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chapter 9 RADICALISM . . . eschue the yoke of Temporal and Spiritual Pharaohs who have long enough domineered over our bodies and souls, and set up again (as in former times) Righteousness, love and Brotherly Sociableness, which are scarce any where to be found. New Netherland was not the only Dutch society in North America. For almost a decade (1657–1664), the city of Amsterdam had a colony of its own on the South River. Technically a patroonship, a sort of fiefdom under the overall authority of the WIC, New Amstel inaugurated the most radical religious and social experiment the republic’s colonies ever saw. While New Netherland clung to the legacy of the 1620s, New Amstel brought in the influences of the 1660s. The mix of radical religion, politics, and philosophy then available in the Dutch world could be called the Age of Spinoza, after the most famous and influential intellectual figure in the republic at the time. Baruch Spinoza never made it to America, nor did he include it much in his philosophizing. His influence was distant and indirect. Nevertheless, New Amstel’s close connection to Amsterdam’s city government opened up America to the republic’s most progressive social visionaries, including men who knew Spinoza and his ideas. The WIC never showed much interest in religious experimentation and held to a conservative version of the public church whenever possible. However, the financial troubles of the WIC after the loss of Brazil gave Amsterdam an opportunity to put into practice an alternate version of Dutch tolerance. Amsterdam had lent a warship for Stuyvesant’s conquest of New Sweden. Unable to liquidate the debt, the cash-poor but now landrich WIC granted the southern half of the South River as a patroonship to 234 Chapter 9 Amsterdam. New Amstel, named after the river that flowed through the city, was the name of both the colony as well as its capital. Several years later, in December 1663, Amsterdam’s patroonship was extended to cover the whole South River valley. Though the English soon seized the region for themselves, New Amstel’s brief history contained the most radical approach to toleration and colonization the republic would ever see.1 Until the conquest of New Sweden, the Dutch had not had a strong enough presence to form a congregation on the South River or call a minister to serve it. After the 1655 conquest, the status of the Dutch Reformed Church was asserted, though there was still no significant group of Dutch colonists in the colony on the upper reaches of the river. From his base at Fort Altena, governor William Beeckman ruled over a mixed crowd of Dutch soldiers and traders surrounded by a largely Swedish and Finnish Lutheran population. Curiously, there was no mention of liberty of conscience in his instructions. He was sworn to ‘‘maintain and as much as is in my power promote the Reformed religion, as the same is taught and preached in the Fatherland and here conform to God’s word and the Synod of Dordrecht.’’2 The small Dutch community designated one of the Dutch freemen ‘‘to read to them on Sundays.’’3 The Dutch community under WIC rule never reached a size justifying a Dutch Reformed minister. Religious services remained in the hands of devout laymen and approved religious texts. The only minister around was the Swedish Lutheran Lock, thanks to Stuyvesant ’s toleration of the Swedish Lutheran church.4 The first sign that change was in the air for Dutch America came with an act passed by the States General in conjunction with the WIC in February 1661. The Dutch were trying to take advantage of the religious uncertainty in England caused by the Restoration of the Stuart monarchy in 1660, which had led a number of English Protestants to rethink their position in the English world. Some fled as exiles and refugees to the Dutch Republic. In America, the strict Calvinists of New Haven began negotiations with Petrus Stuyvesant to settle what eventually became Newark, New Jersey. The WIC judged it a good time to offer discontented Englishmen a chance to establish new settlement in New Netherland. The act opened the colony to ‘‘all Christian people of tender conscience in England or elsewhere, oppressed,’’ targeting the ‘‘English, good Christians’’ in particular. It gave no specifics on what the religious arrangements would be. It simply guaranteed the settlers ‘‘full liberty to live in the feare of the Lord.’’ The majority...

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