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Reply to "New York - The State And City Must Change Their Names"

New York City was settled by Europeans from The Netherlands in 1624. The Dutch called the whole area of New York "Nieuw Nederland" (New Netherland) and they named a fort and town on the south end of Manhattan Island Nieuw Amsterdam (New Amsterdam),[13] after the capital city of the Netherlands, which was to become present-day New York. The English took over the colony in 1664 during the second Anglo-Dutch War. They changed the name to New York, to honor the Duke of York, who later became King James II of England. The Dutch surrendered Nieuw Amsterdam without fighting. They were afraid of the English Royal Navy, so they traded the town to England for the colony of Surinam in South America, which they thought was worth more money.

By the time the English took New York, there were many other Dutch towns in what would become New York City, including Breukelen (Brooklyn), Vlissingen (Flushing), and Nieuw Haarlem (Harlem). There were already some English towns in the area also, such as Gravesend in Brooklyn and Newtown in Queens. Dutch, English and other people had been living together in New York for a long time.

New York quickly grew to become a large and important port city. The important Battle of Long Island of the American Revolutionwas fought in Brooklyn in 1776. New York was the capital of the United States under the Articles of Confederation from 1785 to 1788. When the US Constitution was made, it stayed as the capital from 1789 until 1790.[14]

In 1898, the cities of New York and Brooklyn came together with the Bronx, Staten Island, and the western towns in Queens County to make Greater New York. This is the total area of the City of New York today. Around this time, many new immigrantscame into New York City. They came in at Ellis Island, an island in New York's harbor near the Statue of Liberty. Many of them then moved to the Lower East Side neighborhood in Manhattan, which had over a million people living in just a few square miles.

Early in the twentieth century, with better transportation, more people moved to outer parts of the greater city, and many commuted to Manhattan. Many skyscrapers and other big buildings were put up to provide places to work.


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