.

On the mainland of North America the Dutch planted a single colony--the
New Netherlands, with its capital at New Amsterdam, later New York.
Their commercial instinct had once more guided them wisely. They had
found the natural centre for the trade of North America; for by way of
the river Hudson and its affluent, the Mohawk, New York commands the
only clear path through the mountain belt which everywhere shuts off
the Atlantic coast region from the central plain of America. Founded
and controlled by the Company of the West Indies, this settlement was
intended to be, not primarily the home of a branch of the Dutch nation
beyond the seas, but a trading-station for collecting the furs and
other products of the inland regions. At Orange (Albany), which stands
at the junction of the Mohawk and the Hudson, the Dutch traders
collected the furs brought in by Indian trappers from west and north;
New Amsterdam was the port of export; and if settlers were encouraged,
it was only that they might supply the men and the means and the food
for carrying on this traffic. The Company of the West Indies
administered the colony purely from this point of view. No powers of
self-government were allowed to the settlers; and, as in Cape Colony,
the relations between the colonists and the governing company were
never satisfactory, because the colonists felt that their interests
were wholly subordinated.

The distinguishing feature of French imperial activity during this
period was its dependence upon the support and direction of the home
government, which was the natural result of the highly centralised
regime established in France during the modern era. Only in one
direction was French activity successfully maintained by private
enterprise, and this was in the not very reputable field of West Indian
buccaneering, in which the French were even more active than their
principal rivals and comrades, the English. The word 'buccaneer' itself
comes from the French: boucan means the wood-fire at which the pirates
dried and smoked their meat, and these fires, blazing on deserted
islands, must often have warned merchant vessels to avoid an
ever-present danger. The island of Tortuga, which commands the passage
between Cuba and Hispaniola through which the bulk of the Spanish
traffic passed on its way from Mexico to Europe, was the most important
of the buccaneering bases, and although it was at first used by the
buccaneers of all nations, it soon be