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Port · Province of New York

New York

Around 1715 New York was a busy harbour town of perhaps 6,000 to 8,000 people at the tip of Manhattan. The Dutch founded it as New Amsterdam, the English took it in 1664, and by 1715 it was ruled by a royal governor sent from London. It shipped flour and biscuit to the sugar islands and furs from Albany. Slavery was woven through its life: the city opened an official slave market at Wall Street in 1711, and after an enslaved uprising in 1712 twenty-one people were executed.

What was New York like around 1715?

New York began as New Amsterdam, a trading post of the Dutch West India Company, built to profit from the beaver fur trade. In 1664 the English took it and renamed it after the Duke of York, the king’s brother. Many Dutch families stayed.

By the time Silver & Sails begins, New York was a royal colony run by a governor sent from London. Britannica puts the town at 6,000 to 8,000 people in 1712, and a count in 1723 found 7,248. Like Boston and Philadelphia, it lived by trade with the sugar islands.

The governor from 1710 to 1719 was Robert Hunter, an army officer. He also wrote Androboros, a short political comedy aimed at his opponents. Printed in 1714 or soon after, it is the earliest surviving play from the American colonies.

What did colonial New York trade?

New York’s great export was flour. From about 1680 until 1694, only the city was allowed to bolt (sift) and pack flour for sale overseas, and inspectors stamped the barrels. The rule made New York flour famous, and flour barrels and windmill sails still appear on the city’s seal, first adopted in 1686. Flour, ship’s biscuit and timber went south to feed the sugar islands, and ships came home with sugar and molasses.

Furs came down the Hudson from Albany. A charter of 1686 gave Albany the sole right to deal with Native peoples to the north and west, and the town treated it as a fur monopoly. Beaver had grown scarce in New York by the 1660s, so Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) hunters travelled far to the north and west for pelts to trade. By the 1720s the centre of the trade had moved west to Oswego.

How many enslaved people lived in colonial New York?

Slavery came to Manhattan in the 1620s. Enslaved Africans helped clear and widen the old Native trail that became Broadway and helped build the wooden wall that gave Wall Street its name. Under Dutch rule some could win a limited “half-freedom” with some rights of their own, but English laws closed most paths to freedom.

Around 1712 about 1,000 of the town’s people were enslaved. By the middle of the 1700s about one New Yorker in five was enslaved, and nearly half of all households held at least one enslaved person. In late 1711 the city council set up an official market at the foot of Wall Street, where enslaved Africans and Native Americans were sold or hired out by the day. It ran until 1762, and a city marker now stands at the spot.

Most captives reached New York from the Caribbean rather than straight from Africa. In the 1690s, though, merchants such as Frederick Philipse sent ships to Madagascar, where their agents ran a trading post that bought captives from pirates and other traders. Philipse’s ships made at least five voyages between 1693 and 1699 and bought more than 1,100 people.

What happened in the New York slave revolt of 1712?

In the spring of 1712 about two dozen enslaved people planned a rising. Many were African-born, among them Coromantee (Akan) people from the Gold Coast, and a few were “Spanish Indians”, captives taken from Spanish colonies. On the night of 6 April 1712 they set fire to an outbuilding near Maiden Lane and attacked the townspeople who ran to fight the blaze. Nine colonists were killed and several wounded.

Governor Hunter sent soldiers, and the rebels fled. Six took their own lives rather than be captured. Dozens more were arrested, and twenty-one people were executed. The punishments were deliberately cruel, meant to frighten others. Hunter delayed some sentences, including that of a pregnant woman and two men who said they were free, and asked Queen Anne to pardon them.

In his report to London, Hunter wrote that he could find no cause except revenge for harsh treatment by their masters. The colony then passed harsher laws: freeing anyone became very costly, and Black and Native people were barred from owning land.

What is the African Burial Ground in New York?

Africans in New York were shut out of the churchyards inside the town, so they buried their dead on open ground outside the town to the north. The burial ground was in use from the 1630s until the 1790s and covered about six acres. National Park Service pages give estimates of 15,000 to 20,000 burials.

The land was built over and forgotten. In 1991, before a federal office tower went up, archaeologists found it again and studied the remains of 419 people, almost half of them children under twelve. They were reburied with ceremony in 2003, and the site became a national monument in 2006.

Was New York a pirate port?

In the 1690s, a generation before the game, it came close. Benjamin Fletcher, governor from 1692 to 1698, was accused by the Board of Trade in London of selling protection to pirates and of giving privateer licences, permits to raid enemy ships, to men such as Thomas Tew. The charges even said that one pirate crew gave him their ship as a present. New York merchants also profited from the Madagascar trade.

William Kidd was a respectable New York sea captain who married there in 1691. In 1696 he sailed from New York in the Adventure Galley with a royal commission to hunt pirates and capture French ships. In the Indian Ocean he turned pirate himself. He was arrested in 1699 and hanged in London on 23 May 1701, more than a decade before the game begins.

After 1698 a new governor, the Earl of Bellomont, cracked down, and the Madagascar trade ended around 1701.

Legend or fact?

Legend says: Slavery was a Southern story; northern towns like New York had little to do with it.

Records show: By the mid-1700s about one New Yorker in five was enslaved, and from 1711 the city ran an official slave market at Wall Street.

Legend says: Captain Kidd was a pirate of the 1710s and 1720s, like Blackbeard.

Records show: Kidd sailed from New York in 1696 and was hanged in 1701, years before the pirate wave that began around 1715.

Legend says: Kidd set out from New York as a pirate.

Records show: He sailed with royal commissions to capture pirates and French ships. He turned to piracy later, at sea.

Legend says: Wall Street is named after the slave market.

Records show: It is named after a Dutch wall that enslaved Africans helped build. The market was set up at its foot much later, in 1711.

Legend says: The rebels of 1712 struck without reason.

Records show: Governor Hunter himself told London he could find no cause except revenge for harsh treatment by their masters.

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Sources

  1. New York slave rebellion of 1712, Encyclopaedia Britannica. Date and start of the 1712 revolt, about two dozen rebels, nine colonists killed, six suicides, the trials and harsher laws; the town’s population of 6,000 to 8,000 with about 1,000 enslaved.
  2. Letter to the Lords of Trade, 23 June 1712, Governor Robert Hunter, in E. B. O’Callaghan (ed.), Documents Relative to the Colonial History of the State of New York, vol. V, pp. 341–345 (classroom copy, CUNY) (1712). The governor’s own report: the fire, nine killed, six suicides, twenty-one executed, and his view that the cause was revenge for harsh treatment.
  3. New York City Slave Revolt, Ronald W. Howard, EBSCO Research Starters (2023). Coromantee and “Spanish Indian” rebels, arrests, Hunter’s reprieves and requests for pardons, and the laws passed afterwards.
  4. The African Burial Ground in History, Christopher Moore, National Park Service. Why Africans were buried outside the town, the 1711 market, the 1991–92 excavation of 419 people, reburial in 2003 and the 2006 monument.
  5. African Burial Ground: History and Culture, National Park Service. Dates of use, size and estimated number of burials.
  6. Enslavement in New York, National Park Service. Dutch founding and the fur trade, enslaved labour on Wall Street and Broadway, half-freedom, and the English takeover of 1664.
  7. Slave Market historical marker, Wall Street, NYC Parks (text via the Historical Marker Database). The 1711 Common Council market, its use until 1762, Native Americans hired out there, and one New Yorker in five enslaved by the mid-1700s.
  8. The Philipse Family and the Slave Trade, Historic Hudson Valley, People Not Property. Philipse voyages to the pirate trading post on Madagascar, 1693–1699, and the end of that trade around 1701.
  9. The Business of Slavery, New-York Historical Society, Women & the American Story. Early in British rule, New York merchants bought enslaved people from Caribbean plantations; direct voyages to Africa came later.
  10. Calendar of State Papers Colonial, America and West Indies, vol. 16, entries for 24 November 1698, J. W. Fortescue (ed.), British History Online (1905). The Board of Trade’s charges against Governor Fletcher: protections sold to pirates, a ship accepted as a gift, and commissions for Thomas Tew.
  11. Captain Kidd, Mark Cartwright, World History Encyclopedia (2021). Kidd’s New York marriage, his commissions, sailing from New York in 1696, his piracy, arrest and execution in 1701.
  12. History of the City of New York in the Seventeenth Century, vol. II, Mrs Schuyler Van Rensselaer (Macmillan) (1909). The flour bolting monopoly, its inspection rules and its end in 1694; flour barrels on the 1686 city seal.
  13. The Fur Trade, Stefan Bielinski, New York State Museum. Albany’s 1686 charter and fur monopoly, Haudenosaunee hunters, and the move to Oswego by the 1720s.
  14. Determining the Date of Robert Hunter’s Androboros, Peter A. Davis, Theatre Survey 25:1 (1984). Hunter as governor 1710–1719; Androboros as the earliest surviving American play, printed 1714 or 1715.
  15. New York Burning: Liberty, Slavery, and Conspiracy in Eighteenth-Century Manhattan (data article), Jill Lepore, Journal of Slavery and Data Preservation 2:2 (2021). Very few slaving voyages went straight from Africa to New York before the late 1740s.
  16. Timeline of New York City, Wikipedia (citing Hough’s 1872 census tables). Additional source: the city’s population of 7,248 in 1723.

Written for Silver & Sails. Facts last checked against these sources on 12 October 2026. Found a mistake? Tell us.