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New Sweden: the US's long-lost 'secret' colony

57 points

by bookofjoe

7 hours ago

| past

| 3 comments

| bbc.com

| HN

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Electricniko

41 minutes ago

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New Sweden also gave America one of the first attempted colonial rebellions against English rule.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolt_of_the_Long_Swede

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anyonecancode

1 hour ago

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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...

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comrade1234

3 hours ago

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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.

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aaronbrethorst

9 minutes ago

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And 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.

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macintux

1 hour ago

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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.

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BigTTYGothGF

1 hour ago

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> And the Netherlands was already a democracy before the USA's Declaration of Independence

They were a republic.

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karlshea

1 hour ago

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A republic is a democracy.

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randallsquared

1 hour ago

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It need not be democratic in the modern, universal suffrage sense.

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stonogo

1 hour ago

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Netherlands was not. It was a republic of oligarch-run states. They did not have even landholder suffrage until halfway through the 1800s.

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topgrain2

21 seconds ago

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Yeah, “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 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.

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fakedang

3 hours ago

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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.