We are going to know the history of New York in a brief and entertaining way.
The first settlers in the area were the Lenape, an Algonquian people, who ranged from Virginia to the Rocky Mountains and north to Hudson Bay.
Starting in the 16th century, the first Europeans began to explore the area, with the Florentine navigator and explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano, in the service of King Francis I of France, who was looking for a route to Asia.
In 1624, 30 families of settlers sent by the Dutch West India Company settled on Nutten Island (now Governors Island), which they called New Amsterdam.
In 1626, the governor of New Amsterdam, Peter Minuit, buys the island of Manhattan from the natives for 60 guilders (about $1,000 in today’s dollars) in trade goods, such as cloth or tools.
In 1664 the British took New Amsterdam from the Dutch and changed its name to New York, in honor of the Duke of York.
Over the next century, New York City’s population grew and diversified with the arrival of English, Dutch, French, and German immigrants, as well as servants and slaves from Africa.
The city prospers thanks to the trade in flour, furs, tobacco and wood and in 1760, the population grew from just 300 inhabitants in 1630 to 18,000 surpassing Boston as the second most populous city in the American colonies. 50 years later it already exceeded 200,000 inhabitants, becoming the most populous city in the northern hemisphere.
Between 1760 and 1770, an anti-British activity arose that exploded in 1765 after the approval by the British parliament of the Stamp Act, which involved a direct and specific tax for the thirteen colonies of British America that required that the majority of materials printed in the colonies will be published on stamped paper produced in London, stamped with an embossed revenue stamp. This law was intended to help pay for troops stationed in North America after the British victory in the Seven Years’ War and to control the growing freedom of the press in the colonies.
In August 1776, despite the efforts of George Washington’s Continental Army in Brooklyn and Harlem Heights, New York City falls to the British and serves as a British military base until 1783.
The city quickly recovers from the war and becomes one of the most important ports in the country in 1810.
But the real economic explosion would come with the opening of the Erie Canal in 1825, a 363-mile canal from Lake Erie to the Hudson River, which facilitated the transport of goods. This made NYC the true business capital of the Country.
The growth of the city required new infrastructure improvements. In 1811 the Commissioners’ Plan, considered the most important document in the development of New York City, established an orderly grid of streets and avenues for the undeveloped portions of Manhattan north of Houston Street.
In 1842, the Croton Distributing Reservoir was opened, a reservoir and aqueduct that provided drinking water to the growing population of the city. And in 1845 the city established its first municipal agency: the New York City Police Department.
With increased immigration during the 1840s and 1850s, they settled in different ethnic neighborhoods, started businesses, joined unions and political organizations, and built churches and social clubs.
During the first half of the 20th century, with the construction of interstate highways and suburbs, it encouraged wealthy people to leave the city, which combined with deindustrialization and other economic changes to shrink the tax base and decrease public services.
With the immigration and nationality law approved in 1965 or the Hart-Celler Act (Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965), the national quotas imposed by the National Origins Formula, in force in the United States since the Immigration Law of 1921, are abolished. With it, an annual maximum limit of 300,000 immigrant visas is established, it makes it possible for immigrants from Asia, Africa, the Caribbean and Latin America to reach the United States, many of them to NYC revitalizing many neighborhoods.
On September 11, 2011, NYC suffered the largest terrorist attack in the history of the United States, when a group of terrorists crashed two hijacked planes into the two tallest buildings in the city: the twin towers of the World Trade Center.
Buildings were destroyed and nearly 3,000 people were killed.
Nonetheless. the city remains an important financial and tourist capital with more than 40 million visitors a year.
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