New Sweden

Information about New Sweden

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New Sweden, or Nya Sverige, was a small Swedish settlement along the Delaware River on the Mid-Atlantic coast of North America. It was centered at Fort Christina, now in Wilmington, Delaware, and included parts of the present-day American states of Delaware, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. The settlement was founded March 29, 1638, and was incorporated into Dutch New Netherland on September 15, 1655. Along with Swedes, a large number of the settlers were Finnish and Dutch.

History

Enlarge picture
The Swedish flag and war ensign, version used until the mid-1600s.
By the middle of the 17th century, the Realm of Sweden had reached its greatest territorial extent and was one of the great powers of Europe. Sweden then included Finland and Estonia along with parts of modern Russia, Poland, Germany and Latvia. The Swedes sought to expand their influence by creating an agricultural (tobacco) and fur-trading colony to bypass French and British merchants. The New Sweden Company was chartered and included Swedish, Dutch and German stockholders.

The first Swedish expedition to North America embarked from the port of Gothenburg in late 1637. It was organized and overseen by Admiral Clas Fleming, an ethnic Swede from Finland. A Dutchman, Samuel Blommaert, assisted the fitting-out and appointed Peter Minuit to lead the expedition.

The members of the expedition, aboard the ships Fogel Grip and Kalmar Nyckel, sailed into Delaware Bay, which lay within the territory claimed by the Dutch, passing Cape May and Cape Henlopen in late March 1638, and anchored at a rocky point on the Minquas Kill that is known today as Swedes' Landing. They built a fort on the present site of the city of Wilmington, which they named Fort Christina, after Queen Christina of Sweden.

In the following years, 600 Swedes (and also a number of Dutchmen and Germans in Swedish service) settled in the area. In actual fact, the settlement constituted an invasion of New Netherland, since the river and the land in question had previously been explored and claimed for that colony.
Enlarge picture
Founding of Wilmington.


Peter Minuit was to become the first governor of the newly established colony of New Sweden. Having been the Director of the Dutch West India Company, and the predecessor of then-Director William Kieft, Minuit knew the status of the lands on either side of the Delaware River at that time. He knew that the Dutch had established deeds for the lands east of the river (New Jersey), but not for the lands to the west (Maryland, Delaware, and Pennsylvania).

Minuit made good on his appointment by landing on the west bank of the river, gathered the chiefs of the local Native American Tribes, held a conclave in his cabin on the Kalmar Nyckel, and persuaded them to sign some deeds he had prepared for the purpose to solve any issue with the Dutch.

The segment of land he purchased from the Chiefs included the land on the west side of the South River from just below the Schuylkill; in other words, today's Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, southeast Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Maryland.

Director Kieft objected to the landing of the Swedes, but Minuit ignored his missive because he knew that the Dutch were militarily impotent at the moment. Minuit finished Fort Christina during 1638, then departed to return to Stockholm for a second load, and made a side trip to the Caribbean to pick up a shipment of tobacco for resale in Europe to make the voyage profitable. Minuit died while on this voyage during a hurricane at St. Christopher in the Caribbean.

Thus, the official duties of the first governor of New Sweden were carried out by Lieutenant (then raised to the rank of Captain) MÃ¥ns Nilsson Kling, until the next governor was chosen and brought in from the mainland Sweden, two years later. [1]
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The relative location of the New Netherland and New Sweden in eastern North America.


In 1643 the company expanded along the river from Fort Christina, and established Fort Nya Elfsborg on the north bank near present-day Salem, New Jersey. In May 1654, the Dutch Fort Casimir was captured by soldiers from the New Sweden colony led by governor Johan Rising. The fort was taken without a fight because its garrison had no gunpowder, and the fort was renamed Fort Trinity.

As reprisal, the Dutch — led by governor Peter Stuyvesant — moved an army to the Delaware River in the late summer of 1655, leading to the immediate surrender of Fort Trinity and Fort Christina.

The Swedish and Finnish settlers continued to enjoy a degree of local autonomy, having their own militia, religion, court, and lands.

This status lasted officially until the English conquest of the New Netherland colony, in October 1663-1664, and continued unofficially until the area was included in William Penn's charter for Pennsylvania, in 1682. During this later period some immigration and expansion continued. The first settlement and Fort Wicaco were built on the present site of Philadelphia in 1669.

The historian H. A. Barton has suggested that the greatest significance of New Sweden was the strong and long-lasting interest in North America that the colony generated in Sweden.[2]

America was seen as the standard-bearer of enlightenment and freedom, and became the ideal of liberal Swedes. Admiration for America was combined with the notion of a past Swedish Golden Age, whose ancient Nordic ideals had supposedly been corrupted by foreign influences. Recovering the purity of these timeless values in the New World was a fundamental theme of Swedish, and later Swedish-American, discussion of America.

Since the imaginary Golden Age answered to shifting needs and ideals, the "timeless values" varied over time, and so did the Swedish idea of the new land. In the 17th and 18th centuries, North America stood for the rights of conscience and religious freedom.

In the political turmoil of 19th-century Europe, the focus of interest shifted to American respect for honest toil and to the virtues of republican government. In the early 20th century, the Swedish-American dream even embraced the Welfare State ideal of a society responsible for the well-being of all its citizens. By contrast, America became later in the 20th century the symbol and dream of ultimate individualism.

A massive Swedish immigration to the United States was not to emerge until 1870-1910, most notably to Minnesota, with a total of over a million Swedes moving. With the exceptions of Germany, Ireland and Norway, no other European country has had a higher percentage of its population move to North America.

List of governors

All Governors lived at Fort Christina, except Johan Björnsson Printz who lived at Fort New Gothenborg.

Forts

Permanent settlements

Rivers and creeks

Notes

1. ^ Shorto, Russell, The Island at the Center of the World, Part II; Chapter 6; Pages 115-117.
2. ^ Barton, A Folk Divided, 5—7.

References

  • Barton, H. Arnold (1994). A Folk Divided: Homeland Swedes and Swedish Americans, 1840—1940. Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis.
  • Johnson, Amandus (1927). The Swedes on the Delaware. International Printing Company, Philadelphia. 
  • Munroe, John A. (1977). Colonial Delaware. Delaware Heritage Press, Wilmington. 
  • Shorto, Russell (2004). The Island at the Center of the World. Doubleday, New York. ISBN 0-385-50349-0. 
  • Weslager, C.A. (1990). A Man and his Ship, Peter Minuet and the Kalmar Nyckel. Kalmar Nyckel Foundation, Wilmington. ISBN 0-9625563-1-9. 
  • Weslager, C. A. (1988). New Sweden on the Delaware 1638-1655. The Middle Atlantic Press, Wilmington. ISBN 0-912608-65-X. 
  • Weslager, C. A. (1987). The Swedes and Dutch at New Castle. The Middle Atlantic Press, Wilmington. ISBN 0-912608-50-1. 

See also

External links

Swedish colonial empire American colonies: in North America : New Sweden | Antillian: Saint Barthelemy and Guadeloupe
West African possessions: Swedish Gold Coast


history of New Jersey began with the exploration of the Jersey Coast by Giovanni da Verrazzano in 1524, though the region had been settled for millennia by Native Americans. At the time of European contact, the area was populated many tribes of Lenape.
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history of New Jersey began with the exploration of the Jersey Coast by Giovanni da Verrazzano in 1524, though the region had been settled for millennia by Native Americans. At the time of European contact, the area was populated many tribes of Lenape.
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Colonial History of New Jersey began in 1609 with the discovery of Cape May by Sir Henry Hudson. In the 17th Century parts of what is now New Jersey were colonized by Swedish and Dutch settlers.
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New Jersey was pivotal in the American Revolution and the ultimate victory of the American colonists. The important role New Jersey played earned it the titles of "Crossroads of the Revolution" and the "Military Capital of the Revolution".
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New Jersey in the Nineteenth Century led the United States into the Industrial Revolution. The state participated in the wars of the period but was not the location of a single major battle.

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Historical populations
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New Jersey in the twentieth century under went many changes. New Jersey's position along the Atlantic Ocean made it a prominent part of both of the World Wars. Despite rising in the Roaring Twenties, New Jersey's economy slowed with the start of the Great Depression.
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Like much of the United States, New Jersey in the Twenty-first century has been deeply affected by terrorism and political controversy.

September 11, 2001

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The first known Europeans to reach the Americas are believed to have been the Vikings ("Norse"), who established several colonies in the Americas from the 11th century. One Viking from Iceland, Leif Erikson established a short-lived settlement in Vinland, present day Newfoundland.
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The history of the Americas is the collective history of North and South America, including Central America and the Caribbean. It begins with people migrating to these areas from Asia and possibly Oceania during the height of an Ice Age.
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British colonization of the Americas (including colonization under the Kingdom of England before the 1707 Acts of Union created the Kingdom of Great Britain) began in the late 16th century, before reaching its peak after colonies were established throughout the Americas, and a
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The Duchy of Courland was the smallest nation to colonize the Americas with a colony on the island of Tobago from 1654 to 1659, and intermittently from 1660 to 1689.
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Denmark-Norway took possession of the Danish West Indies (present-day U.S. Virgin Islands) in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. In addition, beginning in 1721, Denmark reestablished colonies in southwestern Greenland, which is now a self-governing part of the Kingdom of
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French colonization of the Americas began in the 16th century, and continued in the following centuries as France established a colonial empire in the Western Hemisphere.
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German colonization of the Americas consisted of failed attempts to settle Venezuela (Klein-Venedig in German), St. Thomas, the Crab Island (Guyana) and Tertholen in the 16th and 17th centuries.
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15th century
1415–1640  Ceuta
1458–1550  Alccer Ceguer (El Qsar es Seghir)
1471–1550  Arzila (Asilah)
1471–1662  Tangier
1485–1550  Mazagan (El Jadida)
1488–1541  Safim (Safi) 16th century
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Russian colonization of the Americas proceeded in several places.

Alaska

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Scottish colonization of the Americas consisted of a number of failed or abandoned Scottish settlements in North America, a colony at Darien, Panama and a number of wholly or largely Scottish settlements made after the Acts of Union 1707.
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The Spanish colonization of the Americas began with the arrival in the Western Hemisphere of Christopher Columbus in 1492. From early small settlements in the Caribbean, the Spanish Empire gradually expanded over four centuries to include Central America, most of South America,
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The Swedish colonization of the Americas included a 17th-century colony on the Delaware River in what is now Delaware, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Maryland, as well as two possessions in the Caribbean during the 18th and 19th century.
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The Vikings, or Norsemen, explored and settled areas of the North Atlantic, including the northeast fringes of North America, beginning in the 10th century. While this settlement process did not have the lasting effects that later settlements and conquests would have, it can be
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Welsh settlement in the Americas was the result of several individual initiatives to found distinctively Welsh settlements in the New World. It can be seen as part of the more general British colonization of the Americas.
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Decolonization of the Americas refers to the process by which the countries in North America and South America gained their independence.

United States


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Motto
(Royal) "För Sverige - I tiden" 1
"For Sweden – With the Times" Â²
Anthem
Du gamla, Du fria
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Delaware River

Delaware River above the Delaware Water Gap


Country | USA
States | New York,New Jersey,Pennsylvania,Delaware
Major cities |
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Mid-Atlantic can refer to:
  • Mid-Atlantic Ridge, an underwater mountain range in the Atlantic Ocean separating two tectonic plates
  • Mid-Atlantic English, a mix between English English and American English
  • Mid-Atlantic States, a region in the North East of the USA

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North America is a continent [1] in the Earth's northern hemisphere and (chiefly) western hemisphere. It is bordered on the north by the Arctic Ocean, on the east by the North Atlantic Ocean, on the southeast by the Caribbean Sea, and on the south and west
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Location: East 7th St. at the Christina River, Wilmington, Delaware

Coordinates: _ ]

Built/Founded: 1638

Added to NRHP: October 15, 1966[1]


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City of Wilmington
City |



Flag |

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State of Delaware

Flag of Delaware Seal
Nickname(s): The First State, The Small Wonder, Blue Hen State
Motto(s): Liberty and Independence

Capital Dover
Largest city Wilmington

Area
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