Directors of New Netherland
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This is a list of Directors, appointed by the Dutch West India Company, of the 17th century Dutch province of New Netherland (Nieuw-Nederland in Dutch) in North America. Only the last, Peter Stuyvesant, held the title of Director General. As the colony grew, citizens advisory boards – known as the Twelve Men, Eight Men, and Nine Men – exerted more influence on the director and thus affairs of province.
There were New Netherland settlements in what later became the US states of New York, New Jersey, and Delaware, with short-lived outposts in areas of today's Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Pennsylvania. The capital, New Amsterdam, became the city of New York when the New Netherlanders provisionally ceded control of the colony to the English, who renamed the city and the rest of the province in June 1665.
During the restitution to Dutch rule from August 1673 to November 1674, when New Netherland was under the jurisdiction of the City of Amsterdam, the first Dutch governor, Anthony Colve, was appointed.
List of directors
=From 1624–1664=
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| Cornelius Jacobsen May (fl. 1600s) | 1624 | 1625 | * Explored Delaware Bay, New York Bay, Hudson River.
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| Willem Verhulst (or van der Hulst) (fl. 1600s) | 1625 | 1626 | * Initiated construction of Fort Amsterdam on southern tip of Manhattan Island, and Fort Wilhelmus on the Delaware River.
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| File:Peter Minuit (Minnewit) old portrait.jpg | Peter Minuit (1580–1638) | 1626 | 1631 | * Purchased the island of Manhattan from Native Americans on May 24, 1626 for 60 Dutch guilders worth of goods.Burrows, Edwin G., and Wallace, Mike. Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), xivff. |
| Sebastiaen Jansen Krol (1595–1674) | 1632{{Citation needed|date=January 2024|reason=Check position start dates - conflict with dates listed https://hdl.handle.net/2027/uc1.b4046204?urlappend=%3Bseq=32%3Bownerid=9007199271937983-34}} | 1633 | ||
| File:Wouter van Twiller.jpg | Wouter van Twiller (1606–1654) | 1633 | 1638{{Citation needed|date=January 2024|reason=Check position start dates - conflict with dates listed https://hdl.handle.net/2027/uc1.b4046204?urlappend=%3Bseq=32%3Bownerid=9007199271937983-34}} | * Previously a Dutch West India Company warehouse clerk, used family connections to the Rensselaer family to gain appointment
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| File:Willem (Wilhelm) Kieft (1597-1647) Director of New Netherland.jpg | Willem Kieft (1597–1647) | 1638{{Citation needed|date=January 2024|reason=Check position start dates - conflict with dates listed https://hdl.handle.net/2027/uc1.b4046204?urlappend=%3Bseq=32%3Bownerid=9007199271937983-34}} | 1647{{Citation needed|date=January 2024|reason=Check position start dates - conflict with dates listed https://hdl.handle.net/2027/uc1.b4046204?urlappend=%3Bseq=32%3Bownerid=9007199271937983-34}} | * Attempted to drive out Lenape tribe.
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| File:Petrus (Peter Pieter) Stuyvesant portrait c1660.jpg | Peter Stuyvesant ({{Circa|1612}}–1672) | 1647{{Citation needed|date=January 2024|reason=Check position start dates - conflict with dates listed https://hdl.handle.net/2027/uc1.b4046204?urlappend=%3Bseq=32%3Bownerid=9007199271937983-34}} | 1664 | * Authorized charter for Communipaw and Bergen (now Jersey City) in 1660.
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=Restoration of the colony, 1673–1674=
In 1673, during the Third Anglo-Dutch War, the Dutch were able to recapture New Amsterdam (renamed "New York" by the English) under Admiral Cornelis Evertsen the Youngest and Captain Anthony Colve.Roosevelt, Theodore. "[http://www.bartleby.com/171/4.html IV. New Amsterdam becomes New York The Beginning of English Rule. 1664–1674]," in New York: A Sketch of the City's Social, Political, and Commercial Progress from the First Dutch Settlement to Recent Times. (New York: Charles Scribner & Sons, 1906). Evertsen renamed the city "New Orange."Barrevald, Dirk J. From New Amsterdam to New York: The Founding of New York by the Dutch in July 1625. (Lincoln, Nebraska: Writers Club Press, 2001), 248. Evertsen returned to the Netherlands in July 1674, and was accused of disobeying his orders. Evertsen had been instructed not to retake New Amsterdam but instead to conquer the English colonies of Saint Helena and Cayenne (now French Guiana).Shomette, Donald G. and Haslach, Robert D. Raid on America: The Dutch Naval Campaign of 1672–1674. (Columbia, South Carolina: University of South Carolina Press, 1988), 73, 139–151; De Waard, Cornelis. De Zeeuwsche expeditie naar de West onder Cornelis Evertsen den Jonge, 1672–1674. (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1928). (in Dutch) In 1674, the Dutch were compelled to relinquish New Amsterdam to the English under the terms of the Second Treaty of Westminster.Westdorp, Martina. [http://stuyvesant.library.uu.nl/kaarten/zeeuwseexpeditie2.htm "Behouden of opgeven? Het lot van de nederlandse kolonie Nieuw-Nederland na de herovering op de Engelsen in 1673"] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080630054643/http://stuyvesant.library.uu.nl/kaarten/zeeuwseexpeditie2.htm |date=2008-06-30 }} in De wereld van Peter Stuyvesant (in Dutch). Retrieved 21 March 2013.Prak, Maarten. The Dutch Republic in the Seventeenth Century: The Golden Age. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 116.
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| Anthony Colve (1644–1693) | 1673 | 1674 | * Colve's authority was brief, starting with the taking of New York, but ended on 10 November 1674 to implement the provisions of the Treaty of Westminster, which restored the colony to the English. News did not reach the New World of the treaty's terms until late in the year. The new English governor Edmund Andros only arrived in November 1674. |