The 17th century Dutch colony of New Netherland, which was located between New England in the north and Maryland and Virginia in the south, has received little attention from most historians of colonial America. The New Netherland Project was formed in 1974 under the sponsorship of the New York State Library and the Holland Society of New York…

The distinguished Columbia University historian Richard Hofstadter possessed a scholarly imagination unusually open to fresh approaches to illuminating the past. In the seven years that separated the publications of "American Political Tradition" (1948) and "The Age of Reform" (1955), Hofstadter absorbed new intellectual…