Excerpt from Dutch Village Communities on the Hudson River "The Government of the United States is not the result of special creation but of evolution... "In the deepest and widest sense our American history does not begin with the Declaration of Independence, or even with the settlement of Jamestown and Plymouth; but it descends in unbroken continuity from the days when stout Arminius in the forests of northern Germany successfully defied the might of imperial Rome." - John Fiske. "The State of New York, once New Netherlands, affords us the remarkable phenomenon of a land settled by one body of Teutonic settlers and afterwards by the accidents of warfare transferred to another. The two sets of colonists were both of the same original stock and the same original speech; but the circumstances of their several histories had made them practically strangers to each other. On the Nether-Dutch of Holland and Zealand transplanted to the New World came in the Nether-Dutch of England... Here is a field of special interest." - Freeman. "But they [the Dutch] brought the patience, the enterprise and the courage, the indomitable spirit, and the hatred of tyranny, into which they had been born, into which their nation had been baptized with blood. "Education came with them; the free schools, in which Holland had led the van of the world, being early transplanted to these shores; ... an energetic Christian faith came with them, with its Bibles, its ministers, its interpreting books." - R. S. Storrs. "The Netherlands divide with England the glory of having planted the first colonies in the United States; and they divide the glory of having set the example of public freedom. If England gave our fathers the idea of a popular representation, the United Provinces were their model of a federal union." - Bancroft. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

“An exquisitely detailed account of the 400-year history of Harlem.” —Booklist, starred review Harlem is perhaps the most famous, iconic neighborhood in the United States. A bastion of freedom and the capital of Black America, Harlem’s twentieth-century renaissance changed our arts, culture, and politics forever. But this is only one of the many chapters in a wonderfully rich and varied history. In Harlem, historian Jonathan Gill presents the first complete chronicle of this remarkable place. From Henry Hudson’s first contact with native Harlemites, through Harlem’s years as a colonial outpost on the edge of the known world, Gill traces the neighborhood’s story, marshaling a tremendous wealth of detail and a host of fascinating figures from George Washington to Langston Hughes. Harlem was an agricultural center under British rule and the site of a key early battle in the Revolutionary War. Later, wealthy elites including Alexander Hamilton built great estates there for entertainment and respite from the epidemics ravaging downtown. In the nineteenth century, transportation urbanized Harlem and brought waves of immigrants from Germany, Italy, Ireland, and elsewhere. Harlem’s mix of cultures, extraordinary wealth, and extreme poverty was electrifying and explosive. Extensively researched, impressively synthesized, eminently readable, and overflowing with captivating characters, Harlem is a “vibrant history” and an impressive achievement (Publishers Weekly). “Comprehensive and compassionate—an essential text of American history and culture.” —Kirkus Reviews, starred review “It’s bound to become a classic or I’ll eat my hat!” —Edwin G. Burrows, Pulitzer Prize–winning coauthor of Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898