The rivals on the Delaware.
The governor at New Amsterdam, Kieft, protested loudly against this invasion of soil claimed by the Dutch, although it was clearly within the grant already made to Lord Baltimore by the English, who probably had as good right in the district as the Dutch. The latter had indeed for a time allowed it to revert to the Indians, after their first colonizing attempt. Kieft rebuilt Fort Nassau, a menace to which the Swedes replied by fortifying the island of Tinicum, six miles below the mouth of the Schuylkill, thus planting the first colony in Pennsylvania as well as in Delaware. In 1643 this island became the seat of Swedish government.
Prosperity of New Sweden.
New Sweden prospered. The settlers were industrious, thrifty, intelligent, and contented. Along the shores of Delaware River and Bay were scattered neat hamlets, and the company's fur-trade was extended far into the interior.
Swedish aggressiveness
In 1641 two English settlements were made on the river by New Haven men; but there was good reason to distrust the new-comers, who belonged to a land-hungry race, and Dutch and Swedes united to drive them out. Possibly the Swedes might have finally settled down into friendly neighborhood relations with the Dutch, had not the Swedish governor, John Printz, adopted an aggressive attitude towards the New Netherlanders. This led to reprisals. Stuyvesant, who succeeded Kieft at New Amsterdam, built Fort Casimir, near the present city of Newcastle, Del., below the Swedish forts (1651), and thus endeavored to cut them off from ocean communication. |ends in the fall of New Sweden.| In 1654 a Swedish war-vessel anchored before Casimir, which was quietly surrendered. The next year (1655) Stuyvesant raised an army of six or seven hundred men, which suddenly appeared on the Delaware, overawed the Swedes, and compelled them to abandon control of the region. Thus New Sweden fell, amid a storm of protest, but without bloodshed.
The Dutch domination.
Part of the Delaware country was sold by the Dutch West India Company to the city of Amsterdam (1656). The officers sent out by the municipality were as a rule inefficient, and the colony declined; bad crops, famine, disease, Indian troubles, quarrels with New Netherland, and boundary difficulties with the English in Maryland, being additional reasons for retrogression.
English rule established.
The city had just acquired the whole of the Delaware River region, when the English took possession (1664), and Amsterdam rule was succeeded by that of the Duke of York, with laws similar to those in vogue elsewhere in his province. There were a few outbreaks, but as a rule both Dutch and Swedes prospered under English domination.