New York, Province of (English Colony)
Substate | Defunct
1664 CE to 1776 CE
The Province of New York (1664–1776) is a British crown colony that originally includes all of the present U.S. states of New York, New Jersey, Delaware and Vermont, along with inland portions of Connecticut, Massachusetts and Maine, as well as eastern Pennsylvania.
The majority of this land is soon reassigned by the Crown, leaving territory that includes the valleys of the Hudson and Mohawk Rivers, and Vermont.
The territory of western New York is Iroquois land, also disputed between the English colonies and New France, and that of Vermont is disputed with the Province of New Hampshire.
The province results from the Dutch Republic surrender of Provincie Nieuw-Nederland to the Kingdom of England in 1664.
Immediately after, the province is renamed for James, Duke of York, brother of Charles II of England.
The colony is one of the Middle Colonies, and ruled at first directly from England.
The New York Provincial Congress of local representatives declares itself the government on May 22, 1775, first referred to the "State of New York" in 1776, and ratifies the New York State Constitution in 1777.
While the British regain New York City during the American Revolutionary War using it as its military and political base of operations in North America, and a British governor is technically in office, much of the remainder of the former colony is held by the Patriots.
British claims on any part of New York end with the Treaty of Paris of 1783.
After the American Revolution, the former colony becomes the State of New York.
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Cash crops include tobacco, rice and wheat.
Extraction industries develop in furs, fishing and lumber.
Manufacturers produce rum and ships, and Americans are producing one-seventh of the world's iron supply by the late colonial period.
Cities eventually dot the coast to support local economies and serve as trade hubs.
English colonists are supplemented by waves of Scots-Irish and other groups.
Freed indentured servants push further west as coastal land grows more expensive.
Europeans will often be offered fur, food or other items as gifts when they first encounter a tribe.
The Europeans do not understand they are supposed to take on an alliance with the natives, including helping them against their enemies.
Native tribes regularly practice gift giving as part of their social relations.
Because the Europeans (or most of them) do not, they are considered to be rude and crude.
After observing that Europeans want to trade goods for the skins and other items, natives enter into that commercial relationship.
As a consequence, both sides become involved in the conflicts of the other.
The Europeans in New France, Carolina, Virginia, New England, and New Netherland become drawn into the endemic warfare of their trading partners.
Wiltwijck is one of three large Hudson River settlements in New Netherland, the other two being Beverwyck, now Albany; and New Amsterdam, now New York City.
With the English seizure of New Netherland in 1664, relations between the Dutch settlers and the English soldiers garrisoned here are often strained.
Four English frigates of a naval squadron commanded by Colonel Richard Nicolls, in a surprise incursion when England and the Dutch Republic are at peace, had sailed into New Amsterdam's harbor on August 27, 1664 and demanded New Netherlands’ surrender.
The British encounter little resistance, perhaps due to the unpopularity of director-general Peter Stuyvesant, whereupon the Dutch colony is provisionally ceded to English control on September 8.
This action will spark the Second Anglo-Dutch War between England and the Dutch Republic.
Under authority of a commission from the Duke of York, (later King James), who had ordered the expedition, Nicolls assumes the position of deputy-governor of New Netherland (New York).
His policy is vigorous but tactful, and the transition to the new regime is made smoothly and with due regard to the interests of the conquered people.
They are guaranteed in the possession of their property rights, their laws of inheritance, and the enjoyment of religious freedom.
The English system of law and administration is at once introduced into Long Island, Staten Island and Westchester, where the English element already predominates, but the change will be made much more slowly in the Dutch sections.
Charles II gives the newly acquired lands between New England and Maryland to his brother, the Duke of York (later King James II), as a proprietary colony, in 1665.
The colony, renamed New York, stretches from...
...Delaware Bay to ...
...Fort Orange.
The land between the Hudson River and the Delaware River is renamed New Jersey after the English Channel Island of Jersey which Charles II, after having seen their loyalty to the crown, had given to the people of Jersey as a gift having given him hospitality in the castle of Mont Orgueil before he was proclaimed king in 1649.
At the Restoration, Sir George Carteret, having shared Charles II’s banishment, had formed one of the immediate train of the restored monarch on his triumphant entry into London.
The next day Carteret had been sworn into the Privy Council, appointed Vice-Chamberlain of the Household, and constituted Treasurer of the Navy.
His career for the next decade is documented in the diary of Samuel Pepys who joined him as Clerk of the Acts to the Navy Board in 1660.
The fidelity with which Carteret, like John Berkeley, 1st Baron Berkeley of Stratton, had clung to the royal cause, has given him also great influence at court.
He had, at an early date, taken a warm interest in the colonization of America.
With Berkeley, Carteret had become one of the proprietors of the Province of Carolina.
The Duke now gives most of the area east of the Delaware to his friends Berkeley and Carteret, whose holdings will eventually become known, respectively, as West New Jersey and ...
...East New Jersey.
The county of Carteret County, North Carolina and town of Carteret, New Jersey are named after Carteret.
Berkeley and Carteret try to entice more settlers to New Jersey in 1665 by granting land to settlers and by passing the Concession and Agreement, a document granting religious freedom to all inhabitants of New Jersey; the British Church of England allows no such religious freedom.
It is issued as a proclamation for the structure of the government for the colony written by the two proprietors.
In return for land, settlers pay annual fees known as quitrents.
The proprietors appoint Philip Carteret, George Carteret’s cousin, as the first governor of New Jersey, who designates Elizabethtown as the colony's capital.