In August 1664, an English fleet acting under the orders of James, Duke of York, the brother of King Charles II, materialized off Manhattan and forced the bloodless surrender of New Amsterdam and New Netherland. It is easy – too easy – to conclude that this was inevitable because New England had roughly 17 times the population of New Netherland. It was in fact a foundational move in the construction of the English empire of the 17th century, and the product of the machinations of first cousins in conspiracy with each other: Sir George Downey, the “second” graduate of Harvard College and one of the most devious people in English politics ever, and John Winthrop the Younger, the pious Governor of Connecticut Colony, son of the leader of the Puritan Great Migration, and a stone cold operator of the first order.

In the end, Peter Stuyvesant was out of moves.

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Selected references for this episode (Commission earned for Amazon purchases through the website)

Russell Shorto, The Island at the Center of the World: The Epic Story of Dutch Manhattan and the Forgotten Colony That Shaped America

J. Franklin Jameson, Narratives of New Netherland, 1609-1664

Richard Nicolls, Proposed Terms for the Surrender of New Netherland

Grant of March 12, 1664 from Charles II to his brother, James, Duke of York

L. H. Roper, “The Fall of New Netherland and Seventeenth-Century Anglo-American Imperial Formation, 1654-1676,” The New England Quarterly, December 2014.

Jonathan Scott, “‘Good Night Amsterdam’: Sir George Downing and Anglo-Dutch Statebuilding,” The English Historical Review, April 2003.

Steve Martin, “Mad at my Mother,” Let’s Get Small.

List of most populous cities in the United States by decade (Very interesting Wikipedia page if you love data and history)