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Historical Background

The Dutch and the Swedes: Patroons and Plowmen (continued)

FOUNDING OF NEW SWEDEN

Sweden's great King, Gustavus Adolphus, who raised his nation to a powerful position in Europe, was interested in the potential of the American fur trade. After he died, his daughter's regent continued this interest, spurred undoubtedly by William Usselinx, a merchant prince of Amsterdam who had been one of the original promoters of the Dutch West India Company. In 1637, the Swedish Government chartered the New Sweden Company, one of the directors of which was none other than Peter Minuit, late Governor of New Netherland. After being recalled to Holland from New Netherland, he had offered his services to Sweden, whose enthusiasm for New World colonization he undoubtedly stimulated.

In December 1637, Minuit sailed out of Gothenburg in 2 vessels, loaded with about 50 emigrants, bound for Delaware Bay to found New Sweden. He proceeded up the Delaware River to the site of Wilmington, where he landed in the spring of 1638. After bartering with the Indians for the land, he erected Fort Christina, which he named for the youthful Queen of Sweden.

Minuit perished at sea the following year, but his leaderless colonists fared quite well. The Indians at the head of the bay were friendly and anxious to trade. Though of motley origin, the colonists proved more than equal to subduing the wilderness. Many were petty convicts, released from Swedish prisons to serve out their terms in the New World; others were recruits from Finland; and some were Dutch who for one reason or another joined the Swedes. In 1640, Peter Ridder replaced Minuit as Governor. The following year, uninvited but not entirely unwelcome, a group of disaffected Puritans from New Haven settled among them.

Two years later, a new Governor arrived: Johan Printz. He founded about a dozen new posts and settlements along the Delaware River in a 15- to 20-mile radius around Fort Christina, and moved the capital from the fort to one of the islands at the mouth of the Schuylkill River, Tinicum Island, near the site of Philadelphia. Under his able, if autocratic, leadership, New Sweden became nearly self-sufficient. Occasionally in lean times it had to purchase supplies from New England at an exorbitant price, but on the whole it fared well during the decade of Printz's administration.

ASCENDANCY OF THE DUTCH

The most serious problem of New Sweden was that both the English and Dutch looked upon it as an intrusion on land that each of them claimed. Perhaps because of the alliance of the three nations in the Thirty Years' War against their common enemy, Spain, the Swedes were not molested until after the war ended, in 1648. William Kieft, of New Netherland, had earlier sent a formal protest about the Swedish intrusion to Governor Printz. Stuyvesant acted. After he had negotiated the boundary agreement with the stronger English, on his north, in 1651 he brought a small fleet into Delaware Bay and with much fanfare erected Fort Casimir.

Printz protested in vain that Sweden had purchased the land from the Indians. Such agreements with the natives were nominal at best. The Indians had no concept of land ownership and willingly "sold" the same land again and again—to Swedes, to Dutchmen, and to English men. Often not even the same Indian band was involved in these duplicate transactions. But, even if the "deeds" were valid, it would have mattered little, for European rivalry in North America intensified.

Not receiving provisions and additional colonists he had requested from the company, Printz resigned in 1653 and sailed for home, leaving New Sweden leaderless and restive. His successor, Johan Rising, who arrived the following year, could do little to curb the inevitable trend. How much longer New Sweden would have had a nominal existence if Rising had not asserted her position will never be known. But his first action brought doom to the colony.

Finding Fort Casimir inadequately garrisoned, in 1654 Rising attacked and forced its surrender. Retaliation came 15 months later, when Stuyvesant appeared in Delaware Bay with three ships and a sizable army. Again with cannon shot, drum roll, and trumpet blast he proclaimed Dutch sovereignty. The Swedes, who had occupied Fort Casimir, hastily capitulated. One Swedish soldier, who had deserted before the surrender, was shot—the only casualty of the opera bouffe. Fort Christina and the other posts soon joined in the surrender, and New Sweden became a part of New Netherland.

FALL OF NEW NETHERLAND

Many of the Swedish and Finnish colonists from New Sweden, including Governor Rising himself, returned to Nieuw Amsterdam with the victorious Stuyvesant. There they joined the already heterogeneous population of the infant metropolis, which included some Negro slaves. As early as 1640, the Dutch West India Company had opened New Netherland to all the peoples of Europe. A number of Europeans emigrated, many of whom sought freedom from religious persecution at home. Stuyvesant, a staunch member of the Dutch Reformed Church, insisted on religious conformity. Soon after his arrival, he initiated rigid and intolerant policies of religious enforcement that were contrary to those of the Dutch Church, though the ministers in Nieuw Amsterdam supported them. The Governor forbade Lutherans to engage in public worship, fined and banished the Baptists, and cruelly punished Quakers. Even the company's directors were embarrassed by this misplaced zeal and ordered him to permit in New Netherland the freedom of conscience that existed in Holland.

New Amsterdam, including Fort Amsterdam, in 1660. From a detail of I. N. Phelps Stokes' redraft of the Costello plan. (Courtesy, Museum of the City of New York.)

Added to this source of resentment was Stuyvesant's refusal to consider any reforms or to allow popular assemblies. Protests availed the growing population nothing. Furthermore, Stuyvesant introduced measures to curb smuggling; to regulate the fur trade; to prohibit the sale of guns, ammunition, or intoxicants to the Indians; and to collect high tariff duties. All of these, of course, were to the benefit of the company and its profit balance, but most of the settlers felt that they were detrimental and dictatorial.

In another field, Stuyvesant incurred even greater unpopularity. In temperance was widespread in Nieuw Amsterdam; one-fourth of all the buildings were "brandy shops, tobacco or beer houses." While not attempting to prohibit alcoholic beverages, Stuyvesant did restrict their sale for certain hours on Sundays. It was a decree hopeless to enforce despite its timidity. In the long run, whether Stuyvesant deserved it or not, New Netherlanders blamed him for all the dissatisfactions that they felt. When the final crisis came, they refused to support him.

"The Fall of New Amsterdam, 1664." When Col. Richard Nicolls sailed into New York Harbor with four English vessels, Gov. Peter Stuyvesant prepared to fight. The citizens of New Amsterdam persuaded him to surrender. From a painting by J. L. G. Ferris. (Courtesy, William E. Ryder and the Smithsonian Institution.)

Haunting all the Dutch administrators was the fact that the small colony sat in the midst of vigorous British settlements, which had a far greater population. Secondly, Dutch merchant ships had begun to carry cargoes, especially the profitable tobacco, in the New World trade—in direct violation of Britain's Navigation Acts. After the Peace of Westphalia, in 1648, Britain turned her attention to the Dutch, with whom she clashed indecisively in the first Anglo-Dutch War, 1652-54. As long as Nieuw Amsterdam was open to Dutch ships, the Navigation Acts could not be enforced. Even Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island had rejected the mercantile theory to the point of opening their harbors to Dutch vessels.

In March 1664, the restored King Charles II acted. He granted all the region embraced by New Netherland to his brother, James, Duke of York. Parliamentary leaders assenting to an armed conquest, Charles appointed Col. Richard Nicolls as Lieutenant Governor of the province and ordered him to prepare an invasion. In August 1664, he led an English fleet of four vessels and several hundred fighting men into New York Harbor. He offered liberal terms of surrender to the inhabitants, who were given 18 months to decide whether they wanted to remain or not and were guaranteed all the rights of English citizens, including liberty of conscience and trading privileges. Furthermore, they were permitted to continue any Dutch customs not contrary to the laws of England. Impotently Stuyvesant blustered and raged. He would be "carried out dead" before he permitted surrender. But his "children" rebelled and refused to support him. With hardly a shot, on August 26, 1664, Nieuw Amsterdam capitulated and welcomed the English. Soon thereafter, the rest of New Nether land capitulated. The Treaty of Breda (1667), which ended the second Anglo-Dutch War, confirmed the loss of the colony.