Editing Middle Colonies (section)

==History==
The Middle Colonies were explored by [[Henry Hudson]] for the [[Dutch East India Company]] in 1609, sailing up the [[Hudson River]] to present-day [[Albany, New York]], and along the [[Delaware Bay]]. The Dutch further explored and charted the area in multiple voyages between 1610 and 1616; the first Dutch settlements were built in 1613 and the name [[New Netherland]] appeared on maps from 1614 on. With Swedish funding, the [[Peter Minuit|third governor of New Netherland]] later founded the colony of [[New Sweden]] in the region around Delaware Bay in 1638. This area was reclaimed by the [[Dutch Empire|Dutch]] in 1655.<ref>Jaap Jacobs, ''The Colony of New Netherland: A Dutch Settlement in Seventeenth-Century America'' (2nd ed. Cornell University Press; 2009)</ref> In October 1664, as a prelude to the [[Second Anglo-Dutch War]], the English largely conquered this land from the Dutch. Though the war ended in a Dutch victory in 1667, the English retained New Netherland and renamed it New York after the [[Charles II of England|English King's]] brother, the [[Duke of York]], who [[Second Anglo-Dutch War#Restoration|had co-instigated the war]] for personal gain and [[Second Anglo-Dutch War#England|had commanded the attack]] on New Netherland.<ref name=Turner>Turner (1948), 83.</ref><ref name=Kammen>Kammen (1996), 71-72.</ref><ref>Jonathan I. Israel, ''The Dutch Republic, Its Rise, Greatness and Fall, 1477–1806'', p. 2.</ref> In 1673, the Dutch [[Reconquest of New Netherland|retook]] the area but relinquished it under the [[Treaty of Westminster (1674)]], ending the [[Third Anglo-Dutch War]] the next year.