Willem Kieft

For the Dutch footballer named Willem (Wim) Kieft, see Wim Kieft

New Netherland series
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Flushing Remonstrance

Willem Kieft (September 1597, Amsterdam – September 27, 1647) was a Dutch merchant and director (of New Netherland of which New Amsterdam was capital) from 1638 to 1647.

Biography

Willem Kieft was appointed to the rank of director by the 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 in a massacre (129 Dutch soldiers killed 120 Indians, including women and children), 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 Dutch West India Company Board of Directors fired him in 1647. He was replaced with Peter Stuyvesant.^[1] He 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 as well, 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. He is in the Gods of Manhattan series by Scott Mebus.^[4][5][6]

See also

• Colonial America
• Dutch colonization of the Americas
• Dutch Empire
• List of colonial governors of New Jersey
• List of colonial governors of New York

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, ISBN 90-04-12906-5.
• Journal of New Netherland 1647. Written in the Years 1641, 1642, 1643, 1644, 1645, and 1646. 1641-1647.

References