Editing New Netherland (section)

==Society==
{{Historical populations
|type= USA
|1630|350
|1640|2030
|1650|4301
|1660|5476
|footnote=Source: 1630–1660<ref name="popstats">{{cite book|first=Thomas L.|last=Purvis|editor-first=Richard|editor-last=Balkin|title=Colonial America to 1763|year=1999|place=New York|publisher=[[Infobase Publishing|Facts on File]]|isbn=978-0816025275|pages=[https://archive.org/details/colonialamericat00purv_0/page/128 128–129]|url=https://archive.org/details/colonialamericat00purv_0/page/128}}</ref>
}}

[[New Netherlander]]s were not necessarily Dutch, and New Netherland was never a homogeneous society.<ref name="Un-Pilgrims"/> Governor [[Peter Minuit]] was a [[Walloons|Walloon]] born in what is now Germany who also spoke English and worked for a Dutch company.<ref>{{cite book
|last=Goodwin|first=Maud Wilder|editor=Allen Johnson|title=Dutch and English on the Hudson|url=http://www.kellscraft.com/DutchEnglishOnHudson/DutchEnglishOnHudsonContentPage.html|series=The Chronicles of America|publisher=Yale University Press
|chapter=Patroons and Lords of the Manor|chapter-url=http://www.kellscraft.com/DutchEnglishOnHudson/DutchEnglishOnHudsonCh03.html|year=1919}}</ref> The term [[New Netherland Dutch]] generally includes all the Europeans who came to live there,<ref name="The New Netherland Dutch" /> but may also refer to Africans, [[Indo-Caribbean]]s, South Americans, and even the Indians who were integral to the society. Dutch was the official language and likely the lingua franca of the province, although other languages were also spoken.<ref name="Un-Pilgrims" /> There were various [[Algonquian languages]]; Walloons and [[Huguenots]] tended to speak French, and Scandinavians and Germans brought their own tongues. It is likely that the Africans in Manhattan spoke their mother tongues but were taught Dutch from 1638 by Adam Roelantsz van Dokkum.<ref>Jacobs, J. (2005) ''New Netherland: a Dutch colony in seventeenth-century America'', p. 313. [https://books.google.com/books?id=Uex2budtSOUC&q=van+Dokkum]</ref> The arrival of refugees from [[Dutch Brazil|New Holland]] in Brazil may have brought speakers of Portuguese, Spanish, and [[Ladino language|Ladino]] (with Hebrew as a liturgical language). Commercial activity in the harbor could have been transacted simultaneously in any of a number of tongues.<ref>{{cite web
 |title       = A Brief Outline of the History of New Netherland
 |work        = New Netherland History
 |access-date  = July 8, 2009
 |date        = February 2003
 |url         = http://www.coins.nd.edu/ColCoin/ColCoinIntros/Netherlands.html
 |url-status     = dead
 |archive-url  = https://web.archive.org/web/20090713064126/http://www.coins.nd.edu/ColCoin/ColCoinIntros/Netherlands.html
 |archive-date = July 13, 2009
 |df          = mdy-all
}}</ref>

The Dutch West India Company introduced slavery in 1625 with the importation of 11 black slaves who worked as farmers, fur traders, and builders. They had a few basic rights and families were usually kept intact. They were admitted to the Dutch Reformed Church and married by its ministers, and their children could be baptized. Slaves could testify in court, sign legal documents, and bring civil actions against whites. Some were permitted to work after hours earning wages equal to those paid to white workers. When the colony fell, the company freed the slaves, establishing early on a nucleus of free blacks.<ref>{{Cite book|last = Hodges |first = Russel Graham | title = Root and Branch: African Americans in New York and East Jersey, 1613–1863 | place = Chapel Hill | publisher = University of North Carolina Press | year = 1999}}</ref>

The [[Union of Utrecht]] is the founding document of the Dutch Republic, signed in 1579, and it stated "that everyone shall remain free in religion and that no one may be persecuted or investigated because of religion". The [[Dutch West India Company]], however, established the Reformed Church as the official religious institution of New Netherland.<ref name="Wentz 1955 6">{{cite book |last=Wentz |first=Abel Ross |title=A Basic History of Lutheranism in America |year=1955 |publisher=Muhlenberg Press |location=Philadelphia |chapter=New Netherland and New York |page=6}}</ref> Its successor church is the Reformed Church in America. The colonists had to attract the Indians and other non-believers to God's word, "through attitude and by example" but not "to persecute someone by reason of his religion, and to leave everyone the freedom of his conscience." In addition, the laws and ordinances of the states of Holland were incorporated by reference in those first instructions to the Governors Island settlers in 1624. There were two test cases during Stuyvesant's governorship in which the rule prevailed: the official granting of full residency for both [[Ashkenazi Jews|Ashkenazi]] and [[Sephardi Jews]] in New Amsterdam in 1655, and the [[Flushing Remonstrance]] involving [[Quakers]] in
1657.
It was located in areas of [[Canada]] all the way to [[Delaware]]<ref name=NYT1>
{{cite news|author=Glenn Collins |title=Precursor of the Constitution Goes on Display in Queens |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/05/nyregion/05remonstrance.html|newspaper=The New York Times|date=December 5, 2007 |access-date=December 5, 2007}}</ref><ref name="Liberty Mag">
{{cite news |author=Michael Peabody |title=The Flushing Remonstrance |url=http://www.libertymagazine.org/article/articleview/532/1/86/ |publisher= Liberty Magazine |date=November–December 2005  |access-date=December 5, 2007 |archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20071204215137/http://www.libertymagazine.org/article/articleview/532/1/86/ <!-- Bot retrieved archive --> |archive-date = December 4, 2007}}</ref>