The purpose of this research will be to examine the legal process and legislative action toward African Americans in respect of slavery by the Dutch and then the English during the colonial period in New York. The plan of the research will be to set forth the social and economic context in which the institution of slavery emerged in the New York colony and then to discuss similarities and differences in the manner in which English governmental control of New York differed from English control and implications for the post-colonial situation of slaves in the colony.
In the background of the differences in slavery policy of Dutch and English colonial rule of New York was the fact that the structure of governance passing from the former to the latter was a fractious issue for the first six decades of the seventeenth century. Dutch administration of New York preceded that of the English, Henry Hudson having founded New Netherlands in 1608. But Dutch colonial efforts appear to have been haphazard and ineffectual for the next fifteen years, colonial activity being largely restricted to acquiring furs for exports; in 1623, the Dutch West India Company established a base at New Amsterdam, intending to "turn a losing colonial venture into a profitable one." The project had limited success, though involving cooperation between the Company and the Dutch crown. Dickason characterizes the Dutch as "minor colonizers in North America and principally interested in trade, "whose behavior was distinguished from that of the English in their attempt to "legitimiz[e] their intrusion . . . by means of land purchases. . . . a procedure which came closest to recognizing Amerindian possessory territorial rights." Meanwhile, as Fiske says, "the English always disputed the title of the Dutch to New Netherlands." Over the next four decades, as a series of naval and trade wars and rivalries between Britain and Holland played out in Europe, the territory of N...