Peter Stuyvesant, New Amsterdam and the Jews

The Real History of the Jewish Arrival in New Amsterdam

Peter Stuyvesant – the last Dutch governor-general of New Amsterdam – before it was surrendered to the English in 1664 and became New York has been in the news a fair amount over recent years. The reason for this is that he has been accused by jewish activists of being ‘anti-Semitic’ – notably by the Israeli ‘lawfare’ organisation Shurat HaDin and its president Nitsana Darshan-Leitner – because of his interactions with the jews during his term of office and especially between 1654 to 1661. (1)

Interestingly the University of Groningen doesn’t even mention this minor episode in its own Wikipedia-style biography of him. (2) The Jewish Virtual Library however spends a significant portion of its entry concerning Stuyvesant complaining about his ‘anti-Semitism’ and ‘anti-jewish discrimination’. (3)

Since Stuyvesant doesn’t really deserve this reputation I thought I’d quote what the Jewish Virtual Library claims and then address them directly providing the context necessary to understanding the Dutch governor’s actions and thought process.

The author writes that:

‘Even the generally tolerant Dutch tried to exclude all but members of the Dutch Reformed Church from their American colonies.’ (4)

This is typical weasel words because it implies that this was not a Dutch policy, but rather some kind of local aberration that was against the spirit of the Dutch Reformed Church. When in fact this was simply the enactment of the polices of the Synod of Dort that occurred in 1618, which – while recognising Judaism as an official religion – (5) required non-adherents to the Dutch Reformed Church - whether Catholic, non-denominational Protestant, Lutheran, Muslim or jew – to suffer some limited civil and economic disabilities. (6)

This wasn’t a case of Stuyvesant being some kind of vengeful anti-Semite, but rather simply enacting official Dutch policy in New Amsterdam and the territories that he governed.

Next we read that:

‘In 1654, 23 refugee men, women and children fleeing from the former Dutch colony of Recife, Brazil, landed in New Amsterdam. These Brazilian Jews were the descendants of perhaps 5,000 Jews who had been living in Recife, most of them secretly, since the mid-1500s. The Dutch captured portions of Brazil from the Portuguese in 1624, and some neo-Christians openly returned to the practice of their Jewish faith. When Portugal recaptured Brazil in 1654, these Jews feared the introduction of the Inquisition and fled. They were probably on their way back to Amsterdam after a stop in Jamaica when their ship was attacked by a Spanish privateer who stripped them of their valuables. A return to Europe was now out of the question. The refugees then made a deal with the ship's captain, Jacques de la Mothe, to take them to New Amsterdam, which they thought would be a hospitable destination.

This was a one-sided bargain, struck in distress, and when the ship landed in New Amsterdam, De la Mothe filed suit against his passengers for failure to pay the balance of their passage. Peter Stuyvesant (1592-1672), the Dutch colonial governor with an anti-Semitic reputation, seized the Jews' meager possessions and ordered them sold at auction. When this failed to raise enough to meet their debts, he jailed two members of the group and wrote to the Dutch West India Company in Amsterdam, asking permission to expel the Jews. Stuyvesant noted that the Jews' indigence might make them a burden on the community and told the company that he “deemed it useful to require them in a friendly way to depart.”’ (7)

When reading even this heavily slanted account; it is clear that what the facts of the case are that the Portuguese jews from Brazil struck a bargain for passage to New Amsterdam with the man who rescued them: Captain Jacques de la Mothe. When the jews arrived in New Amsterdam they failed to honour their deal with de la Mothe and tried to claim that it was ‘made under duress’ and thus they ‘shouldn’t have to pay’. De la Mothe did exactly what he may have reasonably been expected to do; he sued his jewish passengers for the money that they refused to pay him for his time and trouble.

Peter Stuyvesant, then the governor of New Amsterdam, after the court ruled for de la Mothe, seized the goods of the jews and sold them at auction to ensure that de la Mothe was paid what the jews promised. Despite the use of weasel worlds to imply otherwise and suggest that the jews were ‘victims’ of both de la Mothe and Stuyvesant. The simple reality is that de la Mothe and Stuyvesant acted within the bounds and spirt of the law, while the jews were trying to make themselves an exception to both its letter and spirit.

This was something that – as the Jewish Virtual Library fails to mention – the jews had been trying to do for quite some time in the Dutch Republic.

An example of which was the jewish legal case heard between 1621 and 1623 whereby the jews of the Dutch Republic and its colonies demanded the right to ship their cargos of sugar from Brazil – which remember is where these Portuguese jews had come from – in the ships of enemies of the Dutch state - such as the English and the Spanish - and not have them subject to immediate seizure should said ships become prizes of the Dutch fleet or privateers in the ongoing naval war. (8)

That they were doing just this in anticipation of winning their case was then proven by the fact that the jewish share in the Dutch sugar trade out of Brazil fell to one percent from its formerly dominant position following judgment being made against them. (9) It is also worth noting that jews were well-known to be the ones sponsoring and arranging the smuggling of illegal goods to and from the Dutch Republic at the time. (10)

Thus, we can see that these Portuguese jews weren’t quite the innocent victims that the Jewish Virtual Library tries to make them out to be. The fact that they decided to ask de la Mothe to take them to New Amsterdam rather than say the French, English or Swedish possessions in North America and then got upset when de la Mothe asked them to honour their part of the deal goes to further suggest that they were essentially trying to demand a free ride because they were ‘poor jews’.

Indeed the fact that only two jews could not pay the full amount to de la Mothe and were then put in prison – as was normal at the time for debtors who could not pay – is not a case for them being blameless, but rather that their scheme failed and that Stuyvesant simply enforced the law rather than making exceptions for them, which was the governor of a small colony in the sea of a very hostile continent. He simply couldn’t afford to do.

The author continues by stating that:

‘In a letter now in the archives of the American Jewish Historical Society, the Jews of New Amsterdam wrote to their fellow Jews in Holland asking for help.’ (11)

This is once again an instance of weasel words designed to make the jews of both New Amsterdam and the Dutch Republic itself look helpless. When the reality is that jews dominated Dutch trade (accounting for some nine percent of all accounts at the Amsterdam Exchange Bank despite being a tiny minority of the population) (12) as well as Amsterdam’s Stock Exchange to the extent that it closed on the jewish rather than the Christian Sabbath. (13) They also had begun to completely dominate the diamond trade in Amsterdam by the time that Portuguese jews petitioned their jewish confreres in Amsterdam about Peter Stuyvesant’s ‘oppressive conduct’ in New Amsterdam. (14)

So, despite the weasel words of the author of the piece at the Jewish Virtual Library; the jews of Amsterdam and even those in New Amsterdam weren’t exactly the ‘powerless, persecuted people’ that they are being made out to be.

The author continues:

‘The latter petitioned the company on behalf of the New Amsterdam Jews, noting that Jews were allowed to reside in Holland and even to invest in the company. In April 1655, the company granted Jews permission to emigrate to and live in the colony, “so long as they do not become a burden to the company or the community.”’ (15)

Notice that the author of the Jewish Virtual Library piece fails to mention the mercantile influence of the jews that was the weight behind the letter of Amsterdam’s jewish community the Dutch West India Company. Instead, we are lead to believe – as implied by the simple omission of the necessary context – that the Portuguese jews of New Amsterdam had such a righteous case that the Dutch West India Company immediately saw its merit and granted them everything they wanted at that moment in time.

The fact that Amsterdam’s jewish community’s influence very likely had a lot to do with this – as otherwise why would the Dutch West India Company contradict but not replace one of its own senior colonial administrators in the form of Stuyvesant – is not even mentioned. Nor is the fact that even according to the Dutch West India Company’s statement; the Portuguese jews who de la Mothe transported to the colony should not have been allowed to reside in New Amsterdam if the author’s earlier claim in the Jewish Virtual Library piece concerning their absolute poverty is to be believed.

After all they either had the money to pay de la Mothe the agreed sum or they didn’t. If they had the money and refused to honour their side of the contract when de la Mothe had honoured his side. Then said Portuguese jews tried to bilk/defraud de la Mothe and then committed the crime of extortion against Stuyvesant by trying to menace him into doing what they wanted via applying pressure on his employer the Dutch West India Company via Amsterdam’s powerful jewish community.

We get even more claims without context when we read next that:

‘Stuyvesant then tried another tack to discourage Jewish settlement.

Stuyvesant importuned the colonial council to bar Jews from serving in the volunteer home guards. The council levied a special tax on Jews to pay for others to serve in their place. On November 5, 1655, Asser Levy and Joseph Barsimon filed petitions with the colonial court asking that they either be allowed to stand watch with the other citizens or relieved of the tax. After an initial rejection and a two-year fight, Levy won the right to stand watch. Levy, who had been one of the 23 refugees from Recife, would emerge as the champion of Jewish rights in New Amsterdam.’ (16)

Now notice how the author of the piece at the Jewish Virtual Library automatically assumes that because Stuyvesant tried to bar the jews from serving as volunteer settlement guards. Then he was automatically some kind of noxious anti-Semite who just absolutely hated jews.

However yet again Stuyvesant’s reasoning was - and is - fairly obvious if you but provide the necessary context that the jews provided most of the espionage agents working for and behalf an assortment of powers – including the Dutch Republic’s enemies like England, Spain and Portugal – (17) and thus having Portuguese jews on your walls serving as ‘volunteer home guards’ is rather like using members of Al-Qaeda to guard your town against Islamic State militants.

Asking the jews to simply pay a tax rather than serve was – and is obviously when context is applied – a rather diplomatic compromise on Stuyvesant’s part rather than some policy based on his alleged overriding hatred of jews. The fact that Stuyvesant had a long legal battle over this subject with Asser Levy and Joseph Barsimon does nothing to detract from this, but rather causes one to wonder why Levy and Barsimon were so keen to serve as ‘volunteer home guards’.

Remember that because I will come back to that shortly.

The author of the entry at the Jewish Virtual Library however simply doesn’t bother with that and continues on his merry way to write that:

‘When, in December 1655, Dutch troops captured the Swedish territory along the Delaware River, Stuyvesant refused to issue trade permits to Jewish settlers in the new territory. Levy and others wrote to their associates in Holland protesting this discrimination, and the company disciplined Stuyvesant for his actions. The company specified that, from then on, Jews in the colony were allowed to trade and own real estate, but not hold public office, open a retail shop, or establish a synagogue. In 1656, Levy was granted one of the first trading permits. In 1657, he was denied the right to practice a trade but petitioned this injustice and won. When he received his butchers license in 1661, it explicitly exempted him from having to slaughter pigs.’ (18)

Now technically Stuyvesant was out of line in not issuing trade permits to jewish settlers looking to trade along the Delaware river, but the reason once again is likely Stuyvesant’s worry about jews working on behalf of Sweden to help the Swedes retake the area not ‘anti-Semitism’.

Security would have been ever-present in Stuyvesant’s mind as the local representative of the Dutch West Indian Company (and was indeed why he had been sent to New Amsterdam originally by the company), but his employers in Amsterdam were not likely to have the security orientated priorities of as their colonial administrator – focusing instead on increased trade and higher company profits - and were could thus be easily pressured by Amsterdam’s jewish powerful community into officially reprimanding Stuyvesant and issuing him with explicit rights for the jews now residing in and around New Amsterdam.

This power is demonstrated nicely in the fact that Asser Levy’s nuisance petition against Stuyvesant’s denial of a butchering licence to him was revoked four years later and he was even given the right to refuse to butcher pigs for non-jewish customers.

Why else would the Dutch West Indian Company grant such leniency when the Synod of Dort of 1618 would not have meant they had to, which per force suggests that powerful jewish interests in Amsterdam were pushing for a more conciliatory attitude to the Portuguese jews of New Amsterdam.

Yet the author of the Jewish Virtual Library piece accidentally lets the cat out of the bag about Asser Levy at the very end of their screed. To wit:

‘When the English captured New Amsterdam in 1664 and renamed it New York, Levy swore an oath of allegiance to the British crown. All the rights he had under the Dutch were conferred to him under the new regime. In 1671, Levy was the first Jew to serve on a jury in North America.’ (19)

So in essence Asser Levy was not loyal to the Dutch Republic at all and was in fact working for English government as a double agent (after all why would he immediately betrayed the Dutch if he wasn’t), which was exactly what Stuyvesant appears to have feared based upon the available data and the historical context.

Seeing Levy as an agent for the English crown actually makes a lot of sense concerning why he run a legal nuisance campaign against Stuyvesant’s governorship of New Amsterdam and was so adamant about his desire to be a ‘volunteer home guard’, because he was looking to betray New Amsterdam to the English.

So, in summary then Peter Stuyvesant was not an ‘anti-Semite’ or even ‘anti-jewish’, but rather a patriotic Dutch governor who sought to protect his country’s colonial interests as best he could against the wiles of jewish agents working for the English.

References

(1) https://www.jta.org/2017/08/22/news-opinion/united-states/should-new-york-city-remove-statues-of-its-anti-semitic-dutch-governor

(2) http://www.let.rug.nl/usa/biographies/peter-stuyvesant/

(3) http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/new-amsterdam-s-jewish-crusader

(4) Ibid.

(5) Russell Shorto, 2013, ‘Amsterdam: A History of the World’s Most Liberal City’, 1st Edition, Doubleday: New York, p. 163

(6) Simon Schama, 1977, ‘Patriots and Liberators: Revolution in the Netherlands 1780 – 1813’, 1st Edition, Collins: London, p. 212

(7) http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/new-amsterdam-s-jewish-crusader

(8) Jonathan Israel, 1982, ‘The Dutch Republic and the Hispanic World 1606 – 1661’, 1st Edition, Clarendon Press: Oxford, p. 126

(9) Ibid, pp. 126-127

(10) Ibid, p. 141

(11) http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/new-amsterdam-s-jewish-crusader

(12) Israel, Op. Cit., p. 47

(13) Alberto Guenzi, 2006, 'European Expansion in the Seventeenth Century', pp. 73-74 in Antonio Di Vittorio (Ed.), 2006, 'An Economic History of Europe: From Expansion to Development', 1st Edition, Routledge: New York

(14) Geoffrey Cottrell, 1972, ‘Amsterdam: The Life of a City’, 1st Edition, Little, Brown & Company: Boston, p. 73

(15) http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/new-amsterdam-s-jewish-crusader

(16) Ibid.

(17) Cf. Dominic Green, 2003, 'The Double Life of Doctor Lopez: Spies, Shakespeare and the Plot to Poison Elizabeth I', 1st Edition, Century: London

(18) http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/new-amsterdam-s-jewish-crusader

(19) Ibid.