Dutch

Popular belief holds that the Dutch are a mixture of Frisians, Saxons, and Franks. In fact, research has made plausible the contention that the autochthonous inhabitants of the region were a mixture of pre-Germanic and Germanic population groups who in the course of time had converged on the main deltaic…

…American Revolution began, more prominent Dutch families—the Van Cortlandts, De Peysters, and Schuylers—supported the cause than did their English counterparts. One unanticipated result of the fighting was that many enslaved persons, perhaps one-fifth of the city population in 1776, won freedom. One of the first “history” books of New York…

The term Dutch predates the Netherlands. It originates from the Middle Ages when the language spoken by the common people in the region was referred to as Dietsc or Duutsc (“of the people, popular”). This was in contrast to the language of education and government, Latin, which…