A Beautiful and Fruitful Place

Second volume of papers from a well respected annual seminar that showcase the latest research on Dutch colonial history in New York State.

Second volume of papers from a well respected annual seminar that showcase the latest research on Dutch colonial history in New York State.

New Netherland's distinctive regional history as well as the colony's many relationships with Europe and the seventeenth-century Atlantic world are featured in the second collection of papers from the widely praised annual Rensselaerwijck Seminar. Leading scholars from both sides of the Atlantic critique and offer the latest research on a dynamic range of topics: the age of exploration, domestic life in New Netherland, the history and significance of the West India Company, the complex era of Jacob Leisler, the southern frontier lands of the colony, relations with New England, Dutch foodways in the Hudson Valley and their use of beer, the endurance of the Dutch legacy into 19th century New York, and contemporary genealogical research on colonial Dutch ancestors.

Cogent and informative, these papers are an indispensable source for better understanding the lives and legacies of the long ago New Netherland colony.

Elisabeth Paling Funk was born in Woerden, the Netherlands. She is an independent scholar, freelance editor and translator, and former adjunct assistant professor at Manhattanville College. Her articles on early American and Dutch-American literature have been published in the United States and the Netherlands. She is preparing her dissertation, "Washington Irving and His Dutch-American Heritage as Seen in A History of New York, The Sketch-Book, Bracebridge Hall, and Tales of a Traveller," for publication as a book. Martha Dickinson Shattuck is the editor and researcher with the New Netherland Research Center and the editor of Explorers, Fortunes, and Love Letters: A Window on New Netherland. She has published various articles on New Netherland, was the New Netherland and Colonial editor for The Encyclopedia of New York State, and is currently editing and annotating the New Netherland papers from the Bontemantel Collection in the New York Public Library.

"Many of the foremost scholars on New Netherland feature in this anthology that increases considerably the available scholarship on a key aspect of American history." — Hudson River Valley Review