Johan Classon Risingh (1617 in
Risinge – 1672) was the last governor of the
Swedish
Swedish or ' may refer to:
Anything from or related to Sweden, a country in Northern Europe. Or, specifically:
* Swedish language, a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Sweden and Finland
** Swedish alphabet, the official alphabet used by ...
colony
In modern parlance, a colony is a territory subject to a form of foreign rule. Though dominated by the foreign colonizers, colonies remain separate from the administration of the original country of the colonizers, the ''metropole, metropolit ...
of
New Sweden
New Sweden ( sv, Nya Sverige) was a Swedish colony along the lower reaches of the Delaware River in what is now the United States from 1638 to 1655, established during the Thirty Years' War when Sweden was a great military power. New Sweden fo ...
.
Biography
Risingh was born in 1617 in
Risinge,
Östergötland,
Sweden. After gymnasium at
Linköping
Linköping () is a city in southern Sweden, with around 105,000 inhabitants as of 2021. It is the seat of Linköping Municipality and the capital of Östergötland County. Linköping is also the episcopal see of the Diocese of Linköping (Chu ...
, he attended the
University of Uppsala and
University of Leyden
Leiden University (abbreviated as ''LEI''; nl, Universiteit Leiden) is a public research university in Leiden, Netherlands. The university was founded as a Protestant university in 1575 by William, Prince of Orange, as a reward to the city of Le ...
. From 1651 to 1653, he held the office of secretary of the Commercial College of Sweden. He wrote the first treatise on trade and economics ever compiled in Sweden in the autumn of 1653. Receiving knighthood, he set out from Sweden early in 1654, to take up his duties in New Sweden.
His first act was to cause the seizure of the Dutch
Fort Casimir, which the
Director-General of New Netherland,
Peter Stuyvesant, had erected just below
Fort Christina (near
New Castle, Delaware) in 1651. Stuyvesant subsequently responded by leading an expedition to New Sweden and brought the colony under control of his government. After the surrender, Risingh and the other officials, soldiers, and such colonists as were unwilling to become Dutch subjects, were taken back to Europe. Risingh died in poverty at Stockholm in 1672.
Risingh's reports for the period 1654 to 1655, constituting a valuable history of New Sweden under his administration. A contemporary manuscript copy of this report in Swedish is in the
National Library of Sweden. This report was printed in 1878, in the appendix of Carl K. S. Sprinchorn's ''Kolonien Nya Sveriges Historia '' (in English: History of the Colony of New Sweden). A translation of Sprinchorn's text was made by
Amandus Johnson
Amandus Johnson (October 27, 1877 – June 30, 1974) was a Swedish- American historian, author and museum director. He is most associated with his epic two volume history '' The Swedish Settlements on the Delaware 1638-1664'', which was also publ ...
.
Risingh is an amusing character in Washington Irving's "Knickerbocker's History of New York." Irving gives a tongue-in-cheek report of the battle for Fort Casimir.
[Irving, Washington: Knickerbocker's History of New York, Ed. Anne Carroll Moore, NewYork:Frederick Ungar Publishing Co. 1959. Originally published 1809.]
References
Other sources
*
Johnson, Amandus. ''Johan Classon Rising: The Last Governor of New Sweden'' (Philadelphia: The Swedish Colonial Society, 1915)
*
Johnson, Amandus. ''The Swedish Settlements on the Delaware 1638-1664, Volume II'' (Philadelphia: The Swedish Colonial Society, 1927)
*Ward, Christopher. ''Dutch and Swedes on the Delaware, 1609 - 1664'' (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1930)
*
Griffis, William Elliot. ''The Story of New Netherland. The Dutch In America '' (Boston And New York. Houghton Mifflin Company. The Riverside Press Cambridge. 1909)
External links
Report of Governor Johan Risingh, 1654 (his name has in the modernised English translation been changed to Rising)
1617 births
1672 deaths
People from Finspång Municipality
Governors of New Sweden
People of New Netherland
People of New Sweden
People of colonial Delaware
{{Sweden-bio-stub