The New Netherland Institute's 2026 Annual Conference, New Netherland and the World, will be held in Albany at the New York State Museum on November 7-8, 2026.  We will announce the program and provide the registration link shortly.

Image: Jan Albertsz. Rotius, Still Life, ca. 1650. From the Collection of the Rijksmuseum.

Lisa Fludd-Smith is co-founder and Deputy Executive Director of the African American Archive of Columbia County.  She will be working on "Write My Name in the Book of Life," a book about the Black history of the Hudson Valley in the 17th through 19th centuries.  She is particularly interested in exploring the relationships between Dutch settlers and the people they enslaved and then how the two groups interacted after manumission.  

Thomas Lecaque is associate professor of history at Grand View University in Iowa. He will be working on a project entitled, Holy War Rhetoric in Early North America, 1680-1765, which explores the use of the rhetoric of religious violence and apocalypticism in the context of warfare in Imperial North America.  The Wendell Grant will give him time to explore sermons written and delivered in Dutch Reformed Churches in the Hudson River Valley.  Often ignored because they were Dutch speaking in the English era, these church sermons show the continued importance of the Reformed Church after 1664.

Andrea Mosterman is associate professor of history at the University of New Orleans.  She will be working on "A Marvelous Foreshadowing": New Amsterdam and the Dutch Role in Promoting the Early American Slave Trade.  Her research will focus on the voyage of the Dutch slave ship Gideon in 1663-1664 and the central role of New Amsterdam in the early North American slave trade.

Johan Visser, a PhD candidate at Leiden University, will be this year's Fulbright-NNRC scholar.  He will be working on a project entitled Feeding the Atlantic: Computational Reading of Scarcity and Paradise in the Dutch Atlantic World, which looks at how descriptions of New Netherland as an agricultural paradise conflicted with actual experiences of food scarcity for many who lived in the colony.

A rich new collection of essays and exhibits is now available on the New Netherland Institute’s website. Conceived and edited by New Netherland Institute Senior Historian, Dr. Dennis Maika, “Slavery in New Netherland and Early New York” offers some of the latest research on the institution of slavery, the lives of the enslaved, and the slave trade in seventeenth and early eighteenth-century New York. These unique resources provide new insights and promote a deeper understanding of both the institution of slavery and the lives of the enslaved. This project was made possible with the generous support of Dutch Culture USA.

The New York Historical has published a new resource on Asser Levy, one of the first Jewish residents of New Netherland.   Ideal for classroom use, it narrates Levy's life and provides documents and discussion questions for thinking about his experiences and the broader history of Jews in Colonial America. 

Image: First Mill Street Synagogue (NY), 1730.

Alisa van De Haar (Leiden University) analyzes the comparatively large library that Gysbert van Imbroch and Rachel de la Montagne accumulated in Wiltwyck.  Using an inventory taken of their books after their deaths in 1665, Van de Haar finds that a number of different genres are represented as well as evidence that Rachel de la Montagne might have been a school teacher in the town.

Image: Bernard van Zutphen, Practycke der Nederlansche Rechten (Leeuwarden: Gijsbert Sijbes, 1645). [One of the books in the Imbroch/de la Montagne library]

Russell Shorto and Arthur Wheelock Jr. have curated a new exhibition at New York Historical, Old Masters, New Amsterdam. Open now until August 30, 2026, the exhibition explores how New Amsterdam might have looked and felt by delving into paintings of "Old" Amsterdam.  Exhibition highlights also include documents, such as the diary of John Bowne, the Quaker leader who challenged Peter Stuyvesant for greater religious toleration in New Netherland.

Image: Gerrit Dou (1613-1675), Herring Seller and Boy, 1664. From the Leiden Collection. On view in the exhibition.