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How world history helped shape Columbia County
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| John Mason/Hudson-Catskill Newspapers Thomas Mounkhall fields a question from the audience during his talk on Columbia County in a World History Perspective Sunday at the Kinderhook Memorial Library. |
By John Mason
Hudson-Catskill Newspapers
COLUMBIA COUNTY - It was fungi that brought Irish and Germans here, and fur that brought the Dutch, according to an expert on the convergence of world and local history.
While local history is often told from an insider's perspective, historian Thomas Mounkhall brought the opposite approach to Kinderhook Memorial Library Sunday. He told the audience his interest is in what happened outside of Columbia County, outside of New York state, outside of the United States, that had significant impacts on the county.
In his talk, illustrated with charts, he showed how the development of Columbia County was influenced by events in Western Europe, Latin America, Oceania and other areas of the world.
Mounkhall taught World History for 33 years in secondary public schools and is an adjunct professor of secondary education at SUNY New Paltz.
It was because of the success of the world's first multinational corporation that Columbia County became a home in the New World for many Dutch settlers and their descendants, Mounkhall said. The Dutch East India Company paid its investors 18 percent profit per year for 200 years straight by picking up such goods as spices in Indonesia and silk in China and selling them in Western Europe, he said.
"That was a model for the Dutch coming to Columbia County," he said. The creation of the Dutch West India Company signaled the firm's growing interest in animal furs, which could be obtained from Upstate New York and shipped back to Western Europe to be sold as coats in the first half of the 17th century.
The wind patterns in the Atlantic are circular, and would take ships from Europe first to Latin America, where sugar cane, harvested and processed by slaves from Africa, could be loaded on; then up to New York harbor to pick up furs.
It was because of wooden ships that many residents of the Palatine came to Germantown and other parts of the county. The Palatinate was the area along the Rhine River that later would become part of Germany. But in the 18th century there was no Germany. It was this area that was devastated by the 30 Years War between Protestants and Catholics, from 1618 to 1648, causing many residents to seek emigration.
Meanwhile, the British navy had become the world's most powerful, Mounkhall said. But its ships were made of wood.
"You needed certain ingredients for the bottom of ships, and huge straight trees for the masts," he said. "The Palatines came to East Camp [in Germantown] because the British went to their political leader and offered to bring Palatines over and settle them in Columbia County."
This migration happened roughly between 1710 and 1715. Their job would be to raise turpentine and other natural ingredients needed to make sure the British fleet stayed afloat.
Mounkhall also talked about the Quakers and the Shakers.
One of the events that convinced some Quaker businessmen to move to Hudson was the British blockade during the Revolutionary War. The east coast was blockaded to stop the flow of arms and money from France, the Netherlands and Spain to the colonists, Mounkhall said, and many businesses were severely hurt.
Wanting to find a more secure port, the Quakers came upriver and founded the city known as Hudson.
Another local group, the Shakers, were a splinter group from the Quakers.
The 18th century, Mounkhall said, was the Age of Enlightenment, founded on the belief that the world makes rational sense.
"You can see it in this room," he said, directing the audience's eyes up to the library ceiling and the way one side of the room perfectly reflects the other. "Everything is balanced: The room makes sense mathematically. It appeals to philosophers."
In reaction to this rational ethos came a religious revival, based not on reason, but emotion, he said. Some of the Quakers were affected by this movement, and began doing such things as incorporating dancing into their worship. They broke off from the Quakers, left England and came to Watervliet and Chatham, where they became known as the Shakers, combining the simple, communal living of the early Christian church with more contemporary socialist ideals.
The Irish influence on Columbia County is undeniable, but Mounkhall suggested they never would have arrived here had it not been for the agricultural practices of the South American Incas.
When the Spanish conquered the Incas in the 1540s, Europeans were introduced to the potato for the first time. It didn't take long to become the favorite food of many poor Europeans, particularly the Irish Catholics, the Germans and the Russians. Compared to an acre of wheat, an acre of potatoes produces five times the nutritive energy, and it doesn't take a lot of cultivation, Mounkhall said.
In addition, he pointed out, while other produce could easily be stolen or destroyed by marauding troops, potatoes were safe underground.
But in the mid-19th century, a potato fungus came in on a ship and wrecked the potato crops, turning them to mush, Mounkhall said. A huge migration of Irish ensued.
"From a world history perspective, the Irish coming here can be traced back to the development of the potato in South America, the British pushing the Irish Catholics off their own land to the worst farming land in the British Isles, to a fungus that killed the potatoes on a steamship leading to a famine," Mounkhall said.
The lecture was sponsored by the New York Council for the Humanities.
To contact reporter John Mason, call 518-828-1616, ext. 2272 or e-mail jmason@registerstar.com.
COLUMBIA COUNTY - It was fungi that brought Irish and Germans here, and fur that brought the Dutch, according to an expert on the convergence of world and local history.
While local history is often told from an insider's perspective, historian Thomas Mounkhall brought the opposite approach to Kinderhook Memorial Library Sunday. He told the audience his interest is in what happened outside of Columbia County, outside of New York state, outside of the United States, that had significant impacts on the county.
In his talk, illustrated with charts, he showed how the development of Columbia County was influenced by events in Western Europe, Latin America, Oceania and other areas of the world.
Mounkhall taught World History for 33 years in secondary public schools and is an adjunct professor of secondary education at SUNY New Paltz.
It was because of the success of the world's first multinational corporation that Columbia County became a home in the New World for many Dutch settlers and their descendants, Mounkhall said. The Dutch East India Company paid its investors 18 percent profit per year for 200 years straight by picking up such goods as spices in Indonesia and silk in China and selling them in Western Europe, he said.
"That was a model for the Dutch coming to Columbia County," he said. The creation of the Dutch West India Company signaled the firm's growing interest in animal furs, which could be obtained from Upstate New York and shipped back to Western Europe to be sold as coats in the first half of the 17th century.
The wind patterns in the Atlantic are circular, and would take ships from Europe first to Latin America, where sugar cane, harvested and processed by slaves from Africa, could be loaded on; then up to New York harbor to pick up furs.
It was because of wooden ships that many residents of the Palatine came to Germantown and other parts of the county. The Palatinate was the area along the Rhine River that later would become part of Germany. But in the 18th century there was no Germany. It was this area that was devastated by the 30 Years War between Protestants and Catholics, from 1618 to 1648, causing many residents to seek emigration.
Meanwhile, the British navy had become the world's most powerful, Mounkhall said. But its ships were made of wood.
"You needed certain ingredients for the bottom of ships, and huge straight trees for the masts," he said. "The Palatines came to East Camp [in Germantown] because the British went to their political leader and offered to bring Palatines over and settle them in Columbia County."
This migration happened roughly between 1710 and 1715. Their job would be to raise turpentine and other natural ingredients needed to make sure the British fleet stayed afloat.
Mounkhall also talked about the Quakers and the Shakers.
One of the events that convinced some Quaker businessmen to move to Hudson was the British blockade during the Revolutionary War. The east coast was blockaded to stop the flow of arms and money from France, the Netherlands and Spain to the colonists, Mounkhall said, and many businesses were severely hurt.
Wanting to find a more secure port, the Quakers came upriver and founded the city known as Hudson.
Another local group, the Shakers, were a splinter group from the Quakers.
The 18th century, Mounkhall said, was the Age of Enlightenment, founded on the belief that the world makes rational sense.
"You can see it in this room," he said, directing the audience's eyes up to the library ceiling and the way one side of the room perfectly reflects the other. "Everything is balanced: The room makes sense mathematically. It appeals to philosophers."
In reaction to this rational ethos came a religious revival, based not on reason, but emotion, he said. Some of the Quakers were affected by this movement, and began doing such things as incorporating dancing into their worship. They broke off from the Quakers, left England and came to Watervliet and Chatham, where they became known as the Shakers, combining the simple, communal living of the early Christian church with more contemporary socialist ideals.
The Irish influence on Columbia County is undeniable, but Mounkhall suggested they never would have arrived here had it not been for the agricultural practices of the South American Incas.
When the Spanish conquered the Incas in the 1540s, Europeans were introduced to the potato for the first time. It didn't take long to become the favorite food of many poor Europeans, particularly the Irish Catholics, the Germans and the Russians. Compared to an acre of wheat, an acre of potatoes produces five times the nutritive energy, and it doesn't take a lot of cultivation, Mounkhall said.
In addition, he pointed out, while other produce could easily be stolen or destroyed by marauding troops, potatoes were safe underground.
But in the mid-19th century, a potato fungus came in on a ship and wrecked the potato crops, turning them to mush, Mounkhall said. A huge migration of Irish ensued.
"From a world history perspective, the Irish coming here can be traced back to the development of the potato in South America, the British pushing the Irish Catholics off their own land to the worst farming land in the British Isles, to a fungus that killed the potatoes on a steamship leading to a famine," Mounkhall said.
The lecture was sponsored by the New York Council for the Humanities.
To contact reporter John Mason, call 518-828-1616, ext. 2272 or e-mail jmason@registerstar.com.
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