Peter Minuit

Peter Minuit, historicizing representation

Peter Minuit ( erroneous spelling: Minnewit), (* between 1585 and 1594 in Wesel , Duchy of Kleve ; † in August 1638 in front of St. Christopher , West Indies ) was a navigator and supposed founder of Nieuw Amsterdam (today's New York City ).

Life

Minuit was born between 1585 and 1594 in Wesel ( Duchy of Kleve , United Duchies of Jülich-Kleve-Berg ). His father was most likely the Walloon Reformed religious refugee Jean Minuit, mentioned in Wesel in 1584 as a wealthy new citizen . Jean Minuit preferred exile to Spanish Catholic oppression by the Habsburg governors in the Netherlands .

The name 'Minnewit' is a subsequent Germanization of the originally French name Minuit (midnight), for which there is no contemporary evidence. In Wesel, Minuit, who had achieved considerable wealth through marriage to a woman from a wealthy family and an inheritance, worked, among other things, as a businessman. An activity as a voluntary deacon of the local Reformed congregation is not guaranteed. In 1615, however, he was recorded as a diamond cutter in Utrecht in the Netherlands.

The years after that are largely in the dark. In the early 1920s, however, Minuit must have entered the service of the Dutch West India Company (WIC). The WIC had been founded a few years earlier to develop the Dutch colony of Nieuw-Nederland, which is located in what is now New York, with state support. Before his first trip to America in the service of the WIC, which he began in 1625, he must have spent a long time in preparation in Amsterdam, where the headquarters of the WIC was located. In 1625, on behalf of the WIC, Minuit set out for the small colony capital of Nieuw Amsterdam to take part in the search for mineral resources. In 1626 he was sent again to Nieuw-Amsterdam after a temporary stay in Holland. Now his assignment was to replace Willem Verhulst , the governor of the Nieuw-Nederland colony there. The trained businessman showed skill in this task and quickly ensured a respectable population and economic growth of the colony. In dealing with the indigenous population, Minuit showed an unusual level of empathy for the time.

However, despite his merits, Peter Minuit cannot be considered the founder of Nieuw Amsterdam, as he was merely expanding an existing colony. There is also insufficient evidence for Minuit's famous purchase of Manhattan from the Algonquian Indians. After intrigues against Minuit, he was recalled as governor by the WIC in 1632. A subsequent scandalous process led Minuit to become estranged from his former employers. As a consequence of this alienation, Minuit was now operating colonial plans in Northeast America for the Swedish Skeppskompaniet (SK). From 1638 tried Minuit then on Delaware -River in direct competition with his former employer, the Swedish colony New Sweden (Nya Sverige, Nova Svecia) in the neighborhood Nieuw Nederlands establish. In August of the same year, Minuit was probably killed in a storm off the Caribbean island of St. Christopher (St. Kitts).

The Swedish colony created by Minuit became Dutch in 1655 under Governor Petrus Stuyvesant , and in 1664 the English conquered the Dutch colony and renamed Nieuw Amsterdam New York. Peter Minuit was largely forgotten for a long time. The colonial pioneer was only rediscovered and instrumentalized in the course of an increasingly national historiography from the middle of the 19th century. Illustrations of Minuits date from this time, as do the persistent myths about his role as the supposed founder of New York and the purchase of Manhattan. More interesting than these unproven acts is his behavior towards the indigenous people, whom he treated with respect. However, the fact that the extermination of the Indians and the destruction of the original fauna and flora began with primarily profit-oriented merchants and colonial pioneers like Minuit, cannot go unmentioned. In Wesel (on Moltkestrasse) there is now a memorial for Minuit, in New York the Peter Minuit Plaza , a small park in Manhattan, commemorates the alleged founder of the city.

literature

Since most of the sources from Minuit's tenure as director of the Nieuw Nederland colony have been lost, there is no comprehensive, serious biography on him. Older biographies are largely speculative. A short biography, taking into account the disparate sources, is currently only available from:

• Tobias Arand : Peter Minuit from Wesel. A Rhenish overseas merchant in the 17th century. In: Dieter Pesch (Ed.): Brave New World. Rhinelander conquer America. Volume 2: essay part (= guides and writings of the Rheinisches Freilichtmuseum and Landesmuseum für Volkskunde in Kommern. No. 60). Galunder, Nümbrecht 2001, ISBN 3-931251-91-8 , pp. 13-42.
• Tobias Arand: The Myth of Peter Minuit. Life and afterlife of the Wesel colonial pioneer. In: Yearbook Wesel District. 2008, ISSN  0939-2041 , pp. 45-54.
• Meinhard Pohl:  Minuit, Peter. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 17, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1994, ISBN 3-428-00198-2 , pp. 549-551 ( digitized version ).

Web links

• Biography of Peter Minuit in the portal Rheinische Geschichte