective on nearly an entire century of New York history. Two collections are primarily legal: Horsmanden 1744 is the starting place for any discussion of the 1741 conspiracy; Morris 1935 offers a window into the lives of non-elite New Yorkers, including slaves. Eighteenth-century newspapers, beginning with the New-York Gazette and including John Peter Zenger’s New-York Weekly Journal are unparalleled sources for Atlantic history including shipping news and advertisements.

Colden, Cadwallader. The Letters and Papers of Cadwallader Colden. 9 vols. John Watts DePeyster Publication Fund Series 50–56, 67–68. New York: New York Historical Society, 1918–1937.
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A very rich set of letters to and from the colony’s longest-serving politician and renowned naturalist, covering politics, commerce, family relationships, and natural history for most of the 18th century. Text available online.
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Horsmanden, Daniel. A Journal of the Proceedings in the Detection of the Conspiracy Formed by Some White People, in Conjunction with Negro and Other Slaves, for Burning the City of New-York in America, and Murdering the Inhabitants. New York: James Parker, 1744.
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The most extensive contemporary account of the 1741 conspiracy trials, written by one of the judges who participated in them. The 1741 edition is available as a part of a paid subscription to Readex Early American Imprints, and the 1810 edition is freely available online from the Library of Congress.
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Morris, Richard B., ed. Select Cases of the Mayor’s Court of New York City, 1674–1784. Washington, DC: American Historical Association, 1935.
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An excellent selection of common-law suits and papers, organized by theme. Useful for non-elite histories.
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New-York Gazette. 1725–1744.
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New York’s first newspaper, published by William Bradford, the Gazette was also the official organ of the royal government. Available as a part of a paid subscription to Readex America’s Historical Newspapers Series 1.
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New-York Weekly Journal. 1733–1752.
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Published by John Peter Zenger; four issues were deemed to be seditious libel and burnt by the public hangman. While Zenger was imprisoned for nine months in 1735 his wife Anna published the paper, making her the first woman to publish a newspaper in New York. Available as a part of a paid subscription to Readex America’s Historical Newspapers Series 1.
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O’Callaghan, E. B., and B. Fernow. Documents Relative to the Colonial History of the State of New-York. 15 vols. Albany, NY: Weed, Parsons, 1853–1887.
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Wide-ranging collection of official papers and correspondence, covering most aspects of colonial New York, including Native American relations, slavery, religion, and politics. Text available online.
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Smith, William, Jr. The History of the Province of New-York. Edited by Michael Kammen. John Harvard Library. Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 1972.
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An extensive contemporary political history of New York, written by a prominent politician, jurist, and eventual Loyalist. Volume 1 was written in 1757; Volume 2 in 1777.
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Stokes, I. N. Phelps, comp. The Iconography of Manhattan Island, 1498–1909. 6 vols. New York: Arno, 1967.
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Stunning visual collection of maps, images, and timelines for the history of New York from the Dutch era to the early 19th century. Six hundred plates that include all the significant early maps of New York. Originally published in 1915
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From New Amsterdam to New York

The transition from Dutch to English rule in 1664 was straightforward only at the political level. Its implications were felt over several generations and in multiple arenas. Voorhees 1994 revises the interpretation of Leisler’s Rebellion from a resistance against English rule to a protest of Stuart Catholicism, while Murrin 1988 sees it as an outgrowth of English ethnic aggression. Howe 1990 traces the confused aftermath of Leisler’s Rebellion to discover Dutch abdication of their political power in the generation after Leisler. Archdeacon 1976 finds that Dutch elites rapidly lost wealth and status after the English takeover. Merwick 1999 examines this loss in the life of a Dutch notary. The uneven transition from Dutch to English culture is particularly clear in the slow shift away from wives as economic marriage partners, as Narrett 1992 demonstrates using wills.

Archdeacon, Thomas J. New York City, 1664–1710: Conquest and Change. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1976.
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A quantitatively based social history that argues that the Dutch founders lost status and wealth after the English conquest. Their marginalization was a primary factor in their support of Leisler during Leisler’s Rebellion.
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Goodfriend, Joyce D. Before the Melting Pot: Society and Culture in Colonial New York City, 1664–1730. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992.
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Emphasizes the persistence of Dutch culture, language, and politics after the English conquest and well into the 18th century. Women performed much of the cultural work necessary to pass religious and cultural identities through the generations. As a result of the takeover, both the English and the Dutch came to identify their ethnicity in relation to the other.
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Howe, Adrian. “The Bayard Treason Trial: Dramatizing Anglo-Dutch Politics in Early Eighteenth-Century New York City.” William and Mary Quarterly 47.1 (January 1990): 57–89.
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A close reading of the 1702 treason trial of Nicholas Bayard, the man accused of being the driving force behind the beheading of Jacob Leisler. The jurors’ willingness to see their verdict of execution overturned by the new English government is an indication of the Dutch withdrawal from political activity after 1700.
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Merwick, Donna. Death of a Notary: Conquest and Change in Colonial New York. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999.
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Emphasizes the persistence of Dutch culture, language, and politics after the English conquest and well into the 18th century. Women performed much of the cultural work necessary to pass religious and cultural identities through the generations. As a result of the takeover, both the English and the Dutch came to identify their ethnicity in relation to the other.
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Murrin, John. “English Rights as Ethnic Aggression: The English Conquest, the Charter of Liberties of 1683, and Leisler’s Rebellion in New York.” In Authority and Resistance in Early New York. Edited by William Pencak and Conrad Edick Wright, 56–94. New York: New York Historical Society, 1988.
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Argues that Leisler’s rebellion became an ethnic uprising because the malleable definitions of “English” and “Dutch” allowed men of various ethnic backgrounds to define themselves in relation to ideas of English liberty and Calvinist orthodoxy. After the second conquest of 1674, anti-Leislerians used the threat of an attack on English liberties as a weapon against Leisler and his Dutch-identified followers.
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Narrett, David E. Inheritance and Family Life in Colonial New York City. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992.
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A quantitative analysis of wills that reveals the significant shift in gender and legal cultures from the Dutch to the English period. Patterns extracted from these wills demonstrate that popular and legal culture reimagined marriage from the Dutch ideal of an economic entity between two equal partners to the English unitary fiction of coverture.
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Voorhees, David William. “The ‘Fervent Zeale’ of Jacob Leisler.” William and Mary Quarterly 51.3 (July 1994): 447–472.
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An important revisionist account of the leader of New York’s anti-Stuart revolt from 1689 to 1691 that emphasizes his integration into English society and his hardline Calvinist and anti-Catholic views.
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Politics and Factionalism

Events in New York’s political realm have been best explained by influences outside the colony as well as within. Bonomi 1998 shows how transatlantic political slander explains the vilification of an early 18th-century governor as a cross dresser. Hulsebosch 2005 notes the impact of transatlantic legal theories of constitutionalism. New York’s contentious politics are laid out in Bonomi 1971. Voorhees 2009 finds the roots of factionalism in Dutch family politics. Katz 1968 and Ritchie 1977 offer straightforward political histories, while Tully 1994 emphasizes the personal interests at play in the province’s tangled politics. Moglen 1994 explains the political context for Zenger’s famous libel case.

Bonomi, Patricia U. A Factious People: Politics and Society in Colonial New York. New York: Columbia University Press, 1971.
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Still unsurpassed as the primary guide for English New York’s contentious and confusing political interest groups. Bonomi argues that the pervasive “factionalism” of New York’s political culture emerged from the colony’s heterogeneity and resulted in an acceptance of political conflict as a stabilizing political force of its own, foreshadowing the American political party system.
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Bonomi, Patricia U. The Lord Cornbury Scandal: The Politics of Reputation in British America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998.
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In this readable reassessment of an early 18th-century royal governor to whom accusations of cross-dressing have stuck to the present day, Bonomi uncovers a transatlantic political culture of gossip and sexual innuendo.
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Hulsebosch, Daniel J. Constituting Empire: New York and the Transformation of Constitutionalism in the Atlantic World, 1664–1830. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005.
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Argues that New York’s colonial experience in the British empire persisted in its later legal and constitutional history.
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Katz, Stanley Nider. Newcastle’s New York: Anglo-American Politics, 1732–1753. Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 1968.
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A foundational political history that reorients New York’s mid-18th-century politics away from local concerns and reintegrated it into an imperial Atlantic world, focusing on the relationship between New York’s royal governors and the imperial administration
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Moglen, Eben. “Considering Zenger: Partisan Politics and the Legal Profession in Provincial New York.” Columbia Law Review 94 (June 1994): 1495–1524.
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A creative reinterpretation of the trial of John Peter Zenger that emphasizes the political factionalism of the city. Moglen argues that the real significance of the Zenger case was the affirmation of the inviolability of a jury verdict and the independence of a newly professionalized legal bar from the influence of the city’s political administration.
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Ritchie, Robert C. The Duke’s Province: A Study of New York Politics and Society, 1664–1691. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1977.
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A political narrative of the years from the English conquest of New Amsterdam through Leisler’s Rebellion. These years were marked by authoritarian administrations whose self-interest laid the groundwork for the colony’s factious politics.
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Tully, Alan. Forming American Politics: Ideals, Interests, and Institutions in Colonial New York and Pennsylvania. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994.
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A detailed comparison of New York and Pennsylvania’s political institutions that emphasizes New York’s diversity and political self-interest.
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Voorhees, David William. “Family and Faction: The Dutch Roots of Colonial New York’s Factional Politics.” In Explorers, Fortunes and Love Letters: A Window on New Netherland. Edited by Martha Dickinson Shattuck, 129–147. Albany, NY: New Netherland Institute, 2009.
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Explains that the city’s factional politics were extended family feuds, the product of a Dutch political culture that used marital and matrilineal alliances to create a traditional Dutch oligarchy rather than an English aristocracy.
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Trade

New York’s multiple connections to the Atlantic world were primarily mediated through trade. Koot 2011 argues that the trade between New York and the West Indies was essential for the expansion of the English empire. Zabin 2009 examines the implications of Atlantic markets on social status. Kierner 1992 looks at the impact of Atlantic trade at home and abroad on a prominent New York family. Studies of elite merchants like Harrington 1935 and middling merchants such as Matson 1998 reveal the Atlantic networks of New York’s merchants. Middleton 2012 shows the balance New Yorkers attempted to strike between profit and community. Gronim 2007 shows the limited adoption of Atlantic science that traveled on trade networks.

Gronim, Sara S. Everyday Nature: Knowledge of the Natural World in Colonial New York. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2007.
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An exploration of how middling New Yorkers simultaneously disputed and adapted the Atlantic scientific revolution. The scientific knowledge that circulated throughout the Atlantic world was accepted in New York only after it had been empirically tested by lay New Yorkers.
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Harrington, Virginia D. The New York Merchant on the Eve of the Revolution. New York: Columbia University Press, 1935.
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Pathbreaking early study of the relationship between elite merchants, transatlantic trade, and mercantile credit. Complemented by the much more recent Merchants and Empire: Trading in Colonial New York (Matson 1998).
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Kierner, Cynthia A. Traders and Gentlefolk: The Livingstons of New York, 1675–1790. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992.
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A study of five generations of the Livingston family that examines the concurrent rise and fall of the entrepreneurial market values that so benefited this family in the early years of the Atlantic economy with the development of cultural and political status.
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Koot, Christian J. Empire at the Periphery: British Colonists, Anglo-Dutch Trade, and the Development of the British Atlantic, 1621–1713. New York: New York University Press, 2011.
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Examines the Atlantic relationship between English and Dutch traders in New Amsterdam/New York, Barbados, and the Leeward Islands in order to demonstrate that these cross-national connections were essential to the rise of the British Atlantic empire.
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Matson, Cathy D. Merchants and Empire: Trading in Colonial New York. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998.
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Looks at middling merchants who traded in the West Indies rather than concentrating on the wealthiest merchants who traded with London. Their vision of a political economy likewise differed from their wealthier colleagues, notably when they called for both free trade and some mercantilist control at the local level.
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Middleton, Simon. “Private Credit in Eighteenth-Century New York City: The Mayor’s Court Papers, 1681–1776.” Journal of Early American History 2.2 (2012): 150–177.
DOI: 10.1163/187707012X649576Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
This exhaustive examination of private credit arrangements demonstrates that throughout the 18th century, New Yorkers attempted to balance profit with community and social obligations.
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Zabin, Serena R. Dangerous Economies: Status and Commerce in Imperial New York. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009.
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A cultural history of New York’s Atlantic economy that emphasizes the possibilities and dangers of commerce for New Yorkers regardless of status, gender, or race.
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Female Traders

The fluctuating status of women in Atlantic New York can be linked to their experiences with Atlantic trade. Biemer 1983 and Rosen 1997 both see the transition from Dutch to English rule as a deterrent to women’s economic activity. Shaw 2001 agrees that Dutch women in New York had great economic autonomy but connects it to New York’s Atlantic economy rather than Dutch law. Gundersen and Gampel 1982, conversely, suggests that although English common law hindered women’s abilities to trade, both tradition and English courts modified the law in practice. Jordan 1977, examining wholesale merchants, and Cleary 1995, identifying local shopkeepers, both argue that women’s extensive participation in the Atlantic market is robust in the 18th century. Zabin 2006 analyzes the related benefits and risks for both poor and wealthy female traders in New York’s Atlantic marketplace.

Biemer, Linda Briggs. Women and Property in Colonial New York: The Transition from Dutch to English Law, 1643–1727. Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Research Press, 1983.
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A study of five economically active women who demonstrate the autonomy available to some women in Dutch and early English New York. Biemer’s study of women and property in the transition from Dutch to English law reveals that these women increasingly lost control of their property under the new regime’s English common law.
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Cleary, Patricia. “‘She Will Be in the Shop’: Women’s Sphere of Trade in Eighteenth-Century Philadelphia and New York.” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 119.3 (July 1995): 181–202.
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Cleary argues that female shopkeepers in both New York and Philadelphia took advantage of transatlantic commerce to create new opportunities, especially in retailing dry goods to other women. Their experience with importing British luxury goods enabled them to participate meaningfully in revolutionary-era boycotts.
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Gundersen, Joan R., and Gwen Victor Gampel. “Married Women’s Legal Status in Eighteenth-Century New York and Virginia.” William and Mary Quarterly 39.1 (January 1982): 114–134.
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The authors find that courts regularly modified the legal restrictions imposed on married women by English common law. In New York, moreover, the tradition of Dutch women’s economic involvement persisted into the English era, further softening restrictions on married women in civil court.
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Jordan, Jean P. “Women Merchants in Colonial New York.” New York History 58.4 (October 1977): 412–439.
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Thorough investigation of all possible extant sources revealed over one hundred women involved in Atlantic commerce as full-scale merchants during the years 1664–1776. Despite their clear presence in overseas commerce, however, they were generally excluded from political decisions, including those with a direct impact on their trade.
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Rosen, Deborah A. Courts and Commerce: Gender, Law, and the Market Economy in Colonial New York. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1997.
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Through a study of legal documents, particularly debt litigation, Rosen finds that as the 18th-century New York economy expanded, women’s economic opportunities shrank, as measured by women’s presence in the civil courts.
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Shaw, Susanah. “New Light on Old Sources: Finding Women in New Netherland’s Courtrooms.” De Halve Maen 74.1 (Spring 2001): 9–14.
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From a study of legal texts and court documents, Shaw finds that in New Netherland and New York, Dutch women’s vibrant participation in markets was less the result of any advantages that Dutch-Roman law granted them in terms of their legal personality and more a result of the demands of colonial and transatlantic trade.
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Zabin, Serena R. “Women’s Trading Networks and Dangerous Economies in Eighteenth-Century New York City.” Early American Studies 4.2 (2006): 291–321
DOI: 10.1353/eam.2006.0020Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Demonstrates the particular opportunities and perils for women in Atlantic commerce, including the benefits of coverture for wealthy women and the creation of an informal economy by poor white women and slaves.
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Trafficking

In the late 17th and 18th century, New York merchants and captains found more ways to expand the profits of transatlantic trade: privateering and smuggling. Ritchie 1986 uses Captain Kidd’s career to show how New York was transformed from a port that was safe for pirates to one hostile to them. Pivoting from piracy to privateering, governors commissioned captains to capture the ships of England’s Catholic rivals during Queen Anne’s War (1702–1713), King George’s War (1739–1748), and the Seven Years War (1754–1763); Watson 1997 explains how a judge of the vice-admiralty court made New York the most favorable port to which to bring back privateering prizes. Lydon 1970 demonstrates the importance of privateering to New York’s 18th-century economy, while Swanson 1991 examines privateering as a way to make both profits and war. Foy 2010 analyzes the impact of taking black sailors as prizes. The legal papers for many of the prize cases are collected in Jameson 1923 and Hough 1925. Truxes 2008 shows how other merchants, who decided that they could find greater profits ignoring Britain’s wars than fighting them, turned to smuggling.

Foy, Charles R. “Eighteenth Century ‘Prize Negroes’: From Britain to America.” Slavery and Abolition 31.3 (September 2010): 379–393.
DOI: 10.1080/0144039X.2010.504532Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
A comparison of British and American systems of taking black sailors as “prizes” to be sold as slaves shows that both courts took complexion as the most important factor in determining freedom.
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Hough, Charles Merrill, ed. Reports of Cases in the Vice Admiralty of the Province of New York and in the Court of Admiralty of the State of New York, 1715–1788, with an Historical Introduction and Appendix. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1925.
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Primary source. Selected cases on a variety of topics but with a major emphasis on prize and other contraband cases. Includes rich file papers and a useful legal introduction.
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Jameson, J. Franklin, ed. Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period: Illustrative Documents. New York: Macmillan, 1923.
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Essential collection of primary sources, many of which concern New York. Excellent if dated introduction.
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Lydon, James G. Pirates, Privateers, and Profits. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Gregg, 1970.
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An analysis of the impact of privateering on New York’s 18th-century economy, primarily at mid-century.
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Ritchie, Robert C. Captain Kidd and the War against the Pirates. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986.
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The definitive study of the famous sea robber put in the context of the English empire and its administrative machinations. Sailing initially from the pirate haven of New York, and with the blessing of the city’s financial elites, including its governor, Kidd was suddenly entangled in the “war against the pirates” at the end of the 17th century. Betrayed by his earlier political supporters, Kidd was captured and hanged.
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Swanson, Carl E. Predators and Prizes: American Privateering and Imperial Warfare, 1739–1748. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1991.
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An examination of the importance of privateering to the economic and military aspects of the mid-18th-century Atlantic world. This is a comparative study in which New York plays an important role.
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Truxes, Thomas M. Defying Empire: Trading with the Enemy in Colonial New York. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008.
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A readable account of smuggling by New York merchants during the Seven Years’ War.
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Watson, Michael. “Judge Lewis Morris, the New York Vice-Admiralty Court, and Colonial Privateering, 1739–1762.” New York History 78.2 (April 1997): 116–146.
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Examines Judge Lewis Morris’s extraordinary record in the New York vice-admiralty court, where he certified more than twice as many captured enemy ships as legitimate prizes than any other North American court. His sympathy for privateers made New York the busiest prize port in the mainland colonies.
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Slavery

The nature of slavery and questions of race in New York were shaped as much by the city’s Atlantic networks as by any particular needs for labor. Essays in Berlin and Harris 2005 offer an overview of slavery. The harshness of slavery in close quarters is illustrated in Hodges 1999. Foy 2006 shows how some slaves were able to use the Atlantic to help them escape slavery. Foote 2003 explains the relationship between the city’s political instability and the development of antiblack racism. The discussion of the last years of White 1991 elucidates the growth and intensification of slavery in its final years. Taking the history of slavery even further into the 19th century, Harris 2003 explains the development of black communities. Seeman 2010 argues that in the 18th century these communities adapted Anglo as well as African traditions.

Berlin, Ira, and Leslie M. Harris, eds. Slavery in New York. New York: New Press, 2005.
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A collection of essays covering slavery in New York from the Dutch period through emancipation. Extensively illustrated, it was also a catalogue for the New-York Historical Society’s exhibition of the same name.
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Foote, Thelma Wills. Black and White Manhattan: The History of Racial Formation in Colonial New York City. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.
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A postcolonial history of the development of racial formation in New York City and its importance to the city’s economic and political development.
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Foy, Charles R. “Seeking Freedom in the Atlantic World, 1713–1783.” Early American Studies 4.1 (Spring 2006): 46–77.
DOI: 10.1353/eam.2006.0002Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Argues that New York’s slaves exploited the port’s shipping as a successful mode for escaping bondage, especially during the maritime labor shortages of wartime, when the city’s captains warmly welcomed needed crewmen.
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Harris, Leslie M. In the Shadow of Slavery: African Americans in New York City, 1626–1863. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003.
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A history of the formation of New York City’s black communities from the Dutch period to the Civil War, including the creation of race consciousness.
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Hodges, Graham Russell. Root and Branch: African Americans in New York and East Jersey, 1613–1863. John Hope Franklin Series in African American History and Culture. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999.
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Comprehensive study of Africans and African Americans in New York and its hinterland that makes individuals, rather than institutions, the center of the story. Hodges argues forcefully that northern slavery was as harsh as its southern equivalent.
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Seeman, Erik R. “Sources and Interpretations Reassessing the ‘Sankofa Symbol’ in New York’s African Burial Ground.” William and Mary Quarterly 67.1 (January 2010): 101–122.
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An examination of a design found on coffins in the African Burial Ground in New York reveals it not to be a sankofa symbol imported from Akan culture but an adaptation of Anglo-American deathways, revealing the process by which Africans became African Americans
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White, Shane. Somewhat More Independent: The End of Slavery in New York City, 1770–1810. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1991.
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A history of the hesitant and halfhearted abolition of slavery in New York City, an institution that persisted well after the American Revolution until slaves themselves forced whites to agree to a gradual emancipation.
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1741 Conspiracy

The 1741 trials have long been a source of fascination for historians, particularly for the question whether there was in fact a conspiracy at all. Davis 1985 argues that even talk of conspiring among slaves constituted a rebellion. The legal history Hoffer 2003 concurs with this narrow definition of revolt. Szasz 1967 argues that the authorities uncovered a biracial conspiracy to commit thefts. Other historians have moved away from the question of whether or not there was a conspiracy to consider issues of context. Doolen 2004 considers the geopolitical context of the War of Jenkins’ Ear. Plaag 2003 likewise considers the myriad anxieties that beset colonial New York City. Bond 2007 reads the trials for evidence of black agency, while Rucker 2010 sees in them evidence of a cohesive Akan-speaking community. Lepore 2005 considers the trials in light of New York’s political factionalism.

Bond, Richard E. “Shaping a Conspiracy: Black Testimony in the 1741 New York Plot.” Early American Studies 5.1 (Spring 2007): 63–94.
DOI: 10.1353/eam.2007.0000Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
The agency that slaves had in their daily lives shaped the events of 1741, whether or not there was a conspiracy.
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Davis, Thomas J. A Rumor of Revolt: The “Great Negro Plot” in Colonial New York. Free Press, 1985.
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In the first monograph dedicated to the 1741 trials, Davis argues that argues that even the talk of conspiring among slaves constituted a rebellion.
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Doolen, Andy. “Reading and Writing Terror: The New York Conspiracy Trials of 1741.” American Literary History 16.3 (Fall 2004): 377–406.
DOI: 10.1093/ALH/AJH021Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
In the first monograph dedicated to the 1741 trials, Davis argues that even the talk of conspiring among slaves constituted a rebellion.
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Hoffer, Peter Charles. The Great New York Conspiracy of 1741: Slavery, Crime, and Colonial Law. Landmark Law Cases and American Society. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2003.
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A basic legal history of the 1741 trials (without footnotes) that explains that words, not deeds, were all that was needed to convict slaves of conspiracy to revolt.
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Lepore, Jill. New York Burning: Liberty, Slavery, and Conspiracy in Eighteenth-Century Manhattan. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005.
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An evocative depiction of the 1741 trials in the light of New York’s political upheavals.
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Plaag, Eric W. “New York’s 1741 Slave Conspiracy in a Climate of Fear and Anxiety.” New York History 84.3 (July 2003): 275–299.
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Argues that white New Yorkers’ fear of a slave revolt was rational if unfounded, pointing to well-publicized reports of other slave revolts in the British empire, the ongoing war with Spain, rumors of George Whitefield’s antislavery arguments, and memories of a 1712 slave revolt.
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Rucker, Walter. “‘Only Draw In Your Countrymen’: Akan Culture and Community in Colonial New York City.” Afro-Americans in New York Life and History 34.2 (July 2010): 76–118.
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An examination of the records from the 1712 and 1741 slave conspiracy trials in New York reveals a cohesive community of Akan-speaking slaves from the Gold Coast, some of whom had come to New York via the West Indies and previous slave uprisings.
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Szasz, Ferenc M. “The New York Slave Revolt of 1741: A Re-Examination.” New York History 48.3 (July 1967): 215–230.
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An early examination of the trials that concluded the conspiracy was a biracial plot to commit thefts.
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Religion and Ethnicity

New York’s diversity, both ethnic and religious, has long been seen as its defining characteristic. Despite the Dutch ideals of religious toleration, Haefeli 2012 and Gelfand 2008 both agree that the early years of English rule established the practice of religious toleration. Goodfriend 1989 finds that over time ethnic identities became increasingly less important in structuring confessional choice, at least for men. Bosher 1995 agrees, showing that French Huguenot merchants assimilated into a world of Protestant traders. Problems of assimilation were more fraught for other ethnic groups. Frank 2004 shows that Jews both feared and embraced assimilation. Charting this conflict along class lines, Balmer 1989 argues that Dutch elites embraced English culture, creating a rift with middling and lower-class Dutch residents. Conversely, like the “Dutch” after 1691, Otterness 2004 reveals that Palatine Germans only created a coherent ethnic identity after they arrived in New York.

Balmer, Randall H. A Perfect Babel of Confusion: Dutch Religion and English Culture in the Middle Colonies. Religion in America. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989.
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A cultural study of Dutch ethnic assimilation after the English conquest. As merchants and Dutch Reformed clergy cooperated with the new regime, embracing both the English language and the English church in exchange for lucrative opportunities, middling and lower-class Dutch congregants unsuccessfully resisted Anglicization.
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Bosher, J. F. “Huguenot Merchants and the Protestant International in the Seventeenth Century.” William and Mary Quarterly 52.1 (January 1995): 77–102.
DOI: 10.2307/2946888Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Takes a genealogical approach to Huguenot merchants in New York and Boston to argue that ethnic and national identities were less significant than religious identity. For these men, trade, marriage alliances, and Protestantism drew them away from their French connections and into an international circle of Protestants.
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Franks, Abigaill Levy. The Letters of Abigaill Levy Franks, 1733–1748. Edited by Edith Belle Gelles. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004.
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A fascinating set of thirty-five letters written by a Jewish women in mid-18th-century New York to her son in London that reflect on politics and assimilation. Edited with a full introduction that situates Franks in both New York City and its Jewish community.
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Gelfand, Noah L. “A Transatlantic Approach to Understanding the Formation of a Jewish Community in New Netherland and New York.” New York History 89.4 (Fall 2008): 375–395.
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Discovers that despite the occasional presence of Jews in New Amsterdam, most Dutch Jews moved regularly around the Atlantic world looking for more hospitable sites for their commercial activity than New Netherland. Only after the English conquest of New Amsterdam and the development of a vibrant English Atlantic trading network in the 1680s did a permanent Jewish community develop in New York.
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Goodfriend, Joyce D. “The Social Dimensions of Congregational Life in Colonial New York City.” William and Mary Quarterly 46.2 (April 1989): 252–278.
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Argues that in New York’s diverse environment, individuals chose churches initially based on their ethnic identity, but over time men (but not women) transferred their allegiance to the Anglican Church. Quakers, Lutherans, and Jews organized their communities around religious affiliations rather than ethnic ones.
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Haefeli, Evan. New Netherland and the Dutch Origins of American Religious Liberty. Early American Studies. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012.
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A reexamination of the origins of religious toleration in New Amsterdam and New York. Argues that both the Atlantic context and the early English governors deserve some credit for the creation of religious toleration in New York.
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Otterness, Philip. Becoming German: The 1709 Palatine Migration to New York. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004.
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A study of the migration of a group of three thousand people from southwest German territories and Switzerland via London to New York who developed a collective ethnic identity as “Palatines” only after their arrival in the colony.
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Labor

The labor history of New York has only recently begun to develop in an Atlantic context. An early study, Lemisch 1968, considers sailors in the era of the Revolution, and Linebaugh and Rediker 2000 updates this study of waterfront laborers into an explicitly Atlantic story. Hodges 1986 and Middleton 2006 both consider the political privileges of New York City’s workers before the Revolution.

Hodges, Graham Russell. New York City Cartmen, 1667–1850. American Social Experience 4. New York: New York University Press, 1986.
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Cartmen, early semiskilled teamsters, were workers with a strong sense of their political rights from the early English era into the 19th century. Their desire to protect their political privileges as freeholders of the city of New York led them to systematically exclude African Americans, Irish, and other foreigners from their ranks.
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Lemisch, Jesse. “Jack Tar in the Streets: Merchant Seamen in the Politics of Revolutionary America.” William and Mary Quarterly 25.3 (July 1968): 371–407.
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An influential account of sailors in colonial New York that explains their status both as laborers and as political actors in the American Revolution
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Linebaugh, Peter, and Marcus Rediker. The Many-Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners, and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic. Boston: Beacon, 2000.
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A radical labor history of Anglophone Atlantic sailors, one chapter of which focuses on New York’s 1741 conspiracy as a violent multiracial waterfront uprising, part of a larger wave of 18th-century Atlantic rebellions.
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Middleton, Simon. From Privileges to Rights: Work and Politics in Colonial New York City. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006.
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Middleton argues that in the seventy years after the English takeover, artisans slowly shifted their identity and culture from hierarchical ideas of privilege to anglicized ones of equal rights. At the same time, they broadened their focus beyond the workshop and into the marketplace.
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The American Revolution in New York

The question of the coming of the American Revolution in New York has long been closely tied to the question of loyalism in the city. As Nash 1979 and Carp 2007 show, in the decades before the Declaration of Independence, white laborers and artisans in seaports grew increasingly radicalized. Gilje 1987 finds this political activity in riots, while Countryman 1981 sees the revolution overturning colonial social and political structures. As radical as the Revolution seems at the beginning and end in New York, however, during the war years Chopra 2011 shows it is also a haven for Loyalists. Van Buskirk 2002 shows that under occupation previously existing structures of class, family, and status were more salient than political loyalties.

Carp, Benjamin L. Rebels Rising: Cities and the American Revolution. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195304022.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Although this book looks broadly at several colonial cities, one chapter focuses squarely on New York City. In it, Carp argues that New York City’s vibrant and rowdy tavern culture created vital centers of political mobilization in the late colonial and revolutionary periods. Taverns’ diverse male clientele encouraged cross-class resistance to political authority.
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Chopra, Ruma. Unnatural Rebellion: Loyalists in New York City during the Revolution. Jeffersonian America. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2011.
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A study of the diverse Loyalist community in New York City during the American Revolution. Chopra argues that the military occupation of the city simultaneously strengthened and undercut the attraction of the Loyalists’ arguments for colonial union with the British Empire.
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Countryman, Edward. A People in Revolution: The American Revolution and Political Society in New York, 1760–1790. Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981.
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An award-winning account of the American Revolution in New York that emphasizes the significant social changes wrought by the Revolution’s upending of New York’s colonial political structure.
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Gilje, Paul A. The Road to Mobocracy: Popular Disorder in New York City, 1763–1834. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1987.
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An analysis of the changing meaning of rioting in New York City from the colonial period to the 1830s. Gilje argues that riots took on the political rhetoric of revolutionary radicals in a form that was meaningful to working-class white men.
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Nash, Gary B. The Urban Crucible: Social Change, Political Consciousness, and the Origins of the American Revolution. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979.
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A comparative study of the three largest seaports in 18th-century America—Boston, Philadelphia, and New York—that focuses on urban social and economic developments that led to the American Revolution.
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Van Buskirk, Judith L. Generous Enemies: Patriots and Loyalists in Revolutionary New York. Early American Studies. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002.
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Social and familial ties often trumped political divisions in British-occupied New York City during the Revolution. The porous boundaries between patriot and Loyalist camps provided particularly opportunities for enslaved African Americans and for white women’s political activities (particularly espionage).
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