Henry Hudson arrived in America with 'halve maen'

Through a rich but embittered Amsterdam merchant named Isaac le Maire, who had been thrown out of the VOC, Hudson had provided the French with all the information which he had also given to the VOC about his previous expeditions to the North. A silent battle had been taking place to hire the explorer Henry Hudson. Dutch journalist and historian Geert Mak describes this fascinating intrigue in part one of his book ‘1609: The forgotten history of Hudson, Amsterdam and New York’, which is published by the Henry Hudson 400 Foundation and can also be downloaded for free.

The second part of the book deals with the events after Henry Hudson finally sets sail out of Amsterdam. Russell Shorto, a writer for The New York Times, presents a lively picture of what it must have been like on the Half Moon. He sees the threat of mutiny as the primary reason that Hudson neglected the VOC’s instructions to sail a north-easterly route around Russia and, instead, headed westward toward the newly discovered America. Hudson was convinced that this was the shortest route to the Sea of Japan. In those days, the best calculation of the size of the earth estimated it to be about one-third smaller than it actually is. Hudson first sailed to a friendly English settlement in what is now Virginia, before sailing up what we now know as Hudson River, which has tides and is therefore salty, under the mistaken belief that it was a passage that would lead to the Pacific Ocean. Once he and his crew discovered that the river was not, in fact, the much sought-after route to Asia, he sailed back to Europe.

On a subsequent voyage, Hudson’s crew finally mutinied and forced him and his son into a small open boat and set them adrift in what would later become known as Hudson Bay, where they are assumed to have died an icy death. Based on the discovery from Hudson’s first trip, the Dutch Republic had laid claim to a broad strip of land along the east coast of North America. The newly established West India Company established the colony of New Netherlands there, which encompassed five future US states, and it established the settlement of New Amsterdam on Manhattan Island. Under the leadership of Governor Peter Stuyvesant, this tolerant melting pot of many nationalities flourished; it was granted a charter in 1653 – the official year that the subsequent City of New York was established. In 1664, English battleships appeared in the harbour of New Amsterdam and Stuyvesant reluctantly surrendered his command and the colony.

‘1609: The forgotten history of Hudson, Amsterdam and New York’ (2009), by Geert Mak and Russell Short, published by Henry Hudson 400 Foundation, 77 pgs. Free download at: www.hudson400.com (About Us, Projects & Events).

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Its Logistics and Supply Chains innovation programme will focus on in-depth research and development in three thematic areas related to international developments: the so-called Cross Chain Control Centre (4-C), service logistics and the coordinating role of interchanges. The idea is for this top institute to become a communal home base for the best researchers and instructors in the field of supply chain management, with the objective of further developing academic knowledge that has been recognised as forwardthinking by the global community.

The focus will be on innovation and contributing to the success and sustainability of logistics chains. The top institute must eventually be in a position to measure itself against such renowned business schools as INSEAD and IMD, while also bundling the specific know-how and expertise of the Netherlands and positioning it better internationally.

Henry_Hudson arrived in 1609 in America and founded New York

Luckily, the 400th anniversary of Henry Hudson’s arrival in America is being celebrated in both the Netherlands and the US this year. All of the VOC’s power lay in the hands of a collective: the Assembly of the Lords Seventeen. Nobody had the last word and there was no single final authority. It was the start of successful decision-making by consensus, the so-called polder model.

With a worldwide supply chain network, the VOC controlled practically all trade and shipping to Asia for two centuries. It built numerous outposts along the way, including on the Cape Peninsula (now Cape Town) and in Batavia (now Jakarta). The VOC never engaged in colonisation, remaining instead, in the words of Dutch historian Geert Mak, ‘a trading company: powerful and forceful, to be sure, but nevertheless a business, which had just happened to set up operations on the edges of Africa and the Indonesian Archipelago’. The Dutch ability to adapt to the local culture enabled the VOC to become the only trading company to obtain a trading post on the Japanese island of Dejima.

The Dutch were also far ahead of their time from a financial perspective. Amsterdam ship owners held shares in dozens of ships, instead of being sole owners. During the VOC years, Amsterdam was the financial capital of the world. In 1609, two institutions crucial to trade were established there: a commodity exchange, a unique trading place for all merchants, and an exchange bank, which profoundly modernised the international flow of money by converting every conceivable currency into indexed certificates. These financial institutions adeptly served the needs of global trade and shipping: supply chain and finance of which we can be proud.

Martijn Lofvers, Editor-in-Chief & Publisher Supply Chain Magazine
martijn.lofvers@springer.com