The Scandinavian Early Modern World by Jonas Monié Nordin

Author:Jonas Monié Nordin [Nordin, Jonas Monié]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Civilization, Juvenile Fiction, Historical, Ancient Civilizations, Social Science, General, Archaeology
ISBN: 9781000062595
Google: GWbnDwAAQBAJ
Barnesnoble:
Goodreads: 50162912
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2020-05-14T01:48:02+00:00

Lived cosmopolitanism – a background of the New Sweden colony

Plans for a Swedish overseas colony were not made internally. They had little to do with Sweden and more to do with conceptions of wealth, swift gain, and political influence by Dutch traders seeking expanded possibilities in the New World. There are obvious parallels to the plans of Marchelis de Boushouwer and his obsession with founding a Danish East India Company, as discussed in Chapter 2.

Willem Usselincx (1562–1647) was one of the many Protestant cosmopolitans living and actively participating in the making of the Atlantic world. Usselincx was born in Antwerp but grew up in the Azores. After the Spanish takeover of the islands and the subsequent capture of Antwerp, he moved to Middelburg in the United Provinces. He is most renowned for his leading role in the founding of the Dutch West India Company (WIC) in 1621, but he was not merely a trader looking for economic opportunities; he was an intellectual and a visionary. His main goal was to shape Protestant alliances against Portugal and Spain for the making of a Protestant America (Thompson 2013:35–50). Control over the riches, imagined and real, could be the means to strengthen the position of the Protestant side in the ongoing Thirty Years’ War and its global repercussions.

Usselincx was not satisfied with the form of the West India Company, as it developed into an ordinary trading company rather than the religious force he had wanted. He soon withdrew from its activities, and in 1624 he journeyed to the Baltic to find support for a new company to trade with the Americas. He met with the Swedish king, Gustavus Adolphus (1594–1632), in Gothenburg and succeeded in gaining the support of the Swedish Crown for an America company. In 1626, the Swedish king granted formal privileges for the new company, Söder Companiet (The South Company; Johnson 1911:52–68).

The new company would never be activated, however. Initial funding was difficult to obtain from unwilling sponsors. Swedish engagement in the Thirty Years’ War from 1630, the king’s death in 1632, and the Battle of Nördlingen in 1634, which was disastrous for the Swedish army, stalled activities (cf. Frost 2000:103). The dream of a Swedish colonial trading company was not dead, however, and the Dutch initiative would eventually return.

Another individual agent who deserves to be labelled cosmopolitan was Peter Minuit (1580s–1638), who had been appointed governor over WIC’s colony of New Amsterdam – present-day New York – in 1625. Minuit was a French-speaking Walloon from Tournai, whose family fled wars and prosecution from the Spanish Empire. Minuit became legendary for his acquisition of Manhattan Island. Despite his business success and in spite of his leading the growth of the Dutch colony, Minuit ended up in conflict with the colony and was called home to Amsterdam in 1631 (Thompson 2013:44–46). The two disappointed traders, Usselincx and Minuit, encountered each other and Samuel Blommaert (1583–1651), then the former director of the WIC, who also originated from Antwerp. These three created the foundation of new efforts to build a Dutch–Swedish trade company aimed at the Americas.

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