Historical
Curiosities
Piqued by (but not explained in) Great
Mischief
With
regard to money, we can only
reiterate the peculiarities noted with as a curiosity in Die Fasting. Every commercial transaction required much tedious
computation. At the best, exchanges
required translating one physical currency into a more familiar one; more
often, bartering one product or
service for another. One could never be certain that even an apparently
well-heeled customer would be able to produce anything one wanted in order to
purchase cheap, mundane products. In addition, even the value of “pound”
varied, because the various colonies had their own currencies in circulation,
based upon—but varying from—the British “pound sterling.” Try to imagine a
candy store where everybody’s handful of change comprised half a dozen
currencies (including U.S., Canadian, and Australian “dollars”), plus Indian
wampum and Joe Blow’s IOUs!
I
mistakenly accepted the notion that an artisan’s annual wage would approximate
£12 from a footnote to Anderson’s excellent The
Crucible of War. This statement referred to Massachusetts pounds, and I’ve since learned that over-taxed,
repeatedly war-clobbered Massachusetts had the most depreciated currency in
America. New York not having suffered as profoundly (until the French and
Indian War, which in 1759 would still be in its inflationary stage), its
nominal wages and prices would have been higher.
Chapter 1 - The only local historical structure described in the novel is the town’s original octagonal kerk, built in 1700 and demolished early in the 19th century. The "old" Dutch Reformed Church of New Utrecht, a quarter-mile to the east on 18th Avenue and 84th Street today, is its replacement, consecrated in 1828 and currently closed for major renovations. The original site is today occupied by a Baptist Church constructed in 1898. The ancient graveyard to its west—one of the most pathetic I’ve ever seen—is perhaps the only original relic of 18th Century New Utrecht. It is unrelated to the Baptist congregation, fenced off and sadly overgrown.
A colonial New Utrecht monument which was not mentioned in the story is “the milestone.” The original stone—oldest in New York City—dates to 1741, the time when the Kings Highway was laid out, but it has been removed to a museum for preservation. The modern replica sits unobtrusively in its original location, now the vest pocket-sized Milestone Park, at 18th Avenue and 82nd Street. The stone stood in front of the (long gone) 1672 Van Pelt Manor; the property was given to the City by a Van Pelt descendant in 1910 and, with typical municipal alacrity, was fashioned into a usable park in 1988.
When describing the
demographics of New Utrecht, our narrator habitually refers to
"Dutchmen" and "Africans," rather than "whites"
and "blacks." Partly euphemistic, the terms were also increasingly
inaccurate in 1759. We’d estimate that,
in this remote farming hamlet, only 75% of whites were fully Dutch-descended;
the remainder were half-Dutch (e.g.,
our hero and his siblings), or other Protestants (represented by the Edwards,
Stanley, and Traube families). Only Dominie Van Voort is imagined ever to have
been to the Netherlands itself. Of the blacks, even given that this decade was
the height of importation to North America, we estimate that 75% were born in
Kings County and only 5% had suffered the Middle Passage. As the New York
economy grew in sophistication, the labor system proved increasingly unable to
support it. New York slavery came under moral attack after the Revolutionary
War, was legislated to a slow extinction in 1799, and was finally abolished in
1827.
Chapter 2 –
Our hero makes two startling assertions during his interview with Aaron
Colegrove: that “Dutch property law” has
obtained in Kings County since the time of the English conquest (1664); and
that the said law presumed that widows of intestate husbands automatically
inherited 100% of the title to the couple’s lands, goods, and chattels. Both
his assertions are more-or-less correct—although the devil, as always, resides
in the details. A stipulation of non-interference had smoothed the uncontested
takeover of the New Netherlands, but English legal tradition had entrenched
itself in the ninety-five years that followed; nonetheless, the original
assumptions were seldom challenged in practice, possibly out of hesitation to
upset a county where the Dutch heritage remained so strong. The English
property rules were arguably more feudal, insisting that lands should
presumably devolve to eldest sons (with accommodation in cash for the widow and
other siblings). Both traditions were overruled by New York’s independence, and
property inheritance law has developed independently ever since.
Chapter 6 –
Reference is made to Harmanus Dordrecht’s wearing a “paternity cap” fashioned
for him by Katryne Nijenhuis (who is characterized as the local
folklorist). There’s no description of
it … because despite much searching of the internet, I couldn’t find one. The
idea, however, mentioned in Simon Schama’s The
Embarrassment of Riches as a Dutch folk tradition of the time, is rather
charming. I imagine it as no more than a silly, ephemeral bit of cheap cloth
publicly proclaiming a new father’s pride and happiness.
The New York Society Library was founded by
private subscription in 1754 … and still exists.
Chapter 7 –
The indentured servitude of Europeans in America was always problematic, given
the ease with which the disgruntled could flee to the hinterlands or other
provinces and blend into the general population. It was increasingly unpopular,
but still a last voluntary refuge for the destitute. Many were not volunteers,
however, but orphans, vagrants, or petty criminals forcibly exported by the
British authorities. When they had the option, those who indentured themselves
generally preferred Pennsylvania to either New York or Virginia, because
Pennsylvania had less rigid, less feudal land laws, and thus afforded greater
long-term hope of true freedom and independence.
Chapter 8 –
Chasing down the details of the “Arms of Orange” provided an amusing voyage
through the baffling idiocies of dynastic politics. Going way back, Count Henry III of Nassau-Dillenburg-Dietz (1483–1538)
scored a dandy marriage in 1515 with Claudia of Châlon (1498-1521), a princess
of Orange. Thanks to a few uncles getting bumped off childless, his grandson,
Willem I (1533-1584) “of Orange” (a/k/a “Willem the Silent”) inherited the
major-upgrade title of prince. This word—the
inheritance of property, money, and political power were apparently
negligible—allowed Willem to set himself up as the chief contender for royal
perks in the prosperous republic of the Netherlands. That improbable contention
was only actualized a century later by his great-grandson, Willem III
(1650-1702), who became king-in-all-but-name of the Netherlands in 1672, and
King William III of England in 1689. (So Henry’s marriage in 1515 paid off for
his g-g-g-grandson in 1672—there’s foresight
for you!) Over three hundred years later, however, Beatrix, Queen of the
Netherlands today, still heads the Dutch royal House of Orange-Nassau.
So where in the Netherlands are the fairy-tale places Nassau and Orange? Ha! Neither
of them is in the Netherlands! Nassau is
today a Rhine River town of five thousand in west central Germany. It has given
its name to the capital of the Bahamas, and to a county in New York State
that’s home to 1.3 million Americans.
Orange is an
ancient town in southern France, just north of Avignon. (It’s a huge place,
five times the size of Nassau!) In 1163, probably after some of its nobles
committed worthwhile atrocities in the crusades, it was decreed to be a principality by the Holy Roman
Empire—notwithstanding that it was never very big or important. According to Wikipedia, “It continued to
exist as an autonomous and independent state within the Kingdom of France until
1703.” The town’s name, incidentally, has nothing at all to do with either the
fruit or the color. It was originally the town of Arausio, named for a Celtic water god, and its founders gave the
Romans a trouncing there in 105 BCE.
Thanks to William III, that little town has given its name to many
cities and counties across the United States, Aruba, South Africa, and Australia,
not to mention the militantly Protestant Orange Order in Northern Ireland.
The heraldry on William’s
gold guinea coin (pictured) is the same used for the tavern sign of The Arms of Orange in our story. The
“Lion of Nassau” is in the center, surrounded by (clockwise from top) the arms
of England, Scotland, France, and Ireland.
France? Yeah, well, you’ll recall that the English
monarchs had maintained that they were the rightful claimants to that throne
since medieval times. Despite losing their last control over continental
territory in 1558, they kept up the pretense right until 1801—eight years after
the French Revolution had decided there was no king of France at all!
What about “King Billy?” Historically, he was no sweetheart. He was implicated in the murders of the De
Witt brothers, which symbolically brought the Dutch golden age to an end, and
he did order massacres in Ireland and
Scotland. He also involved Britain in preposterous dynastic squabbles on the
continent throughout his thirteen-year reign. By the time he pegged, he had
long worn out his welcome.
So why are all these places
named for him? Those in Britain and the
Netherlands who wanted to justify the cause of Protestantism and magnify the
dire threat of Catholic
Europe—probably a tad more realistic than the threat of Iraqi WMD, but that’s not saying much—magnified William
into a great hero, a savior of Protestant liberty, for decades after his death.
Once the Jacobite pretenders to the British throne were finally squelched
(1746), however, saviors became less necessary, and William’s overblown
reputation slowly began to slide.
Chapter 11 –
The legal infrastructure of colonial Kings County seems incredibly slipshod as
described (and possibly is
overemphasized). The reader is asked to consider, however, that the identical
71 square miles of Kings County that today house some 2,500,000 people … was
then home to fewer than five thousand,
total. Around 1760, “New York City,” then covering just the southernmost tenth
of Manhattan Island, had some 18,000 residents; today “Brooklynites” outnumber
“Manhattanites” by nearly a million.
The predicament of the
sailors is reasonably plausible. A large percentage of Britain’s navymen were
originally pressed—brutally grabbed off the street and forced into extremely
dangerous military service—and opportunities for experienced seamen in the
private colonial merchant fleets were at their greatest height during the
latter years of the French and Indian War, given the inflation that war always
brings (temporarily) to an economy. Notwithstanding the involuntary
circumstances of Nicholls’ original recruitment, his “desertion” probably would
have been treated as a capital offense. Thomas Dordrecht’s impetuous decision
to abet their flight could have gotten him
into deep trouble.
Chapter 15 –
Why do the Selectmen hesitate to “lay down the law” to their recalcitrant
slaves? How is it that the slaves are bold enough to resist their disarmament
and demand time to bury their dead? Because there really is no such thing as
absolute power of one human being over another; there is always a practical
compromise between the whims of the empowered and the needs of the powerless.
The latter employ economic reality—the fact that excessive mistreatment
unquestionably causes recalcitrance, malnourishment, illness, and premature
death—to force concessions from their tormentors. The level of the compromise
waxes and wanes with the complex social and economic environment, particularly the
replacement cost of labor.
Chapter 16 –
Smuggling, tax-evasion, and outright piracy were long-established traditions up
and down the American coast long before independence. If ships’ captains such
as Zechariah Jameson could evade the mercantilist Navigation Acts, they could
bring proscribed continental goods or tax-free British goods to colonial
consumers at great profit. For this purpose they needed small, fast ships,
lively and trained mariners, and small, out-of-the way ports of call. Thomas
Dordrecht is confronted with all three in this midnight scene by Sheepshead
Bay.
Chapter 19 –
The status of freed slaves also repeatedly rose and fell over time in New York
(and everywhere else). Before the English conquest, the New Netherlanders had
conceived an unusual “half-free” status that accrued to individual slaves
(African, Native American, or European) after around two decades, that
restricted their political rights but protected their marriage and property
rights. As the indentured servitude of Europeans became more obviously
impractical, race-based outright slavery grew in relative acceptance; the time
of the French and Indian War was, in fact, the high point of its relative
popularity among the wealthy. Nonetheless, it was still possible, in New York,
for some talented and dedicated slaves to accumulate money over time and to
purchase their own freedom.
Chapter 20 –
Five years after the war had begun, British forces finally captured Fort
Ticonderoga, the choke point of the Hudson-Champlain corridor, in June 1759, a
major objective that had prevented their northward progress. The plodding but
thorough General Amherst never managed to press on to the St. Lawrence,
however, so the “glory” of the number one military accomplishment of that
year—the taking of Québec city—resounded to General Wolfe in September (after our story ends).
Notices – Ordering
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