Reviewed by Kathleen DuVal | Book Review | The William and Mary Quarterly, 64.2

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Reviewed by Kathleen DuVal | Book Review | The William and Mary Quarterly, 64.2 | The History Cooperative

Reviews of Books

Kathleen DuVal, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

The Shame and the Sorrow: Dutch-Amerindian Encounters in New Netherland. By Donna Merwick. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006. 342 pages. $49.95 (cloth).
Is it worse to do harm with bad intentions or to do harm with good intentions? In The Shame and the Sorrow, Donna Merwick makes no attempt to answer such an unanswerable question. But she reveals the particular shame of unintended damage. The Dutch who began trading with the Mohawk and other Indians along the Hudson River in 1609 and bought Manhattan Island in 1625 intended to be traders, not conquerors. They modeled their imperial methods on the Portuguese and in opposition to Spanish atrocities (as described by Bartolomé de Las Casas) and English disregard for Indian landrights. The Dutch sought to remain "alongshore," trading from their island base but not changing or even judging native North Americans. Colonizers who sought to spread European forms of religion or civilization also intended to do no harm, yet they sought dramatic changes in Indians' lives. It is tempting to imagine that, had all European colonial powers simply practiced the Dutch form of light-handed commerce, Indian nations would have retained their land and sovereignty. As Merwick shows, the story of New Netherland proves otherwise.	1
Merwick steers a careful course in analyzing Dutch intentions. She never romanticizes them, yet she gives them due credit. Pluralism and tolerance were not simply pragmatic tactics. The Dutch generally believed that coexistence was the right way to deal with foreign peoples. The best form of interaction was trade, not extensive involvement in foreign politics and cultures. Dutch distaste for foreign entanglements resulted at least in part from their own experience of being under the rule of a foreign power, Hapsburg Spain. After decades of fighting to throw off imperial rule, the Dutch were reluctant to impose it on others. This alongshore mentality could be quite self-serving. When England in 1632 tried to claim that Virginia included the places where the Dutch were trading, the Dutch responded that the land belonged to the native peoples who lived there, not to any Europeans. And there would have been no empire at all if there had been no profits to be made.	. . .

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