Immigration To New Netherland
Jonas Bronck’s decision to relocate from Europe was prompted by a number of factors.
During the late 1630s events in both Holland and America induced significant changes in the governance of New Netherland, territory controlled by the Dutch West India Company (WIC) between the Delaware and Connecticut rivers and north along tidewaters of the Hudson. At its heart was the trading facility of New Amsterdam on the southern tip of Manhattan Island.
Following spectacular collapse of the Tulip mania in 1637, Holland’s government contemplated the idea of taking control of New Netherland from the Company and using the colony for resettlement of individuals impoverished by failed tulip bulb speculations. There was also vexation over the West India Company’s failure to develop New Netherland much beyond its original function, facilitating the fur trade. By contrast, English enclaves in the region were rapidly expanding in territory, population, and viability.
New Amsterdam’s inhabitants then numbered only about four hundred, a count that hardly had increased during the previous decade. Company properties in the colony showed signs of physical neglect and conditions of law and order were less than ideal. Faced with possible government expropriation, the company appointed Willem Kieft as director of New Netherland with a mandate to increase the territory’s population and vitality. Arriving in 1638, Kieft promptly purchased additional Lenape lands in the environs of Manhattan and encouraged private settlement by enterprising colonists of diverse backgrounds. It also liberalized the previous Charter of Freedoms and Exemptions so that settlers were no longer encumbered with excessive responsibilities to the WIC. Previously, most real estate and commercial activity in New Netherland had been under its direct control.
These vicissitudes did not escape Bronck’s notice. He was among the first to recognize promising opportunities and along with various emigrants from Europe he crossed the Atlantic to settle in New Amsterdam’s hinterlands. Vriessendael and Colen Donck were established around the same time.
In the spring of 1639 Jonas Bronck and a party of other emigrants, including his good friend the Dane Jochem Pietersen Kuyter, departed the Dutch port of Hoorn on the Zuiderzee. In addition to passengers and crew, their ship “De Brandt van Troyen” (Fire of Troy) was laden with numerous cattle. On June 16 the vessel was seen in the harbor of New Amsterdam.
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