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Daniel Denton (C.1626–1703), Paul Royster

UNL Libraries: Faculty Publications

Daniel Denton wrote and published A BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF NEW-YORK: FORMERLY CALLED NEW-NETHERLANDS in London in 1670. The work was a promotional tract designed to encourage English settlement of territories lately seized from the Dutch. It is one of the earliest English accounts of the geography, climate, economy, and native inhabitants of the region that includes present-day New York City, Long Island, Staten Island, and New Jersey. The tract is perhaps most famous for its early statement of Manifest Destiny: how “a Divine Hand makes way for them [the English settlers] by removing or cutting off the Indians, either by …