32 minutes ago
I 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-peoplin...
3 hours ago
This is stupid. And New York was new Amsterdam before the USA and a lot more people came through new Amsterdam (including my family) than whatnever new Sweden was. And the Netherlands was already a democracy before the USA's Declaration of Independence so they would have got ideas from that rather than whatever Sweden was. This is just reaching to write an article.
an hour ago
Or, 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.
42 minutes ago
> And the Netherlands was already a democracy before the USA's Declaration of Independence
They were a republic.
39 minutes ago
A republic is a democracy.
37 minutes ago
It need not be democratic in the modern, universal suffrage sense.
27 minutes ago
Netherlands was not. It was a republic of oligarch-run states. They did not have even landholder suffrage until halfway through the 1800s.
2 hours ago
Uh, 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.