Washington Irving and New Netherland

This chapter presents Diedrich Knickerbocker, Washington Irving's narrator, as the historian of New Netherland. It details his version of its history, from its “discovery” through its surrender to England, along with his descriptions of the colony's officials and institutions, its relations with other colonies and ethnic groups, and commentary on his work's fact and fiction. As a result of Knickerbocker's inflated claims for the Dutch colony, its participants, and his own role in composing and preserving a record of that era, A History of New York assumes the character of a mock-epic in which Knickerbocker himself functions as a major mock-heroic figure. It is the mock-epic form of his work and the bombastic, vehement, biased, and occasionally nostalgic tone of Knickerbocker's commentary and narrative manner that lend the History its aura of fiction. The historical facts, however, are largely as accurate as Irving's conscientious pursuit of them and the paucity and at times questionable reliability of his available sources and their contemporary translations could render them, albeit with notable exceptions.