In its exhibition devoted to the Castello Plan, one of the earliest maps of New Amsterdam, the New-York Historical Society shows us a 400-year-old city that remains, if faintly, recognizable.
On May 24, 1626, one of the most famous real estate transactions in history took place: the director-general of New Netherland, a colony of the United Provinces of the Netherlands located in the northeast of America, bought the island called Manhattan from the Lenni-Lenape Indians for sixty florins.
Jeroen Dewulf is Queen Beatrix Professor in Dutch Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. At Berkeley, he developed a new course on the Dutch history of New York that in 2012 was awarded the American Cultures Innovation in Teaching Award.