In the very title of her book, Donna Merwick foregrounds the enduring image of New Netherland's last director general, Peter Stuyvesant, as a “captive,” a “tethered figure” and an “outcast” (ix), a man who was destined for tragedy. This Essay on Loss across Time aims to reconstruct Stuyvesant's life through an emphasis on the interconnected themes of duty, belief and loss. The book is organized into three sections in which the author examines the magistrate, the believer and the defeated leader. Focussing on the sources as well as on contemporary literature, Merwick recounts the reasons for which Stuyvesant's image has endured as one of rejection and loss. His career has inevitably been associated with the English conquest of New Netherland in August 1664; thus Stuyvesant has been blamed for New Netherland's backwardness and failure, and has been condemned to endure the same “disrespect, distortion, and silence” that has characterized histories of pre-1664 New York (137). By reconsidering this experience of loss, Merwick's work is underwritten by a desire to show that “being bound” is not necessarily tragic and that, according to Martin Heidegger, whom she quotes, it can be linked to “the positive meaning of human existence” (xviii).

Merwick thus takes us through Stuyvesant's political career, from his early years in the Dutch colonies of Fernando de Noronha and Curaçao (1635–44) to his appointment as director general of New Netherland in 1646, a period during which he faced a great number of challenges in the form of the widespread corruption of the Dutch West India Company and the poor reputations of the governors who had preceded him. Despite these challenges, however, he distinguished himself through his unfailing integrity and authority. With regard to religious belief and practices, Stuyvesant's reputation has been undermined by historians who wrongly argue that he implemented and imposed a form of strict Calvinism that stymied religious freedom. As a matter of fact, Merwick argues that the many ordinances calling for days of thanksgiving and prayer, which were common in Europe, were a way for him to unify the population as a lawgiver and believer and to construct a group identity by putting his personal beliefs in the public arena.

The climax of the essay is reached in chapter 8, in which Merwick describes the tragic loss of the colony and dramatizes Stuyvesant's confrontation with the States General in The Hague. Here, Stuyvesant was called upon to defend his loss of New Netherland in an atmosphere deeply hostile to this defense. Stuyvesant claimed that English incursions in Dutch territory had always been frequent and that the States General had ignored Stuyvesant's warnings; furthermore, that he had refused to engage in what he foresaw as a European war and not just a local insurgency and that recourse to deterrence had always been his strategy. The director general went to great pains to defend his cause, acting as his own “first archivist,” selecting from among his own writings over seventeen years the elements that were most convincing and which would save his life.

In the final chapters, Merwick muses on the way history has been written and how this has influenced the way in which Stuyvesant is now remembered. However, his experience must be understood within the context of post-Reformation religio-politics and premodern structures, where emotion ruled over reason and logic. Indeed, Stuyvesant's going back to New Netherland in 1667 has often come to exemplify the easy acceptance by the Dutch of the English conquest and has contributed to the myth of the creation of modern America based on the “triumph of Anglo-American culture” and of liberty over tyranny. This essay is thus consistent with Merwick's earlier works as well as with the current historiographical trend aimed at offering a Dutch view of the colony's history and at reconsidering the cultural distinctiveness of colonial America, in which one should stop seeing “germs of Americanism” (158).

As usual, Merwick distinguishes herself through the richness of her writing style and the wide range of sources she uses, including Stuyvesant's personal papers, correspondence, ordinances, and reports to the Company and the States General. However, her many allusions to interpretive theory and contemporary literature undermine, to some extent, her goal of helping us to cope better with loss in our present-day “complex global communities” (xviii).