Janny Venema. Beverwijck: A Dutch Village on the American Frontier, 1652-1664. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003. 527 pp. $86.50, cloth, ISBN 978-0-7914-6079-5.

Reviewed by Holly Rine

Published on H-Atlantic (December, 2007)

The past several years have seen the publica‐ similar argument, but one that focuses solely on tion of several monographs on New Netherland the settlement of Beverwijck alone. Like Jacobs that work to bring the history of the Dutch colo‐ and other scholars, she sees much more maturity nial experience in North America out of the mar‐ and complexity in this Dutch frontier community gins and into the mainstream of colonial Ameri‐ than scholars have previously acknowledged.[2] can historiography.[1] While these new books fo‐ By the time of the English takeover, she argues, cus on the entirety of the Dutch colonial experi‐ Beverwijck had not only a healthy trade system, ments in North America, a topic often considered but also fully developed governmental and fairly narrow in both time and space, Janny Vene‐ church administrations as well as opportunities ma goes even further in narrowing the perspec‐ for both men and women involved in a variety of tive. In Beverwijck: A Dutch Village on the Ameri‐ trades and crafts. Also, like many scholars, Vene‐ can Frontier, 1652-1664, she gives us the most in- ma analyzes her subject from the perspective of depth look at the twelve-year existence of the cross-cultural encounters.[3] She states that hers Dutch community known as Beverwijck on the "is a study of construction, structure and opera‐ northern reaches of both the Hudson River and tion of an urban community in a contact situation the colony of New Netherland. from the perspective of the fatherland" (p. 25). In many ways, Venema's work compliments In order to fully uncover life in Beverwijck, the arguments put forth by Jaap Jacobs in his re‐ Venema frst focuses on the physical and material cently published monograph New Netherland: A world of Beverwijck. By showing how settlers Dutch Colony in Seventeenth-Century America were able to construct a town based on Dutch (2005). Jacobs argues that New Netherland's im‐ concepts of a successful community--presence of a portance in the larger Dutch colonial world was church, a poorhouse, a school, mills, roads, not, as often put forth, merely as a trading ven‐ bridges, and houses--along the upper reaches of ture, but as a settlement colony. Venema ofers a Hudson River, she illustrates her "hypothesis that H-Net Reviews location played not only an essential role in the encounters, and Dutch ideas and practices of sta‐ Atlantic setting, but also in laying out the village; bility and success came together in Beverwijck. it accelerated the development of the community Venema's last chapters on workers (black‐ and provided individuals with particular opportu‐ smiths, bakers, brewers, tavern keepers) and on nities" (p. 22). In chapter 2, she shows how this survival strategies, particularly poor relief, also Dutch physical and material landscape then provide clear examples of how location, adminis‐ helped to bring about an "orderly village" (p. 99). trative stability, and fuidity of opportunity al‐ Here she argues that the administration of lowed people to succeed and survive in Beverwi‐ church, poorhouse, schools, and courts helped to jck.[4] Furthermore, one of Venema's main contri‐ stabilize the community and allow it to develop butions to the feld of New Netherland and Bever‐ beyond a mere trading post. Chapter 3 ofers us a wijck/Albany historiography is the large amount look at the role of the Van Rensselaers as leaders of data that she presents. As a part of the New of the community, which helped bring about the Netherland Project at the New York State Library, stabilization of Beverwijck. she, along with Charles Gehring, has been provid‐ It is in chapter 4 that Venema ofers her most ing an invaluable service to scholars of New convincing demonstrations of how cross-cultural Netherland history by organizing, translating, and encounters in this Dutch-American landscape of‐ publishing collections of documents to make fered individuals unique opportunities. Here she available to the public. This book continues in presents the lives of fve individuals whose names that service by providing quite detailed appen‐ are mostly unfamiliar and whose stories are not dices that show population sizes; locations and normally told. She successfully intertwines the descriptions of lot patents; house measurements; Dutch perspectives and American experiences of magistrates; lists and tables of people who held men who were able to take advantage of both the particular jobs in the community; wages for stability and fuidity of Beverwijck in order to be‐ farmhands; and locations of individual town lots. come successful burghers. For example, she intro‐ The vast amount of data is refective of the re‐ duces the reader to Volckert Jansz Douw, who ar‐ search Venema did to complete her dissertation, rived in Rensselaerswijck in 1641; he purchased on which this book is based, and the book's main land in 1649, to which he received a patent in weakness is that quite often it reads like a disser‐ 1652, something only possible in a stable colony. tation. In fact, she refers to the book as a "disser‐ In this contact situation, Douw became familiar tation" (p. 25). All the elements are present to an‐ with the Indians and their languages, and was swer her central question, namely how did "a cul‐ able to beneft from both the Indian and commu‐ ture brought by the Europeans, in the beginning nity trades. Douw also cooperated with other phase of this settlement, changed under infuence burghers in the operation of a brewery and was of the physical environment and the native popu‐ able to purchase more land where he raised live‐ lation?" Unfortunately, the evidence is often not stock and grew tobacco. While Douw was not a clearly linked together (p. 20). The clearest exam‐ member of the ofcially sanctioned Dutch Re‐ ple of this is in her inclusion of Native Americans. formed Church (he was a Lutheran), he was still While they are of central importance to her thesis, elected to the magistrate in 1652, in which he they are often presented merely as individuals or served throughout the 1650s (pp. 249-254). It is in groups the Dutch reacted to, instead of interacted these brief stories of previously obscure lives that with. The signifcance of the Indian presence of‐ we see how the physical landscape, cross-cultural ten seems inserted into the narrative, rather than integrated into it.

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That said, Venema provides scholars interest‐ counter in America: The Struggle for Sovereignty ed in community studies with clear examples of in the Hudson Valley (Oxford: Berghahn, 2005). how to uncover the signifcance of individual [4]. Much of this work is a continuation of lives within the context of culture and space. She Venema's earlier contributions to understanding has also provided a service to those who work in poverty in Beverwijck. See particularly, Janny New Netherland history by uncovering such vast Venema, "Poverty and Charity in Seveenteenth- amounts of signifcant and overlooked data, and Century Beverwijck/Albany, 1652-1700," New York by making a signifcant contribution to the contin‐ History 80 (1999): 369-390. ual revision of New Netherland history. Notes [1]. Joyce Goodfriend, ed., Revisiting New Netherland: Perspectives on Early Dutch America (Boston: Brill, 2005); and Jaap Jacobs, New Nether‐ land: A Dutch Colony in Seventeenth-Century America (Boston: Brill, 2005). [2]. Venema particularly argues against Sung Bok Kim's claim that, at the time of the English takeover of the colony in 1664, Beverwijck con‐ sisted of only two hundred souls under a commer‐ cial directorate. See Sung Bok Kim, Landlord and Tenant in Colonial New York: Manorial Society, 1664-1775 (Chapel Hill: University of North Caroli‐ na, 1978). For other recently published scholars who, like Venema and Jacobs, see Beverwijck as a fully functioning community and not just a trad‐ ing post, see Martha Dickinson Shattuck, "A Civil Society: Court and Community in Beverwijck, New Netherland, 1652-1664" (Ph.D. diss., Boston University, 1993); and Dennis Sullivan, The Pun‐ ishment of Crime in Colonial New York: The Dutch Experience in Albany during the Seventeenth Cen‐ tury (New York: Peter Lang, 1997). Donna Mer‐ wick's work should also be considered in this vein, but a signifcant amount of her attention is focused on the English period of the community. See Donna Merwick, Possessing Albany, 1630-1710: The Dutch and English Experiences (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990). [3]. Donna Merwick, The Shame and the Sor‐ row: Dutch-Amerindian Encounters in New Netherland (Philadelphia: University of Pennsyl‐ vania, 2006); and Paul Otto, The Dutch-Munsee En‐

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Citation: Holly Rine. Review of Venema, Janny. Beverwijck: A Dutch Village on the American Frontier, 1652-1664. H-Atlantic, H-Net Reviews. December, 2007.

URL: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=13929

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