The Dutch West India Company was chartered by the States General of the Netherlands on 03 June 1621. It was founded for the purpose of establishing trading settlements in the New World.
The first permanent settlement to be established by the Dutch West Indian Company was made in 1624 by about thirty families under the direction of Cornelis Jacobsen May. Upon their arrival at the bay that would later become known as New York Harbor, the group divided into three smaller groups. One was landed on Nut (i.e. Governor's) Island; one went up the Delaware, and established a settlement that was named Fort Nassau where Gloucester, New Jersey now stands; and the third sailed up the Hudson River to the Fort Nassau that had been erected circa 1617 near present-day Albany. It is conjectured that some of the third party settled on Manhattan Island and Long Island. The settlement on Manhattan Island took the name of New Amsterdam while the collection of settlements made by the Dutch West India Company was known as New Netherland.
The boundaries of New Netherland continued to expand. Between 1640 and 1645 settlements were established at Vriesendael on Tappan Zee, Staten Island and Hackensack. But at the same time, the English were moving into the same area. They established the settlements of Cornell, Hutchinson and Throgmorton Plantations in the vicinity of present-day Westchester; they established the settlements of Maspeth and Lady Moody's plantation on Long Island.
The Indian tribes of the lower Hudson Valley were displeased with the expanding Dutch presence in the region, and began to make raids into the settlements on the Staten and Manhatten Islands in the summer of 1641. A truce arranged by Jonas Bronck, a settler on the Bronx River, provided some relief to the other settlers, but the peace would be shortlived.
In February 1643, the Mohawk tribes of the upper Hudson Valley were supplied with guns and ammunition by traders at Fort Orange and Rensselaerswyck and enticed to attack the Indians of the lower Hudson. The resulting Indian conflict could not be controlled by the Dutch authorities. The English settlements in Westchester were destroyed. Only Lady Moody's plantation was spared. The peace was restored by August of 1645. But tensions remained between the Dutch and English settlers.
In July 1652, war broke out between England and the Netherlands. The English settlements in the New World formed the New England Confederacy, and although the Confederacy did not declare war against the settlements of New Netherland, it did seize the Dutch held Fort Good Hope on 05 July 1653.
The Dutch and English remained on an uneasy peace following the conclusion of the Anglo-Dutch War. Ten years later, in the spring of 1664, the Connecticut provincial government sent troops under the command of Captain John Talcott into the Westchester settlements and troops under James Christie into the Long Island settlements. The immediate threat to their farms and livelihood induced the settlers to swear oaths of allegiance to England. Pressured to maintain the peace, Peter Stuyvesant, the governor of New Netherland, acquiesced to the pleas of his colony's inhabitants, and without bloodshed, surrendered the colony to the English.
