Monday, February 15, 2021

Other new attempts

TL;DR -- There were other countries in the area: Sweden, Netherlands. 

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New Netherland (c 1684)
We started with New England for obvious reasons and recently decided to look at other colonies since our focus, in part, is the total of the North American continent. New France was brought into the picture due to its geography and its role in many conflicts. Also, it did the early studies of the Mississippi region. However, when the Louisiana Purchase expanded the western regions of the new U.S., it was Spain with whom we did the deal. We do need to look at New Spain which covered a lot of area, so we will look at that in the next post. 

Before we go into some details of New Spain, there were two other close colonial attempts. These were New Netherland and New Sweden

New Sweden

The former is better known having left behind whole areas that are part of our modern culture, such as New York. The map shown at the right is noted to be fairly accurate given when it was drawn up. The earliest Dutch settlement was in 1613. After the arrival of the English, it wasn't long before New Netherland was being encroached upon from the north by the settlers. 

Later, in 1638, there was a Swedish colony established in Fort Christina on the Delaware River. This was the first of several countries who tried to make a foothold (Finns and Germans). 

New Sweden was principally in the Delaware Valley. Mapped out in 1637, there was a build up of settlers until were several town and hundreds of residents. The area was taken back by the Dutch in 1655. The English got New Netherland in 1674. 

As we will see in the  next post, New England picked up a large part of eastern New France with New Spain getting the larger portion of the west that we saw again in the Louisiana deal. 

Remarks: Modified: 08/14/2021

02/27/2021 -- Looked at New Spain. Added the TL;DR line. 

08/14/2021 -- Started a New England look as Weymouth is next year (2022). After that, the locale of our focus, Gloucester/Cape Ann. Coming soon will be a continuing series on slavery and associated topics, such as the Quakers, abolitionists, Civil War, and more emphasis on the relationships with the American Indians. Plus, point to world events through those 400 years; the U.S. was not in isolation. 

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