n a day in mid-February 1690, Joris Aersen was an of self-respect, and an impaired sense of social order. angry young man. IIe had been provoked to frustration John Garraty and Robert A. IvIcCaughey implied this in and not a little daring by Robert Livingston’s arrogant their 1987 edition of The American Nation: A History of “slanders” toward the Prince of Orange as “Chief Rebel” the United States to 1870. Referring to New York under against the king of England, JamesII. In an outburst of the Dutch rule and then under the governanceof the Duke vexation, Aersen announcedthe worthiness of the prince of York, they wrote, “New York had no local assembly, and the basis of his own loyalty to him. I am, he cried, until the 168Os,but there had been no such body under “an Amsterdam boy.“’ the Dutch eitherss2Clearly, the authors were using the absenceof a representative assembly as a metaphor for Such instances of self-identification are rare “finds” a whole set of repressive political practices after the for the historian. Clues to a structure that helped an English conquestof 1664.However, they were also using individual make senseof his life are fugitive and few. it as a metaphor for a people lacking the will to explore Even more elusive are those that would help the historian or institutionalize “modem democracy.” In failing to discover how a whole group of people constructed a display a vigorous impulse toward a mode of repre- senseof self-respect,order or well-being for themselves. sentation like an assembly-the single institution which Often the evidence is thought to be found in examining Americans have always taken to symbolize liberal political institutions or political behavior. “Politics,” it is democracy-the Dutch signalled an incapacity to assumed, somehow gives a fundamental measure of appreciateand enjoy the fundamental building block, as another people’s senseof order. Yet while it is certainly it were, of proper social order. true that the ceremonies and daily enactments that we call “political” reveal a people’s senseof self-regard as It would be possible, of course, to make the argument a group as well as individually, it is nonethelessmislead- that in fact Dutch men and women duplicated in New ing to assumethat such actions are a privileged way of Netherland ehestructures of republicanism establishedin measuringapastpeople’s senseof self-esteem.Nor were the Low Countries. For all the inefficiency and arrogance they necessarily the pre-eminent “performances” in of the directors of the West India Company, republican which a people of the past saw that they were creating political forms were nonethelesstransplanted to the New proper social formations or properly-constructed chan- World. However, New Netherlandersdisposed of power nels of power among themselves. and constructed“the good society” in non-political “per- formances” as much as in those described as political. Such a misunderstanding has particularly colored our understanding of the Dutch men and women of seven- They enacted a stable and meaningful society in teenth century New Netherland. All too often, historians countless ways. The Dutch of New Netherland took a have assumed that a study of Dutch political culture senseof “first and last things” from all the socializing would afford a special grasp of the settlers’ values, actions of life. Thus rituals, like those surrounding so ambitions and senseof proprieties. Yet, repeatedly, they seemingly commonplace a set of practices as trading, have been disappointed. They have failed to find the caught up the meanings of power and order, of the good signs of the political order they expected: there was no life and self, as much as those we specify as “political,” evidence of representative government as it was like voting. The rituals of handelstijd show us that the developing in other North American colonies; there were men and women of seventeenth-centuryBeverwijck had few signs of concern about the place of loyalty to or constructed a rich and complex way of life for them- rebellion against authority; there were no marks of a selves. It was one in which power was shared in a people given to political vision or ideals. As a conse- particular way. It was one where daily rituals, even those quence,such scholarswere led to write of an errant sense as seemingly trivial as public auctions, made a man or 318 SELECTEDRENSSELAERSWIJCKSEMINAR PAPERS woman part of a society unequal in our terms but never- claims generally arising from the ill-conceived and risky thelesssustaining and elaborately well-ordered. business transactions of residents.7 The strangers’ presenceundoubtedly pleased townsmen with wares to I auction. But their presencewas also troublesome and a Like all people, the townspeople of Beverwijck had danger. many ways to relate themselvesto their past and present. Even for the passageof the days of the year, they had Ordinarily the Indians arrived with furs in mid-June. devices for fixing time’s sequences into meaningful So the first weeks of May were those of preparation. parts. We know, for example, that they lived out a year However, they were nonetheless int’ense for that. in rich liturgical, agricultural and trading cycles. But Townsmen arranged the assetsthat might give them a above all, time was burgherlijk. That is, it was organized win in the gambling of handelstijd. They purged them- around civic occurrences,when civic virtues (and vices) selves of debt, rented out rooms, built shedsfor natives, were displayed, when townspace-as distinct from the sold properties, all in order to be in the trade with countryside-was the stage of meaningful action. And merchandiseand sewant.Jeremias van Rensselaerinad- the dominant rhythm was the annual recurrence of the vertently registered the edginess of these first weeks. trading season,handelstijd. “The beaver trade,” the director of Rensselaerswijck wrote of the waiting-game in May, 1659, “if all the Handelstijd began on May 1 and ended in November. Indians come home with beaver, may turn out to be very It was a time when population swelled and merchandise good for almost all the river Indians are out hunting.“’ brought within the town palisades doubled or perhaps tripled in bulk and value. Mirrors, gold rings, New Public festivities in the first weeks of handelstijd Testaments,guns, blankets and velvet cloaks arrived for announced it as a seasonof heightened and potentially sale. In a single season,as many as 50,000 beaver pelts dangerouscompetition. The men of the town engagedin might have entered the market town in one year as well. “shooting the parrot.” Under the supervision of a Somehow the goods found spacein about 127 houses3 prominent burgher, they competedto discover and honor In 1657, 40,940 beaver pelts were taken in trade. The the best marksman among the burgherguard (schut- value was 327,520 guilders.4 If only half of them were terij)P These men of the local militia set a wooden purchased in sewant, 39,320,400 black and white shells papegaai (parrot) on a pole and fired from positions at would have been strung and exchanged.Moreover, if the possibly eighteen feet distance. The competition was a 40,940 pelts had beenevenly dividedamong the 105 men universal festivity among the Dutch. Some continental and women who claimed to be traders in 1659, each cities feastedthe marksmen after the occasion; at Table would have had 390 pelts, an earning of 3 120 guildem.’ Bay in South Africa “the whole body of shooters” Half of that as profits was equal to six.years’ wagesas a escortedthe winner to his home “in state” after the event. local farmhand. The profits were, of course, not equally He won the title, “Ring of the Marksmen.“” distributed. Quite the contrary. Handelstijd was a time when fortunes were made and 10s~ it cheated some, In Beverwijck, the revels of the papegaayschoet in ruined others and rewarded a few. It set all men 1655 were in the care of Hendrick Jochemsz.He was a gambling. burgher at whose inn the West India Com:pany’ssoldiers were often found drinking and creating scenes of May 1, then, was a day when it profited an outsider to “assault” and “fighting.” So it is likely that the schoet move into town. House rentals to transients were was not only a ritual of some violence in itself but that common. Some entered into contracts for “one month, 6 some of the contestantswere men of violence as well.’ ’ days” as early as March; others legally squatted on Certainly the community recognized sorne of this. The properties for which only the first installment would have court admonished Jochemsz to avoid the recurrence of been required.6 It was a time of strangers.They came to “accidents . [that] occur or result” from thepapegaay- trade, sell sewant,bake, auction yachts, deliver merchan- schoet and breachesof ‘good order.” Yet the court gave dise, sue residents for debt, gamble at auctions. Youths, its permission. It acquiesced in a ritual contest which men from outlying farms, agents for Boston, buyers and allowed burghers to fire weapons, a practice otherwise wealthy wholesalers of New Amsterdam and Hartford never sanctioned.12 For a moment, it set aside the arrived. From 1652 to 1664, thirty-two non-resident familiar structures of conduct, keynoting the way it merchants appeared in the Beverwijck court suing for would consent to the larger “happening,” handelstijd RITUALS OF HANDELSTIJD IN BEVERWIJCK 319 Fig. 55. Adriaen Brouwer, ‘Five PeasantsFighting.” Courtesy of the Bayer&he Staasgem2ldesammlungen,Munich. itself. We can only assumethat the men played out the severe with those luring natives into their homes and competition on the plain near Fort Orange south of town shops? and from there, full of drink and ready to cause “accidents,” they escorted the victor through the south The pace of hande/sfijd was fast and barely controlled.