Peter Stuyvesant, Director-general of the Dutch colony of New Netherland surrenders to the overwhelming larger and more powerful English forces. Following its capture, the name of New Amsterdam, the successful Dutch settlement on the southern tip of Manhattan, was changed to New York, in honor of the Duke of York.
In 1673, the Dutch retook the colony but relinquished it under the Treaty of Westminster on February 19, 1674 that ended the Third Anglo-Dutch War. The origin of the Dutch colony, went back to 1609, when Englishman Henry Hudson had charted the area on behalf of the Dutch East India Company. The Dutch had laid claim to a wide area of the East Coast, originally covered an area including all or parts of five future states: New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Delaware and Pennsylvania. More
