New York history

• 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 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 r...