The Founding of New Sweden

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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.