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Dutch Occupation of Acadia


New Holland (Nova Hollandia) was a colony established by Dutch naval captain Jurriaen Aernoutsz upon seizing the capital of Acadia, Fort Pentagouet in Penobscot Bay (present day Castine, Maine), and several other Acadian villages during the Franco-Dutch War. The Dutch imprisoned the Governor of Acadia Jacques de Chambly. The French and native allies under the command of St. Castin regained control of the area the following year in 1675, however, a year later the Dutch West India Company appointed Cornelis Steenwijck, a Dutch merchant in New York, governor of the "coasts and countries of Nova Scotia and Acadie." The formal Dutch claim to Acadia (1676) was finally abandoned at the end of the war with the Treaty of Nijmegen in 1678.

In 1672 the Franco-Dutch War began, and England allied itself with the French. England and the Netherlands came to terms early in 1674 and then several months later the July day when Captain Jurriaen Aernoutsz sailed into New York harbor. Previously he had been sailing the North Atlantic Ocean looking for English and French ships to attack.

In New York he met a trader named John Rhoades, a Massachusetts resident thoroughly familiar with the fur trade on the coasts of Maine and Acadia, who told him that the Dutch were no longer at war with the English, but that France had yet to come to terms. Rhoades went on to explain to Aernoutsz that the French colony in Acadia was barely defended and ripe for conquest. Aernoutsz took this suggestion to his a crew and they agreed unanimously. John Rhoades would be the crew's guide.


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