ABSTRACT
The terrorist outrages of September 11 serve as an unwelcome reminder that Lower Manhattan has abundant experience with the violence spawned by international trade and war. In 1625 the Dutch West India Company chose that site for a fur-trading post in New Netherland, “purchased” the entire island from the Lenape Indians, and began work on a massive fortress at the foot of Broadway (now the site of the Museum of the American Indian). The fort’s location made military as well as commercial sense: it was the prime site from which to control traffic along both the East and Hudson rivers, and it would also guard New Amsterdam, the burgeoning settlement outside its walls, from attack by the Spanish (with whom the Netherlands had been fighting for decades). In the years that followed, the ebb and flow of world events would reveal new enemies and compel the residents of Manhattan to improve and extend their defenses. I want to suggest, indeed, that that sense of exposure, of precariousness, of vulnerability was central to their historical experience.
