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 Dutch.

Contents

New Sweden ca. 1650.
New Sweden ca. 1650.
The Swedish flag and war ensign, version used until the mid-1600s.
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 Clas Fleming, a Swedish Admiral 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.

Founding of Wilmington.
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) Måns Nilsson Kling, until the next governor was chosen and brought in from the mainland Sweden, two years later. [1]

The relative location of the New Netherland and New Sweden in eastern North America.
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.

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

  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.

  • 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. 

 Philadelphia Portal

Swedish colonial empire

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


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