Brooklyn was a big city of its own until New York swallowed it in 1898
On its own, Brooklyn would rank as the fourth largest city in the United States, behind only the rest of New York, Los Angeles and Chicago. It kept its independence until 1898, when it was folded into Greater New York over the objections of many residents. Its flag still carries a Dutch motto about unity and strength.
The name comes from Breukelen, a town in the Netherlands whose name combines Dutch words for marshland and a small dug stream. The American settlement was chartered in 1646 as part of New Netherland, one of six early parishes on land long inhabited by the Lenape. Spellings wandered from Breucklyn to Brookland before settling. After the English seized the colony in 1664, the area was renamed around the Duke of York, and in 1683 Kings County, named for Charles II, was carved out as one of New York's original twelve counties.
The county has a dark early record: without the tenant-farm system of the Hudson Valley, it came to hold one of the highest shares of enslaved people in the thirteen colonies. On 27 August 1776 it saw the Battle of Long Island, the largest battle of the Revolutionary War. The British drove George Washington's army off the heights, but his overnight retreat of every soldier and supply across the East River is now counted among his finest moves. More American prisoners died on British prison ships in Wallabout Bay than fell in combat across the whole war.
Steam ferries turned Brooklyn Heights into a commuter suburb for Wall Street. The village of 1816 became the City of Brooklyn in 1834 and absorbed neighbouring Williamsburgh in 1855, while two local institutions, the Brooklyn Eagle newspaper and the Dodgers baseball team, gave residents a sense of separate identity. Both disappeared in the 1950s, the paper closing in 1955 and the team leaving for Los Angeles in 1957.
The 2020 census counted 2,736,074 people, making it the most populous borough and the second densest county in the country after Manhattan. Around a fifth of residents are Jewish, and in recent decades the borough has become known for gentrification, soaring house prices and startups.
Source: Brooklyn
