Did the dutch really swap new york for surinam, if so, why?
No they didn’t. The English claimed New Netherland on the ground of the Cabot discoveries; and Charles II now, 1664, coolly gave the entire country, from the Connecticut to the Delaware, to his brother James, Duke of York, ignoring the claims of the Dutch colony, and even disregarding his own charter of two years before the younger Winthrop. Richard Nicolls of the royal navy set out with a small fleet and about five hundred of the king’s veterans. Reaching New England, he was joined by several hundred of the militia of Connecticut and Long Island, and he sailed for the mouth of the Hudson. Stuyvesant had heard of the fleet’s arrival at Boston, but he was made to believe that its object was to enforce the Episcopal service upon the Puritans of New England, and so unsuspecting was he that he went far up the river, to Fort Orange, to quell an Indian disturbance. Here he was when informed that Nicolls was moving toward New Amsterdam. Stuyvesant hastened down the river with all speed, arriv
