Excerpt from The American Historical Review, Vol. 6: October, 1900 to July, 1901 The order of 1640 marks a decided change in the policy of the Company. For the future, instead of encouraging the establishment of patroon estates, the officers of the Company were directed to further the growth of towns and villages composed of independent settlers. The old concentration of all governmental authority in the Director and Council at New Amsterdam was abolished, and in its place was put the Dutch system of local government. Almost at the same time, owing to difficulties with the Indians, the Director was compelled to have recourse to a representative political system. Thus from this time, the political history of New Netherland shows two tendencies, one leading to the extension of local governmental privileges and the other to a system whereby the localities might be represented in the central conduct of affairs. For the present it is our purpose to trace the course of the first tendency, leading to the development of town institutions. 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.