The Jacob Leisler Institute for the Study of Early New York History, in collaboration with the Hudson Area Library, hosts a presentation by BJ Lillis about changing land rights in the colonial Hudson Valley including Indigenous and tenant resistance to a manorial system.
This talk traces Indigenous survival and resistance to colonialism on Hudson Valley manors from the early 18th century to the 1760s, when an unlikely alliance between tenant farmers and Native people organized tenant uprisings, rent strikes, and coordinated legal action against Hudson Valley landlords. In the 1760s, some landlords intensified their approach to market-oriented agriculture, replacing customary lease terms with shorter leases and money rents. Tenants turned to extra-legal action even as their Wappinger and Mohican allies pursued their land rights within the imperial legal system. Together, their actions reveal the contingent, contested foundations of rural capitalism and property on the eve of the American Revolution.
BJ Lillis is the Hench Post-Doctoral Fellow at the American Antiquarian Society in Worcester, MA. They completed their Ph.D in history at Princeton University in 2024. Their project, A Valley Between Worlds: Slavery, Dispossession, and the Creation of a Settler-Colonial Society in the Hudson Valley, 1674-1766, brings together histories of Atlantic slavery, Indigenous North America, and English, Dutch, and German colonialism to explore the contested relationship between land, labor, and property in the 18th-century Hudson Valley.
Date/Time: Thursday, January 23, 6-7:30pm.
Location: In-person, Community Room, Hudson Area Library.
The Jacob Leisler Library Lectures are made partially possible through the generous support of the Van Dyke Family Foundation, HRBT Foundation, and Bank of Greene County Charitable Foundation.