Willem Kieft
Template:Short description Script error: No such module "For". Template:Use mdy dates Script error: No such module "infobox".Script error: No such module "Check for unknown parameters".Script error: No such module "Check for conflicting parameters". Script error: No such module "Sidebar". Willem Kieft, also Wilhelm Kieft, (September 1597 – September 27, 1647) was a Dutch merchant and the Director of New Netherland (of which New Amsterdam was the capital) from 1638 to 1647.
Life and career
Willem Kieft was appointed to the rank of director by the Dutch West India Company in 1638.[1] He formed the council of twelve men, the first representative body in New Netherland, but ignored its advice.[2]
He tried to tax, and then drive out, local Native Americans.[1] He ordered attacks on Pavonia and Corlears Hook on February 25, 1643, which erupted into a horrific massacre (129 Dutch soldiers killed 120 Indians, including women and children). The Dutch local citizen advisory group had been specifically against such a raid, and were aghast when they heard the details. This was followed by retaliations resulting in what would become known as Kieft's War (1643–1645). The war took a huge toll on both sides, and the directors of the Dutch West India Company dismissed him in 1647. Peter Stuyvesant succeeded Kieft in office.[1]
Kieft died on September 27, 1647, in the Princess Amelia shipwreck near Swansea, Wales, en route to Amsterdam to defend himself, along with many of his opponents, including the Rev. Everardus Bogardus.[3] His archive was also lost, so his exact role cannot be established apart from what his opponents wrote of him.[4][5]
Legacy
He is depicted in the Gods of Manhattan series by Scott Mebus.
See also
- Land of the Blacks (Manhattan)
- Colonial America
- Dutch colonization of the Americas
- Dutch Empire
- List of colonial governors of New Jersey
- List of colonial governors of New York
References
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- ↑ Russell Shorto, The Island at the Center of the World: The Epic Story of Dutch Manhattan and the Forgotten Colony that Shaped America. First Edition. New York City: Vintage Books (a Division of Random House, 2004. Template:ISBN
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Further reading
- William Elliot Griffis The Story of New Netherland. The Dutch In America. (Chapter IX. Cambridge: The Riverside Press. 1909)
- Allen Johnson, Ed. Dutch and English on the Hudson (Chapter IV. New Haven: Yale University Press. 1919)
- Jaap Jacobs (2005), New Netherland: A Dutch Colony in Seventeenth-Century America. Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers, Template:ISBN.
- Journal of New Netherland 1647. Written in the Years 1641, 1642, 1643, 1644, 1645, and 1646. 1641–1647.
- Pages with script errors
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- 1597 births
- 1647 deaths
- 17th-century Dutch businesspeople
- People from New Netherland
- Businesspeople from Amsterdam
- Directors of New Netherland
- Dutch merchants
- Kieft's War
- Dutch mass murderers
- Deaths due to shipwreck at sea
- Accidental deaths in Wales
- Native American genocide perpetrators