The New Amsterdam judicial system was initially developed privately by the Dutch East India Company, and gradually brought into closer conformity with Dutch law of the period. The beginnings In the first years after Henry Hudson sailed up the river in 1609 and claimed the area for the Dutch East India Company and the government of the Republic of the Seven United Provinces, there was no real New Netherlands government and judicial system. The inhabitants of the small trading community of Manhattan Island as well as the members of the crew of the ships that came to the area, were subject to the rule of their captains. When the Dutch West India Company (WIC) was founded in 1621, the Dutch presence in America intensified and the States General charged the WIC to set up the appropriate forms of governance and judicial control. Early New Amsterdam governance and judiciary: the WIC The city of New Amsterdam started as a purely commercial colony, mainly inhabited by employees of the WIC. Governance and adjudication was a matter of WIC control. In 1623 the first colonists, 30 Walloon families, came to New Netherlands. Willem Verhulst was one of the first local directors. He soon came into conflict with the colonists and Peter Minuit replaced him as a director in 1626. The New Amsterdam director and his council exercised legislative, administrative and judicial powers, subject to review by the WIC’s Amsterdam Chamber, and finally the States General in the Republic of the United Provinces. The applicable law was at first a mixture of the law of the sea and the regular law of the Republic of the United Provinces, and it would slowly become entirely similar to the law of the Republic of the United Provinces. Next step: Patroonships In 1629, the patroonship system was introduced as a solution to the financial problems of the WIC. The system of patroonships enabled Amsterdam investors to obtain large tracts of land on the condition that fifty families settled within those lands within four years. The patroons could establish and administer courts of justice (Patroon’s Courts). Appeal was possible to the director and the council of the WIC in New Amsterdam for fines higher than 50 guilders. The most famous and successful patroon was Kiliaen van Rensselaer who established Rensselaerwyck. The system of patroonships did not affect New Amsterdam, as the WIC retained control over Manhattan. By 1640