Excerpt from Thirty-Seven Years of Holland-American Relations, 1803 to 1840: Thesis During the past three centuries several lines of connec tion, more or less important according to one's point of view, have existed between The Netherlands and the American continent. The earliest and best known of these Holland American relations dates from the year 1609, when the dis coveries of an English sea captain, Henry Hudson, in the employ of a Dutch commercial company, established for the Republic of Holland a claim to the region which came to be known as New Netherland, lying between the Delaware and Connecticut rivers. Discovery was followed by occupation; trading stations were founded to develop the new line of trade with the Indians, and colonists were sent in to found settlements along the Hudson or to find employment on the semi-feudal estates of the patroons. In 1621 the Dutch West India Company was organized, with supreme power of gov erning the newly acquired region in the name of the Estates General. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.