• The area was inhabited by the Lenape people and other Native American tribes. They used natural waterways for fishing, trade, and war with nearby tribes.
• In 1524, Italian Giovanni da Verrazzano explored the region in service to the French and named it New Angoulême, after the French King Francis I.
• Then in 1609, the English explorer Henry Hudson arrived. He took note of the large local beaver population, whose pelts were a valuable commodity.
• Inspired by Hudson's discovery, the Dutch found several fur trading outposts in the area, including a 1624 settlement in what is now Manhattan.

• By 1626, the Dutch had constructed Fort Amsterdam, which served as the town's nucleus. The town was named New Amsterdam and served as the capital of the local Dutch colonies.
• The Second Anglo-Dutch War (1665–1667) resulted in the British gaining control of the city as part of a treaty.
• After the exchange, New Amsterdam was promptly renamed New York after the English King Charles' brother James, the Duke of York.

By the late 1940s, New York had become the world's biggest manufacturing centre. It had 40,000 factories, a million factory workers and a port which handled 150 million tons of freight goods a year.

The city inherited Paris's role as the centre of the art and fashion world. New York was a refuge for foreign artists fleeing war-battered Europe.

New York was a great international city and took on the role of the world's financial capital and the site of the world's two largest stock exchanges: the New York Stock Exchange and NASDAQ.