New Amsterdam

New Amsterdam was a 17th century Dutch settlement at the southern tip of Manhattan Island, now Lower Manhattan, that served as the colonial capital of New Netherland and the seat of the Dutch West India Company's fur trading operations. Founded in 1624 and granted municipal rights in 1653, it is remembered for the 1626 purchase of Manhattan negotiated by Peter Minuit from Canarse leaders for goods worth about 60 guilders, though the deed has not survived; English frigates captured the settlement without bloodshed on August 27, 1664 and renamed it New York, and after a brief Dutch return as New Orange in 1673-74 it became permanently English territory and grew into New York City.