Description

This pamphlet, published in Amsterdam in 1656, contains information about the patroonships offered by the West India Company to settlers in the Dutch colony of New Netherland, and in particular about the policies of the city of Amsterdam toward overseas colonization under the terms of the agreement between the city and the West India Company. Intended to help populate the colony, the patroonships were large grants of land made to Dutch investors who agreed to establish a colony of “fifty souls, upwards of fifteen years old.” The pamphlet was, in ...