#126 The Founding of New Sweden

The History of the Americans

Jack Henneman

History

4.9 • 632 Ratings

🗓️ 28 August 2023

⏱️ 40 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Sweden’s greatest king, Gustavus Adolphus, aspires for Sweden to become a maritime and commercial power in the Atlantic, and engages Dutch entrepreneurs to advise him and his councilors how to do it. The Swedes recruit Peter Minuit, the erstwhile governor of New Netherland and the man who acquired Manhattan island from the Lenne Lenape tribe in the region. Eager for a new gig in the New World, Minuit leads two Swedish ships with Dutch crews – the Kalmar Nyckel and the Gripen – to the site of today’s Wilmington, Delaware. Minuit would meet with the chiefs in the region and acquire, in one fashion or another, the west bank of the Delaware River from roughly the site of Philadelphia International Airport to Cape Henlopen. New Sweden would survive and at times prosper for 17 years, but Minuit, tragically, would not live more than six months after landing again in the New World.

For more on Minuit’s career in New Netherland, you might listen to “The Purchase of Manhattan and Other Dutch Treats.”

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Selected references for this episode

Russell Shorto, The Island at the Center of the World: The Epic Story of Dutch Manhattan and the Forgotten Colony That Shaped America

C. A. Weslager, New Sweden on the Delaware 1638-1655

C. T. Odhner and G. B. Keen, “The Founding of New Sweden, 1637-42,” The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, 1879.

Carl K. S. Sprinchorn and G. B. Keen, “The History of the Colony of New Sweden,” The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, 1883.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the History of the Americans podcast episode 126.
0:11.1	I'm your host, Jack Heneman, and I'm recording this episode on August 27, 23, and in an extremely hot Austin, Texas. We are telling the history of the lands now encompassed
0:25.5	by the United States from the beginning without presentism, more or less. Those of you who are
0:33.3	all caught up have been waiting patiently or not longer than usual for this episode. As previously
0:40.5	reported, my wife and I left Austin on July 22nd for a C-America road trip, as we've come to
0:47.7	call them, returning only last week. Along the way, we picked up my beloved mother in Charlottesville and spent two weeks with her and lots of other family in the Adirondacks in upstate New York, where I was able to pump out a couple of episodes.
1:02.6	We left there on August 11th and took our sweet time driving down the East Coast to such swinging hot spots as Princeton, Wilmington, North Carolina,
1:14.1	which is not to be confused with Wilmington, Delaware,
1:17.0	the eventual destination of this episode,
1:20.8	Charleston, South Carolina, and St. Augustine, Florida.
1:24.6	Saturday last, we drove west to New Orleans and thence back to Austin. Total mileage,
1:31.3	including a bit of local driving, came to 49142.1 miles. Those of you who follow me on the website,
1:40.7	formerly known as Twitter, probably picked up a lot of that anyway.
1:51.5	Suffice it to say, it was awesome. This is a beautiful country, home to some really great people.
1:57.5	We talked to a lot of them eating our dinners at the bar, which is how we do. It was, however,
2:01.6	challenging to do much podcast work in the last few weeks, so my apologies.
2:07.6	Along the way, we passed through the old territory of New Sweden,
2:13.7	as we rolled down Interstate 295 in western New Jersey and northern Delaware, which, my wife, who was not terribly interested in history, learned all about,
2:18.9	assuming she was paying attention to the flapping of my gums.
2:23.3	She's not alone in this, except for a few people with an interest in the arcane corners of
2:29.0	early colonial America, ethnically proud, and Finnish Americans and people passing through
2:36.1	Swedesboro, New Jersey, or Wilmington, Delaware, who are curious enough to consult their
	...

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