May 2005 Feature of the Month:

The tulips that bloom throughout the Capital District and other parts of New York at this time of the year are not just a sign that spring has finally arrived -- they are also an annual reminder of New York's Dutch heritage.

The Atlantic World: America and the Netherlands explores the Dutch presence in America, which began in 1609 with Henry Hudson's explorations of Manhattan, Staten Island and the Hudson River. Between then and 1664 the Dutch established the colony of New Netherland in parts of what are now New York, New Jersey, Delaware, and Connecticut.

This online exhibit, developed by the Library of Congress in cooperation with the National Library of the Netherlands, includes more than 70 items totaling some 11,737 images from the collections of these two libraries, as well as from other Dutch institutions that are cooperating with the National Library on the project. Among the items digitized are:

a letter describing the purchase of Manhattan from the Native Americans in 1626,
an etching of the Mohawk Sychnecta,
early land grants and patents from Dutch settlers,
seventeenth-century maps, and
an early description of the Dutch colony on the eve of its transfer to the British.

The project initially focused on the first Dutch colonies in America, with later stages scheduled to add information about other periods, including:

the role of the Dutch and Dutch-American patriots in the American War of Independence;
large-scale migration from the Netherlands to the United States in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries;
"Holland-Mania", or the discovery of Dutch painting and culture by American artists and scholars in the late nineteenth century; and
the World War II and post-war periods, including a new wave of post-1945 immigration.

The Atlantic World is part of the Library of Congress's Global Gateway project to establish cooperative digital libraries with national libraries from around the world. There is a companion site at The Memory of the Netherlands, a project of the National Library of the Netherlands. The Atlantic World is available in both English and Dutch and is intended for use in schools and libraries and by the general public in both countries and around the world.

Related Resources:

New Netherland Project: The New Netherland Project was established under the sponsorship of the New York State Library and the Holland Society of New York. Its primary objective is to complete the transcription, translation, and publication of all Dutch documents in New York repositories relating to the seventeenth century colony of New Netherland.

Albany Tulip Festival: Each year, this traditional Albany event greets spring with thousands of tulips blooming in many colors and varieties. People from across the Capital District Region and beyond come to the Tulip Fest in Washington Park each May to celebrate Albany’s rich Dutch heritage.

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