5 ms·
New Sweden: the US's long-lost 'secret' colony
- comrade1234 4mo ago[flagged]
- fakedang 4mo agoUh, what's your gripe? The article clearly states that the colony was pivotal to American history for two reasons - 1.) For creating the log cabin and 2.) For being the only colony to not have been at war with the natives by choice. The article even says why the colony suffered - lack of supplies and immigrants to the colony from Sweden. That even corroborates with your point. And yes, imo those two reasons are pretty significant enough reason to remember that New Sweden existed.
- macintux 4mo agoOr, just maybe, people are interested in knowing more about history? I certainly never knew there was a Swedish colony in the U.S., so I’m glad the article was written.
- BigTTYGothGF 4mo ago> And the Netherlands was already a democracy before the USA's Declaration of Independence They were a republic.
- karlshea 4mo agoA republic is a democracy.
- randallsquared 4mo agoIt need not be democratic in the modern, universal suffrage sense.
- stonogo 4mo agoNetherlands was not. It was a republic of oligarch-run states. They did not have even landholder suffrage until halfway through the 1800s.
- topgrain2 4mo agoYeah, “ackshually it’s a republic” is usually a case of midbrow “incorrecting” (political scientists regularly use “democracy” to label a basket of political systems that include democratic republics, it’s not just normal vulgar usage, the “pros” use it that way, too, all the time)… buuuuut this time it might be a hair worth splitting.
- ButlerianJihad 4mo agoLike the People’s Republic of China, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics? Those ones?
- ianburrell 4mo agoRepublic back then meant commonwealth with any form of government. The Dutch Republic was loose union of seven provinces. Republic changed to mean democratic government by representatives without monarch.
- true_religion 4mo agoI don't think the meaning of republic changed, it just got conflated with democracy because we often say 'Democratic Republic', which requires at least in modern (18th century and beyond) terms that the common people vote to decide political direction or policy. The US itself didn't start off very democratic, and could have stablized into a more oligarchic nation if it kept the notion of only allowing property owners to vote. Originally, land ownership wasn't a high barrier of entry, but in a more modern era corporations or oligarchs could own most of the land, and lease it out to prevent anyone else from gaining a vote.
- intrasight 4mo agoThe Republic of Venice formed in 697
- euroderf 4mo agoSan Marino claims the year 301 AD.
- BigTTYGothGF 4mo agoWhile technically correct, that doesn't prevent the Netherlands from also being one a millennium later.
- aaronbrethorst 4mo agoAnd New York was new Amsterdam before the USA and a lot more people came through new Amsterdam Why they changed it, I can't say, people just liked it better that way.
- eliasson 4mo agoHaha, clever!
- 1659447091 4mo ago> And New York was new Amsterdam before the USA The article does not dispute this, in fact it's a big part of the New Sweden history in the article. The same person is credited for being responsible for both > and a lot more people came through new Amsterdam (including my family) than whatnever new Sweden was Again, Not in dispute. There are paragraphs about how it was a far-flung failed settlement that was taken twice, once by each Dutch and English -- but smooth way to throw in your families long US history coming in through such a a popular port as New Amsterdam. One of my ancestor lines came through some backcountry called Jamestown; def not a swank sounding place like modern-day NYC. >> "Despite its territorial expansion, New Sweden never became the profitable venture it was conceived to become because it was chronically under-populated and neglected. The colony never counted more than about 400 people" [...] "From 1638-1655, this forgotten Swedish settlement extended across the Delaware Valley, encompassing parts of modern-day New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware and Maryland. In addition to being the smallest, least-populated and shortest-lived European colony in the US, it was also the most clandestine." > so they would have got ideas from that rather than whatever Sweden was Where does it even say anything about ideas for Declaration of Independence came from Sweden?
- anyonecancode 4mo agoI first learned about New Sweden several years ago from reading The Barbarous Years[0]. Now I always think about it whenever I drive south toward Maryland and DC when I cross the Delaware and see signs for towns like Swedesboro (NJ) and various Cristiana/Christiana place names in DE. [0]https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-barbarous-years-the-peopling-of-british-north-america-the-conflict-of-civilizations-1600-1675-bernard-bailyn/859fe9d648925ae5 https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-barbarous-years-the-peoplin...
- Electricniko 4mo agoNew Sweden also gave America one of the first attempted colonial rebellions against English rule. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolt_of_the_Long_Swede https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolt_of_the_Long_Swede
- reaperducer 4mo agoNew Sweden: the US's long-lost 'secret' colony I guess it's a secret to the Brits and the BBC. We learned about Swedish colonies in the Delaware Valley area in fifth grade history class. So secret that it had its own U.S. postage stamp, as shown at the top of TFA. There's lots of things that people learned in elementary school in the UK that I don't know about. That doesn't made them a secret.
- timc3 4mo agoIts just a stupid headline isnt it, I am British born and knew about it but then again I also live in Sweden and like learning about history.
- eesmith 4mo agoThe title refers to the secrecy related to its founding, not any present-day secrecy. From the text: > "It started as sort of secret colony," said Deborah-Jean Hoffman, a board member at the New Sweden Centre, which promotes the Delaware Valley's colonial history. "The Swedes weren't flag-planting like the French or the Spanish. The idea was to create an under-the-radar colony where the Dutch wouldn't see them."
- zkmon 4mo agoWhat an irony - the once European colonies which depended on their motherlands to defend them in an alien land, now become a menace or estranged godfather to Europe.
- alephnerd 4mo agoAt least 25% of us Americans have never had blood or ethnic ties with Europe. African Americans make up around 15% of the US, Asian Americans around 7%, Arab Americans around 1.5%, and Native Americans around 2%. That percentage is likely much higher when you factor Latino Americans - the plurality of whom either have indigenous or African ethnic origins. And some of America's richest and most politically powerful states like California and Texas have some of the lowest rates of European heritage in the nation. This whole "America is European" mentality reeks of West European supremacy and fails to recognize how diverse America is. The only European ethnic groups who still have active blood and ethnic ties with the old country tend to be Central and Eastern Europeans or Irish Americans - large pluralities of whom were forced to leave the old country due to colonial reasons (the Russian Empire, Austro-Hungarian Empire, and British rule in Ireland was equally destructive as colonial rule outside Europe). Alternatively, the only reason Western Europe didn't have a Park Chung Hee, Suharto, or Zia was because Europeans who were naturalized Americans like Brzeziński (Poland), Kissinger (Germany), and Albright (Czechoslovakia) ran policy during the Cold War era. The modern equivalents of Brzeziński, Albright, and Kissinger are all either Heritage (ie. Pre-Civil War), Latino, Asian, or Arab American. Why should European states be given privileges that Japan, South Korea, Phillipines, Taiwan, and others weren't extended until the last 30 years? We are not a European ethnostate. We are America.
- rapidaneurism 4mo agoI had the impression that (at least some of) those groups contain people of mixed ancestry including European ancestry. Am I wrong? Is the child of a white person and a black person not considered black in the US? Is that not the case form the other groups too?
- alephnerd 4mo ago
- dreamcompiler 4mo agoThere are a number of lesser-known chunks of American history like this. One of my favorites is that Santa Fe has been the capital city of Nuevo Mexico since 1610. Acoma, another city in modern-day New Mexico, is about 500 years older still. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acoma_Pueblo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acoma_Pueblo
- alephnerd 4mo ago> One of my favorites is that Santa Fe has been the capital city of Nuevo Mexico since 1610. Acoma, another city in modern-day New Mexico, is about 500 years older still We were taught this in California in elementary school. Spanish colonial history actually tends to be taught at the same time or earlier than East Coast history in much of the American West (usually as "California" or "Texas" or "Colorado" history).
- dreamcompiler 4mo agoI grew up in Texas and took Texas history. I learned things like Texas being the only US state that was once an independent country and where the Six Flags came from (later the name of an amusement park empire that originated in Texas). But they never taught us much about New Mexico.
- wat10000 4mo agoVermont was also an independent country, and for longer than Texas was.
- dreamcompiler 4mo agoYet another thing they didn't teach us in Texas history class.
- eesmith 4mo agoThe Hawaiian Kingdom lasted from 1795 to 1893.
- 4mo ago
- zazazache 4mo agoI thought this was going to be about how Sweden’s claimed neutrality is a sham (even more so now that we joined NATO), but I guess it would have been vassal and not colony in the title if that were the case.
- bananaflag 4mo agoThe title is misleading because it is suggests it is about a colony of the US (like Phillipines), not a colony on territory which is now US.
- 21asdffdsa12 4mo agoI knew it- that architecture- those red houses with the wide windowframe.. that is swedish..
- amelius 4mo agoI'm wondering why the Vikings didn't conquer the Americas long before.
- AndrewAndrewsen 4mo agothey did
- arrowsmith 4mo agoThey briefly visited, they didn't "conquer"
- hammock 4mo agoThe Vikings didn’t “conquer” new lands the way you might imagine. Rather than just raiding, they often settled, intermingled with the locals farmers and established new states. As seen in Scottish Isles, Ireland, Danelaw (England), Ukraine, Faroes, Iceland, Normandy, Greenland, Newfoundland etc they sack some leadership but quickly integrate and evolve into mostly peaceful farming societies
- arrowsmith 4mo agoYes but that didn't happen in the Americas. They didn't settle or leave any lasting impact.
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- rdtsc 4mo ago> The Vikings didn’t “conquer” new lands the way you might imagine. Rather than just raiding, they often settled, intermingled with the locals farmers and established new states There aren’t any the viking settlements in the Americas from that time? Or at least evidence of intermingling with the locals.
- 5555624 4mo ago> But chances are, almost none of those coming realises that the US's political and ideological birthplace was once part of a little-known Swedish colony known as Nya Sverige (New Sweden). Or they think Virginia has a strong claim to be "the US's political and ideological birthplace." The author of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson was from Virginia. The "Father of the Constitution," James Madison, was from Virginia. George Washington was from Virginia. It's not like only one European country had colonies in the pre-United States.
- Brendinooo 4mo ago> But chances are, almost none of those coming realises that [Philadelphia] was once part of a little-known Swedish colony known as Nya Sverige (New Sweden). That's all it's trying to say in this sentence. It's not trying to say that the New Sweden colony was actually the US's political and ideological birthplace. (That's how you read it, right? I'm not sure how your last sentence makes sense otherwise; Philadelphia was a creation of the same European country as Virginia.)
- carlosjobim 4mo agoThe book "Swedes on the Delaware" (or "The Swedes in America") is a comprehensive history of this colony: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/77652.epub3.images https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/77652.epub3.images The interesting part of the book to me was that the Swedes and the native American Indians negotiated as equals for the land purchase, it wasn't by means of violence or deceit. In the end they depended on the purchase of food from the natives during a bad harvest. Amazing that modern Delawareans have built a beautiful replica of the Kalmar Nyckel ship, considering how little impact the Swedish colony had on American history. All in all, Swedish and Dutch colonists, although enemies, treated each other very much as gentlemen. Taking a fort meant showing up with the larger force and the other surrendering. Forts changed hands several times, which isn't mentioned in the BBC article.
- flumes_whims_ 4mo agoThe article mentioned the "the 12-year-old Queen of Sweden" which is quite an interesting story of its own. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christina,_Queen_of_Sweden https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christina,_Queen_of_Sweden
- leviathant 4mo agoThere is an Ikea in south Philadelphia not far from the Old Swedes Church, but they do not do anything to promote the Swedish history there, however brief. The colors of the flag is Philadelphia pay homage to this Swedish heritage.
- lofaszvanitt 4mo agoLooks like BBC is deliberately trolling the US... :DD
- oljwo398ogrj 4mo agoThe ship having the Finnish flag is just a bit anachronistic methinks. Finland would have been under Swedish rule back then (and Swedish, which used to be a language of the elite, is still an official language albeit spoken by a ~5% minority nowadays). The Finnish flag didn't become a thing until much, much later. Even the nationalist Fennoman movement was started by Swedes. Did you know that Finns weren't always considered white? If you do a bit of Wikipedia spelunking, you'll find e.g. an old German map that paints Finland yellow for 'mongoloid'. Weird, eh? Somewhat recently the Swedes returned some Finnish skulls that were stolen and studied by so-called racial 'scientists'. Also, Finns were apparently called 'China Swedes' in the States. Another fun fact for those interested: Finnish is a Uralic language, related to neither Swedish nor Russian. In fact, the Uralic languages are a family separate from Indo-European languages.