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The history of New York City (1665-1783) began with the establishment of British rule over formerly Dutch New Amsterdam and New Netherland . As the newly renamed City of New York and surrounding areas developed, there was a growing independent feeling among some, but the area was decidedly split in its loyalties. The site of modern New York City was the theatre of the New York Campaign , a series of major battles in the early American Revolutionary War . After that, the city was under British occupation until the end of the war, and was the last port British ships evacuated in 1783 .


EARLY BRITISH PERIOD

The British had renamed the colony New York, after the king's brother James, Duke Of York and on June 12 , 1665 appointed Thomas Willett the first of the Mayors Of New York . The city grew northward, and remained the largest and most important city in the colony of New York.

The Dutch regained the colony briefly in 1673, renaming it "New Orange", then ceded it permanently to the English in 1674 after the Third Anglo-Dutch War .

In the context of the Glorious Revolution in England, Jacob Leisler led Leisler's Rebellion and effectively controlled the city and surrounding areas from 1689 - 1691 , before being arrested and executed. The rebellion laid bare class differences and some see it as a sort of precursor of the American Revolution.

New York was cosmopolitan from the first, established and governed largely as a strategic trading post. Jews expelled from Brazil were welcome in New York. St. Patrick's Day was celebrated in New York City for the first time at the Crown and Thistle Tavern on March 17 , 1756 . This holiday has since become a yearly city-wide celebration that is famous around the world as the St. Patrick's Day Parade . Freedom of worship was part of the city's foundation, and the trial for libel in 1735 of John Peter Zenger , editor of the ''New-York Weekly Journal'' established the principle of Freedom Of The Press in the British colonies.

The New York Slave Insurrection Of 1741 was a major event with claims of arson and a conspiracy and many slaves executed on unclear charges.


TOWARD REVOLUTION

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The city was the base for British operations in the French And Indian War (the North American theatre of the Seven Years' War ) from 1754 - 1763 . That conflict united the colonies for the first time in common defense, and moreover eliminated the main military threat that the colonists had relied on the Britain to defend them from. When two years after the conclusion of that war in 1765 , Parliament imposed a Stamp Act to finance the costs of defending the colonies, delegates from nine colonies met to protest at what would later be known as Federal Hall on Manhattan for the Stamp Act Congress . The Sons Of Liberty , a secretive revolutionary and sometimes violent group, was founded in the city and Boston immediately thereafter. Their most prominent activity in the New York City was the raising of Liberty Pole s in prominent public locations.


AMERICAN REVOLUTION

Though the lead statue of George III in Bowling Green was melted down for bullets in the first enthusiasm of the Revolution , the city itself was roundly Tory during the war after British military successes resulting in the area becoming their political and martial center of operations for the remainder of the conflict. Five skirmishes comprising the New York Campaign were fought around the city's then limits in late 1776 , beginning with the Battle Of Long Island in Brooklyn on August 27 . A quarter of the city structures were destroyed in the Great Fire on September 21 , a few days after the British Landing At Kip's Bay and the Battle Of Harlem Heights . Following the highly suspicious fire, British authorities apprehended dozens of people for questioning, including Nathan Hale , who was executed a day later. The British conquest of Manhattan was completed with the fall of Fort Washington on November 16 , 1776 , and thereafter they held the city without challenge until 1783 . The city's status as the British nexus made it the center of attention for Washington's Intelligence Network . In addition, American prisoners were held under deliberately inhumane conditions on rotting British Prison Ships in nearby Wallabout Bay for much of the war. More American soldiers and sailors died on these ships from deliberate neglect than in every battle of the Revolution, combined. Evacuation Day , in which the last British troops and many Tory supporters departed in September 1783, was long celebrated in New York.