From January 22 to April 4, 1998, The Equitable Gallery will present an exhibition comprising rare prints, maps and illustrated books tracing the Dutch emergence as a major power in the seventeenth century, focusing in particular on the Dutch role in the colonial history of the Western Hemisphere. The Dutch in the Americas, 1600-1800 was organized by, and with only a few exceptions is drawn entirely from the holdings of, the John Carter Brown Library, an independently funded and administered center for advanced historical research located on the campus of Brown University, in Providence, Rhode Island. Among the more than one hundred objects included in the exhibition are some of the earliest printed views of what was to become New York City, as well as of Dutch colonies in the Caribbean and South America, examples of the superb Dutch map- a and chart-making of the period, and rare contemporary journals, treatises, and illustrated compendiums on the natural environment.

The exhibition is sponsored by ING Barings and The Equitable Gallery of the Equitable Life Assurance Society of the United States, with additional major support from the Acorn Foundation, Schiphol USA, and the Society of the Daughters of Holland Dames.

Most Americans -- and New Yorkers certainly -- are familiar with the story of the Dutch official Peter Minuit who, as an agent of the Dutch West India Company, bought Manhattan Island from the local Indians in 1626 in exchange for goods worth, it is said, $24. It is the kind of tale we take for granted, without asking what Netherlanders were doing at the mouth of the Hudson River early in the seventeenth century. The purpose of The Dutch in the Americas, 1600 to 1800 is to tell the story of the Dutch emergence as a major imperial power in the seventeenth century, with interests stretching from Japan to Suriname, and to recount in particular the Dutch role in the colonial history of the Western Hemisphere as a whole, of which New York and the Hudson Valley in were but a small, although important, piece.

It is also a story worth telling because the Netherlands between 1600 and 1800, with a population throughout the period of never more than two million, was in many respects the wonder of the age. In 1990s terms we should speak of the Dutch “miracle,” as we today speak of tiny commercial entities like Singapore or Hong Kong. For a public exhibition of historical books, maps, and prints, there is another good reason to focus on the Dutch. No people at that time seem to have been quite as pictorially-directed as the Dutch. More frequently than the French, the English, the Spanish, or the Portuguese -- all of whom were New World imperial powers -- the countrymen of Rembrandt and Vermeer illustrated their books. This fact corresponds well with the famous avant-garde role of the Dutch in producing realistic, secular imagery in portrayals of people and landscapes, as distinguished from the more symbolic and religious Italian schools. Along these same lines, the Dutch also elevated geographical maps and charts to a new art form, while at the same time greatly improving cartographical and hydrographical science.

The conquest of the Americas by Europeans required the conquest of the oceans -- the ability to project men and goods across 3,000 miles of open sea. By the middle of the seventeenth century, the Dutch were supreme at sea. No maritime force in the world was superior to it. Such superiority is an extremely complex achievement, involving not only technology and capital, but also such matters as the training of seamen and the social and political organization to back such a fleet.

Dutch maritime accomplishments include three of the five earliest circumnavigations of the globe, and most notably the voyage of Willem Schouten in 1616, the first to round Cape Horn, or better “Hoorn” for Schouten’s hometown in the Netherlands. Moreover, for a hundred years, at least, Dutch sea charts were recognized as the best and most reliable, that is, until the English and the French caught up in the eighteenth century.

The history of the Dutch in the Americas can be documented almost alone by the production of maps. It can safely be said that among the most beautiful maps ever made were the Dutch maps of the seventeenth century, and this is a tradition that is well exemplified in this exhibition -- the tradition of Mercator, Ortelius, Hondius, Visscher, and Blaeu -- all of whom did work representing the Americas.

The story of the Dutch in Brazil in the seventeenth century is especially intriguing. It has been said that the most culturally advanced place in the Americas in 1640 was hardly Cambridge, Massachusetts, nor even Mexico City or Lima, both of which were far in advance of Massachusetts at the time; but the court of Prince Maurits of Nassau in Olinda and Recife in Brazil.

Under English pressure the Dutch abandoned their New York colony in 1664, but the Netherlands and the British mainland colonies continued to be closely involved commercially. In 1780 John Adams was in Europe as a representative of the nascent United States, hoping to induce the English to enter peace negotiations. He traveled to the Low Countries seeking commercial agreements and money for support of the Revolution. The Dutch were no longer strong -- the descent from power of the country had been almost as rapid as the ascent. But when in April 1782 Adams succeeded in gaining Dutch recognition of American independence -- the first country to take this step after France -- he considered that achievement, he said, “the happiest Event, and the greatest action of my Life past or future.” Recognition was followed by a series of loans from the Netherlands that literally saved the new United States from bankruptcy at that perilous time.

Begun as the private collection of John Carter Brown (1797-1874) a Providence merchant with an avid interest in Americana, The John Carter Brown Library has been since 1901 an independently funded and administered center for advanced historical research located on the campus of Brown University. Housed within the Library’s walls is an internationally renowned, constantly growing collection of primary historical sources pertaining to the Americas, North and South, before ca. 1825. For 150 years the Library has served scholars from all over the United States and abroad. In order to facilitate and encourage use of the collection, the Library offers fellowships, sponsors lectures and conferences, regularly mounts exhibitions for the public, and publishes catalogues, bibliographies, and other works that interpret its holdings.

The Equitable Gallery presents works from all fields of the visual arts, including exhibitions originating outside of New York that would not otherwise have a presence in the city, as well as New York collections that would benefit from preservation and public presentation. Gallery hours are Monday to Friday, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.; Saturdays from noon until 5 p.m.; closed Sunday. The gallery is handicapped accessible. Admission is free.

THE DUTCH IN THE AMERICAS, 1600-1800

Among the items featured in the exhibition are:

the only known copy of a Dutch-language edition of Amerigo Vespucci’s early reports on the New World, published in 1507, the first work in the Dutch language that takes notice of the discovery of America.

a beautiful hand-colored edition of one of the foundation stones of Dutch national culture, the Itinerario of Jan van Linschoten (Amsterdam, 1596), a work that more than any other gave encouragement to Dutch oceanic expansion in imitation of the Portuguese and the Spanish.

a copy of Willem Schouten’s Journal, first published in Amsterdam in 1618, in which is described the first voyage around Cape Horn.

various works celebrating the extraordinary Dutch colony in northeastern Brazil between 1630 and 1654, which transformed Pernambuco into an oasis of European art and science in the New World, including Caspar van Baerle (Barlaeus), Rerum per octennium in Brasilia(Amsterdam, 1647); Franciscus Plante’s Mauritiados (Amsterdam, 1647), a paean to the governor of the colony Prince Johan Maurits; and Willem Piso’s and Georg Marcgraf’s Historia naturalis Brasiliae (Amsterdam, 1648), a compendium of natural history about Brazil that was unmatched until the nineteenth century.

some of the earliest printed views of what was to become New York City, with glimpses of life there at mid-century and in 1673, at the moment the Dutch briefly wrested control of the town from the British, and a beautifully decorated manuscript map (on vellum) of Long Island and vicinity made by Robert Ryder in 1679, based upon actual surveys of the area.

examples of the superb Dutch map- and chart-making in the seventeenth century, including maps from Willem and Joan Blaeu’s 11-volume Atlas Major (1662), an unsurpassed cartographic masterpiece.

prints and maps that document graphically the settlement and development of the Dutch colony in Suriname, including Lavaux’s Algemeene kaart van de colonie of provintie van Suriname(1758) and sixteen colored lithographic prints of different aspects of Surinamese life in the nineteenth century by G. W. C. Voorduin.

Adrian Van der Kemp’s Verzameling van stukken tot de dertien Vereenigde Staeten van Noord-America betrekkelijk (Leiden, 1781)and John Adam’s Geschiedenis van het geschil tusschen Groot-Britannie en Amerika (Amsterdam, 1782) two works published at a time when the fledgling United States was desperate for international loans and for diplomatic recognition as a sovereign country. In hopes of gaining the sympathy of leaders in the Netherlands, both books, one by a learned Dutchman who later emigrated to the United States, and one by the American patriot and future president, undertook to translate into the Dutch language a variety of American documents and letters. The goal was to inform the Dutch of the essential principles of constitutional democratic government that underlay the new republic.

The following free lectures have been scheduled in conjunction with the exhibition:

The Golden Age of Dutch Cartography
A lecture by Prof. Dr. Günter Schilder
University of Utrecht, The Netherlands
Equitable Tower, 787 Seventh Avenue, 49th Floor
Tuesday, February 10, 1998; 6:30 p.m.

New Views on the Dutch Period of New York
A lecture by Prof. Dr. Willem Frijhoof
Free University, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Equitable Tower, 787 Seventh Avenue, 49th Floor
Tuesday, February 24, 1998; 6:30 p.m.

Jews, African, and Philosophes: The Suriname Stories of David Nassy
A lecture by Natalie Zemon Davis
Henry Charles Lea Professor Emeritus, Princeton University
Sponsored by the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, New York University
Equitable Tower, 787 Seventh Avenue, 49th Floor
Thursday, February 26, 1998, 3:00 p.m.