What in the world? The Hudson leads to the Erie Canal which leads to the Great Lakes which lead to the largest system of navigable waters on Earth which happens to be right on top of the largest mass of arable land on the planet.
Also, do you know which river the the great lakes feed into? The mississippi river which bisects the land with the most arable land on earth. The missouri river also cuts through much of the continental US. The hudson river doesn't. I've lived along the hudson river pretty much all my life, so you can take my word on this.
If you think the thames or the hudson river is anywhere comparable to the yangtze, mississippi or the missouri, I suggest you take another look at what these rivers are. The hudson barely spans a few hundred miles in length. The yangtze, missouri and mississipi span a few thousand miles deep into the hinterlands of china and the US respectively. Compared to the mississipi or the yantze or the missouri, the hudson river is a stream.
By then, other Eastern Seaboard cities had great harbors, but none had a comparable water tributary to the expanding interior of the United States.
[...]
In 50 years, New York City had grown from 120,000 people to more than a million in 1870. What historians called “a river of gold” flowing into the city’s lap had also proved to be a triumph of a fledgling democracy and capitalism, said James S. Kaplan, president of the Lower Manhattan Historical Association. What was known as the Great Western Canal exported New York’s politics and principles to the rest of the nation.
[...]
The canal affirmed New York’s political ascendancy over Virginia and the rest of the South (four of the first five presidents were Virginians) and its commercial dominance over competing ports not just on the Eastern Seaboard, but all the way to New Orleans.
No wonder that in his “Wedding of the Waters: The Erie Canal and the Making of a Great Nation” (2005), Peter L. Bernstein wrote: “A town with an imperial name was about to witness the birth of a project that would turn New York into an imperial state.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/26/nyregion/history-of-the-e...
So the eerie canal joined the hudson with the mississippi. The mississippi is 2300 miles long, the hudson river is 300 miles long. So which is the more important river?
I wish you addressed my comment rather than posting a bunch of quotes. But I can see this won't go anywhere. You are entitled to your opinion. I'm sorry I could't change your mind.
The topic is your claim that:
> the hudson doesn't lead to a "huge hinterland"
I think it's objectively clear that for any reasonable definitions of "lead" and "huge hinterland", it does.
I'll repeat my point for your edification. NYC was already a major city before the erie canal. As I stated, the erie canal was built because NYC was the most important city in the US. The erie canal didn't cause NYC to become the most important city in the US.
Yes, the hudson river with one of the world's major projects ( the erie canal ) eventually granted access to the hinterlands. But before the erie canal was built, it did not. Yet, NYC existed before the erie canal. Meaning without "access to the hinterlands via the artificially created erie canal", NYC would still exist because it did exist without the erie canal.
Using your logic, NYC shouldn't have even existed before the erie canal because it didn't have access to the "huge hinterlands". But we know NYC existed prior to the erie canal and access to the "huge hinterlands".
New York City exists at its location because nature made it the greatest port facility in the western hemisphere. Great cities emerge where there are transportation breaks: Seaports, rivers, lakeside sites (Chicago), the edge of mountain ranges (Denver). Any place goods need to be loaded and unloaded from long-range vehicles and onto other ones. The Erie Canal gave NYC access to America's hinterland, which floored the accelerator on the city's growth.
But don't take my word for it; here's a foreword written by perhaps the most respected authority on the history of the city of New York:
https://books.google.com/books?id=lVWSpqwqX8AC&lpg=PR15&ots=...