HUDSON, THE, a Western Province comprising the valley of the river of that name and the adjoining country towards the Lakes watershed, with New Amsterdam at its maritime entrance. Its consequence arises from the connexion of an ocean port with an interior route. The river is not navigable in the same manner throughout its course, nor does a watershed become a through passage merely because it is readily followed upon a small map. The province's commercial history is largely the history of reducing the interruptions.
Taken from the Dutch in 1664, the country was retained by the Commonwealth at the Peace of Breda in 1667; Surinam (q.v.) passed to the United Provinces (q.v.) in the same settlement. New Amsterdam kept its name. The later Alliance of the Republics (q.v.) gave that retention the appearance of an old courtesy, though conquest had supplied its occasion. The persistence of Dutch names and mercantile connexions is less surprising than the notion that a change of sovereignty ought to have extinguished either.
The Hudson was one of the five Western Provinces admitted to representation under the Second Frame (q.v.) of 1691. Its senators and tribes, like those of its companions, at first proceeded under binding instructions. Here, as elsewhere, the word tribe in the constitutional account denotes an electoral body; it is not a description of the native nations of the country. The distinction is elementary, but confusion upon it can make a constitutional table say more than it contains.
The hinterland supplies agricultural produce, timber, and the business of their carriage; the port supplies warehouses, credit, and connexion with overseas markets. Roads, improved waterways, and rail carriage have successively enlarged the quantity which can reach the shipping point at a remunerative cost. They have also altered the distribution of advantage within the province. An older landing-place may remain geographically convenient while losing trade to a route which offers fewer transfers. The charges upon handling and storage often explain such changes better than the distance travelled does.
Benjamin Franklin (q.v.) removed from Boston to the Hudson province to establish his press. His printing, subscription library, and electrical work illustrate the mixture of trades and useful inquiry which the commercial towns made possible. Ezra Fenwick (q.v.), born at the falls of the Mohawk, carried another part of the provincial inheritance into painting. His river country is chiefly a country of light; the same falls entered local accounts as power, transport obstruction, and sites of employment. Neither account is made complete by substituting it for the other.
The Hudson's place in Western expansion (q.v.) is consequently larger than the acreage acquired in the Dutch war might suggest. It joined existing maritime commerce to routes by which later interior settlement could be supplied. Yet an outlet profiting by inland growth did not thereby possess every district whose produce passed through it. Commercial dependence and provincial jurisdiction must be reckoned separately, especially in the history of a port whose merchants have often found it useful to speak of the two in the same breath. (M. S. W.)