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

That's all it's trying to say in this sentence. It's not trying to say that the New Sweden colony was actually the US's political and ideological birthplace. (That's how you read it, right? I'm not sure how your last sentence makes sense otherwise; Philadelphia was a creation of the same European country as Virginia.)

You can easily sail with a fleet of several hundred longships across smaller bodies of water like the North Sea and concentrate enough power to threaten existing kingdoms on the other side. This is a journey of ~ 3 days, and under optimal conditions, they could make it across in a day and a half.

Sending even a tenth of that force across the Northern Atlantic, with its different weather patterns, longer distances, icebergs and very few places to replenish your resources (Iceland yes, Greenland maybe - they lived fairly on the edge as it was, with not much of a food surplus), was not feasible. A few ships could do it, but a few ships means a few people, and in the Americas, which were settled by other people already, it meant that you were a somewhat weak guest to someone else's territory, and you could always be thrown out or made to leave.

You and a group of your buddies would get together while you were young, build boats, and go be pirates for a while until it was time to settle down somewhere.

There isn't a straightforward transition to the larger amount of organization and economy needed to build the larger more sophisticated ships to cross the Atlantic and land somewhere southerly enough to meaningfully colonize.

We were taught this in California in elementary school. Spanish colonial history actually tends to be taught at the same time or earlier than East Coast history in much of the American West (usually as "California" or "Texas" or "Colorado" history).

> "It started as sort of secret colony," said Deborah-Jean Hoffman, a board member at the New Sweden Centre, which promotes the Delaware Valley's colonial history. "The Swedes weren't flag-planting like the French or the Spanish. The idea was to create an under-the-radar colony where the Dutch wouldn't see them."

The article does not dispute this, in fact it's a big part of the New Sweden history in the article. The same person is credited for being responsible for both

> and a lot more people came through new Amsterdam (including my family) than whatnever new Sweden was

Again, Not in dispute. There are paragraphs about how it was a far-flung failed settlement that was taken twice, once by each Dutch and English -- but smooth way to throw in your families long US history coming in through such a a popular port as New Amsterdam. One of my ancestor lines came through some backcountry called Jamestown; def not a swank sounding place like modern-day NYC.

>> "Despite its territorial expansion, New Sweden never became the profitable venture it was conceived to become because it was chronically under-populated and neglected. The colony never counted more than about 400 people" [...] "From 1638-1655, this forgotten Swedish settlement extended across the Delaware Valley, encompassing parts of modern-day New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware and Maryland. In addition to being the smallest, least-populated and shortest-lived European colony in the US, it was also the most clandestine."

> so they would have got ideas from that rather than whatever Sweden was

Where does it even say anything about ideas for Declaration of Independence came from Sweden?

Why they changed it, I can't say, people just liked it better that way.

They were a republic.

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.

African Americans make up around 15% of the US, Asian Americans around 7%, Arab Americans around 1.5%, and Native Americans around 2%.

That percentage is likely much higher when you factor Latino Americans - the plurality of whom either have indigenous or African ethnic origins. And some of America's richest and most politically powerful states like California and Texas have some of the lowest rates of European heritage in the nation.

This whole "America is European" mentality reeks of West European supremacy and fails to recognize how diverse America is. The only European ethnic groups who still have active blood and ethnic ties with the old country tend to be Central and Eastern Europeans or Irish Americans - large pluralities of whom were forced to leave the old country due to colonial reasons (the Russian Empire, Austro-Hungarian Empire, and British rule in Ireland was equally destructive as colonial rule outside Europe).

Alternatively, the only reason Western Europe didn't have a Park Chung Hee, Suharto, or Zia was because Europeans who were naturalized Americans like Brzeziński (Poland), Kissinger (Germany), and Albright (Czechoslovakia) ran policy during the Cold War era.

The modern equivalents of Brzeziński, Albright, and Kissinger are all either Heritage (ie. Pre-Civil War), Latino, Asian, or Arab American.

Why should European states be given privileges that Japan, South Korea, Phillipines, Taiwan, and others weren't extended until the last 30 years?

We are not a European ethnostate. We are America.