Buying Manhattan

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May 6: The Dutch purchased Manhattan Island on this day in 1626, for goods valued at $24. The legendary deal is the starting point for Russell Shorto's recent bestseller, The Island at the Center of the World, which offers "a new foundation myth" (the New York Times) based on his thesis that "Manhattan is where America began":

We are used to thinking of American beginnings as involving thirteen English colonies—to thinking of American history as an English root onto which, over time, the cultures of many other nations were grafted to create a new species of society that has become a multiethnic model for societies around the world. But that isn't true. To talk of the thirteen original English colonies is to ignore another European colony, the one centered on Manhattan, which predated New York and whose history was all but erased when the English took it over.

If The Island at the Center of the World is "literary alchemy," its base metal is a roomful of historical records from the period when the island was the Dutch colony of New Netherland. Recently translated, the documents offer a full portrait of not only "the kings and generals who plotted for control of this piece of property," but the "explorers, entrepreneurs, pirates, prostitutes, and assorted scalawags from different parts of Europe" who sought adventure or wealth there:

Its capital was a tiny collection of rough buildings perched on the edge of a limitless wilderness, but its muddy lanes and waterfront were prowled by a Babel of peoples—Norwegians, Germans, Italians, Jews, Africans (slaves and free), Walloons, Bohemians, Munsees, Montauks, Mohawks, and many others—all living on the rim of empire, struggling to find a way of being together, searching for a balance between chaos and order, liberty and oppression. Pirates, prostitutes, smugglers, and business sharks held sway in it. It was Manhattan, in other words, right from the start: a place unlike any other, either in the North American colonies or anywhere else.

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Daybook is contributed by Steve King, who teaches in the English Department of Memorial University in St. John's, Newfoundland. His literary daybook began as a radio series syndicated nationally in Canada. He can be found online at todayinliterature.com.