Peter Minuit

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Peter Minuit bigraphy, stories - third director-general of New Netherland, founder of the Swedish colony of New Sweden in 1638

Peter Minuit : biography

1589 – August 5, 1638

Peter Minuit, Pieter Minuit, Pierre Minuit or Peter Minnewit (1580 – August 5, 1638) was a Walloon from Wesel, in present-day North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, then part of the Duchy of Cleves. He was Director of the Dutch colony of New Netherland from 1626 until 1633, and founded the Swedish colony of New Sweden in 1638. According to tradition, he purchased the island of Manhattan from Native Americans on May 24, 1626 for goods valued at 60 Dutch guilders, which in the 19th century was estimated to be the equivalent of $24 (or $1,000 USD in 2006).

Biography

Early life and education

Minuit was born in 1580 in Wesel, amidst religious tensions between Protestants and Catholics following the Protestant Reformation that culminated in the Thirty Years’ War. Minuit’s Walloon family, originally from the French-speaking city of Tournai in modern day Belgium, was among those Protestants who migrated away from suppression by the Roman Catholic government of the Spanish Netherlands. The year he was born, the Minuit family took refuge in the city of Wesel, which had become a haven for Protestants as early as 1540.

The Eighty Years’ War split the Netherlands into a Catholic south and a Protestant north. The religious wars ended with the Peace of Westphalia in 1648. They would leave much of Germany devastated, although Westphalia suffered less than other regions. Protestant refugees from German states and France migrated to sympathetic nations and cities such as London. The neighboring Dutch Republic emerged in the 17th century as a dominant force in Europe.

At some point, Minuit moved to Utrecht and never returned to his homeland.

Career as Director of New Netherland

At the age of 45 in December 1625, Minuit was appointed the third director of New Netherland by the Dutch West India Company. He sailed to North America and arrived in the colony on May 4, 1626.. On May 24, 1626, Minuit was credited with purchasing the island of Manhattan from the natives http://www.kb.nl/coop/geheugen/extra/tentoonstellingen/atlanticworldEN/tentoon5.html) in exchange for traded goods valued at 60 guilders.

The figure of 60 guilders comes from a letter by a member of the board of the Dutch West India Company, Pieter Janszoon Schagen, to the States-General in November 1626. In 1846, a New York historian converted the figure of Fl 60 (or 60 guilders) to US$24. "[A] variable-rate myth being a contradiction in terms, the purchase price remains forever frozen at twenty-four dollars," as Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace remarked in their history of New York.Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace, Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898, (1999: xivff) Sixty guilders in 1626 was valued at approximately $1,000 in 2006, according to the Institute for Social History of AmsterdamThe International Institute for Social History, Amsterdam its value as 60 guilders (1626) = €678.91 (2006), equal to about $1,000 in 2006. Based on the price of silver, Straight Dope author Cecil Adams calculated an equivalent of $72 in 1992.http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/715/how-much-would-the-24-paid-for-manhattan-be-worth-in-todays-money

The transaction is often viewed as one-sided and beneficial to the Dutch, although one popular history of Manhattan claims that Minuit actually purchased the island from the wrong tribe (the Canarsee, who lived on Long Island). In any event, there is no evidence that either the Dutch or the Indians believed they had swindled, or been swindled by, the other party to the deal An 1877 embellishment of the myth claimed that the Dutch offered "beads, buttons and other trinkets," though there is no evidence for this.http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/41/415.html But according to researchers at the National Library of the Netherlands, "The original inhabitants of the area were unfamiliar with the European notions and definitions of ownership rights. For the Indians, water, air and land could not be traded. Such exchanges would also be difficult in practical terms because many groups migrated between their summer and winter quarters. It can be concluded that both parties probably went home with totally different interpretations of the sales agreement."