New Sweden
New Sweden was a Swedish colony along the lower reaches of the Delaware River in America from 1638 to 1655, established during the Thirty Years' War when Sweden was a great military power. New Sweden was part of Swedish colonization efforts in the Americas. Settlements were established on both sides of the Delaware Valley in the region of Delaware, New Jersey, Pennsylvania in places where Swedish traders had been visiting since about 1610. Fort Christina in Wilmington, Delaware was the first settlement, named after the reigning Swedish monarch; the settlers were Swedes, a number of Dutch. New Sweden was conquered by the Dutch Republic in 1655 during the Second Northern War and incorporated into the Dutch colony of New Netherland. By the middle of the 17th century, the Realm of Sweden had reached its greatest territorial extent and was one of the great powers of Europe. Sweden included Finland and Estonia, along with parts of modern Russia, Poland and Latvia under King Gustavus Adolphus and Christina, Queen of Sweden.
The Swedes sought to expand their influence by creating an agricultural and fur-trading colony to circumvent French and English merchants. The Swedish South Company was founded in 1626 with a mandate to establish colonies between Florida and Newfoundland for the purposes of trade along the Delaware River, its charter included Swedish and German stockholders led by directors of the New Sweden Company, including Samuel Blommaert. The company sponsored 11 expeditions in 14 separate voyages to Delaware between 1638 and 1655; the first Swedish expedition to America sailed from the port of Gothenburg in late 1637, organized and overseen by Clas Fleming, a Swedish admiral from Finland. Flemish Dutch Samuel Blommaert assisted the fitting-out and appointed Peter Minuit to lead the expedition; the expedition sailed into Delaware Bay aboard the Fogel Grip and Kalmar Nyckel, which lay within the territory claimed by the Dutch. They passed Cape May and Cape Henlopen in late March 1638 and anchored on March 29 at a rocky point on the Minquas Kill, known today as Swedes' Landing.
They built a fort in Wilmington. In the following years, the area was settled by 600 Swedes and Finns, a number of Dutchmen, a few Germans, a Dane, at least one Estonian, Minuit became the first governor of the colony of New Sweden. Minuit had been the Director of the Dutch West India Company and the predecessor of Director Willem Kieft, he knew the status of the lands on either side of the Delaware River, he knew that the Dutch had established deeds for the lands east of the river in New Jersey, but not for the lands to the west in Maryland and Pennsylvania. Governor Minuit landed on the west bank of the river and gathered the sachems of the Delawares and Susquehannocks, they held a conclave in Minuit's cabin on the Kalmar Nyckel, he persuaded them to sign deeds that he had prepared to solve any issue with the Dutch. The Swedes claimed that the section purchased included the land on the west side of the South River from just below the Schuylkill River in Philadelphia, southeastern Pennsylvania and coastal Maryland.
Delaware sachem Mattahoon claimed that the purchase only included as much land as was contained within an area marked by "six trees", the rest of the land occupied by the Swedes was stolen. Kieft objected to the Swedes landing, but Minuit ignored him since he knew that the Dutch were militarily weak at the moment. Minuit completed Fort Christina in 1638 sailed for Stockholm to bring the second group of settlers, he made a detour to the Caribbean to pick up a shipment of tobacco to sell in Europe in order to make the voyage profitable. However, he died on this voyage during a hurricane at St. Christopher in the Caribbean; the official duties of the governor of New Sweden were carried out by Captain Måns Nilsson Kling, until a new governor was selected and arrived from Sweden two years later. The company expanded along the river from Fort Christina under the leadership of Johan Björnsson Printz, governor from 1643 to 1653, they established Fort Nya Elfsborg on the east bank of the Delaware near Salem, New Jersey and Fort Nya Gothenborg on Tinicum Island to the immediate southwest of Philadelphia.
He built his manor house The Printzhof at Fort Nya Gothenborg, the Swedish colony prospered for a time. In 1644, New Sweden supported the Susquehannocks in their war against English colonists in the Province of Maryland. In May 1654, soldiers from New Sweden led by Governor Johan Risingh captured Fort Casimir and renamed it Fort Trinity. Sweden opened the Second Northern War in the Baltic by attacking the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Dutch sent an armed squadron of ships under Director-General Peter Stuyvesant to seize New Sweden. In the summer of 1655, the Dutch marched an army to the Delaware River capturing Fort Trinity and Fort Christina; the Swedish settlement was formally incorporated into Dutch New Netherland on September 15, 1655, although the Swedish and Finnish settlers were allowed local autonomy. They retained their own militia, religion and lands; this lasted until the English conquest of New Netherland, launched on June 24, 1664. The Duke of York sold New Jersey to John Berkeley and George Carteret to become a proprietary colony, separate from the projected colony of New York.
The invasion began on August 29, 1664 with the capture of New Amsterdam and ended with the capture of Fort Casimir in October. This took place at the beginning of the Second Anglo-Dutch War. New Sweden continued to exist unofficially
Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state located in the northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The Appalachian Mountains run through its middle; the Commonwealth is bordered by Delaware to the southeast, Maryland to the south, West Virginia to the southwest, Ohio to the west, Lake Erie and the Canadian province of Ontario to the northwest, New York to the north, New Jersey to the east. Pennsylvania is the 33rd-largest state by area, the 6th-most populous state according to the most recent official U. S. Census count in 2010, it is the 9th-most densely populated of the 50 states. Pennsylvania's two most populous cities are Philadelphia, Pittsburgh; the state capital and its 10th largest city is Harrisburg. Pennsylvania has 140 miles of waterfront along the Delaware Estuary; the state is one of the 13 original founding states of the United States. Part of Pennsylvania, together with the present State of Delaware, had earlier been organized as the Colony of New Sweden.
It was the second state to ratify the United States Constitution, on December 12, 1787. Independence Hall, where the United States Declaration of Independence and United States Constitution were drafted, is located in the state's largest city of Philadelphia. During the American Civil War, the Battle of Gettysburg was fought in the south central region of the state. Valley Forge near Philadelphia was General Washington's headquarters during the bitter winter of 1777–78. Pennsylvania is 170 miles north to south and 283 miles east to west. Of a total 46,055 square miles, 44,817 square miles are land, 490 square miles are inland waters, 749 square miles are waters in Lake Erie, it is the 33rd-largest state in the United States. Pennsylvania has 51 miles of coastline along Lake Erie and 57 miles of shoreline along the Delaware Estuary. Of the original Thirteen Colonies, Pennsylvania is the only state that does not border the Atlantic Ocean; the boundaries of the state are the Mason–Dixon line to the south, the Twelve-Mile Circle on the Pennsylvania-Delaware border, the Delaware River to the east, 80° 31' W to the west and the 42° N to the north, with the exception of a short segment on the western end, where a triangle extends north to Lake Erie.
Cities include Philadelphia, Reading and Lancaster in the southeast, Pittsburgh in the southwest, the tri-cities of Allentown and Easton in the central east. The northeast includes the former anthracite coal mining cities of Scranton, Wilkes-Barre and Hazleton. Erie is located in the northwest. State College serves the central region while Williamsport serves the commonwealth's north-central region as does Chambersburg the south-central region, with York and the state capital Harrisburg on the Susquehanna River in the east-central region of the Commonwealth and Altoona and Johnstown in the west-central region; the state has five geographical regions, namely the Allegheny Plateau and Valley, Atlantic Coastal Plain and the Erie Plain. New York Ontario Maryland Delaware West Virginia New Jersey Ohio Pennsylvania's diverse topography produces a variety of climates, though the entire state experiences cold winters and humid summers. Straddling two major zones, the majority of the state, with the exception of the southeastern corner, has a humid continental climate.
The southern portion of the state has a humid subtropical climate. The largest city, has some characteristics of the humid subtropical climate that covers much of Delaware and Maryland to the south. Summers are hot and humid. Moving toward the mountainous interior of the state, the winter climate becomes colder, the number of cloudy days increases, snowfall amounts are greater. Western areas of the state locations near Lake Erie, can receive over 100 inches of snowfall annually, the entire state receives plentiful precipitation throughout the year; the state may be subject to severe weather from spring through summer into fall. Tornadoes occur annually in the state, sometimes in large numbers, such as 30 recorded tornadoes in 2011; as of 1600, the tribes living in Pennsylvania were the Algonquian Lenape, the Iroquoian Susquehannock & Petun and the Siouan Monongahela Culture, who may have been the same as a little known tribe called the Calicua, or Cali. Other tribes who entered the region during the colonial era were the Trockwae, Saponi, Nanticoke, Conoy Piscataway, Iroquois Confederacy—possibly among others.
Other tribes, like the Erie, may have once held some land in Pennsylvania, but no longer did so by the year 1600. Both the Dutch and the English claimed both sides of the Delaware River as part of their colonial lands in America; the Dutch were the first to take possession. By June 3, 1631, the Dutch had begun settling the Delmarva Peninsula by establishing the Zwaanendael Colony on the site of present-day Lewes, Delaware. In 1638, Sweden established the New Sweden Colony, in the region of Fort Christina, on the site of present-day Wilmington, Delaware. New Sweden claimed and, for the most part, controlled the lower Delaware River region (parts of present-day Delaware, New Jersey, Pe
Fur
Fur is a thick growth of hair that covers the skin of many animals. It is a defining characteristic of mammals, it consists of a combination of oily guard hair on thick underfur beneath. The guard hair keeps moisture and the underfur acts as an insulating blanket that keeps the animal warm; the fur of mammals has many uses: protection, sensory purposes and camouflage, with the primary usage being thermoregulation. The types of hair include definitive. Hair length is negligible in thermoregulation, as some tropical mammals, such as sloths, have the same fur length as some arctic mammals but with less insulation; the denseness of fur can increase an animal's insulation value, arctic mammals have dense fur. Some desert mammals, such as camels, use dense fur to prevent solar heat from reaching their skin, allowing the animal to stay cool. Aquatic mammals, trap air in their fur to conserve heat by keeping the skin dry. Mammalian coats are colored for a variety of reasons, the major selective pressures including camouflage, sexual selection and physiological processes such as temperature regulation.
Camouflage is a powerful influence in a large number of mammals, as it helps to conceal individuals from predators or prey. Aposematism, warning off possible predators, is the most explanation of the black-and-white pelage of many mammals which are able to defend themselves, such as in the foul-smelling skunk and the powerful and aggressive honey badger. In arctic and subarctic mammals such as the arctic fox, collared lemming and snowshoe hare, seasonal color change between brown in summer and white in winter is driven by camouflage. Differences in female and male coat color may indicate nutrition and hormone levels, important in mate selection; some arboreal mammals, notably primates and marsupials, have shades of violet, green, or blue skin on parts of their bodies, indicating some distinct advantage in their arboreal habitat due to convergent evolution. The green coloration of sloths, however, is the result of a symbiotic relationship with algae. Coat color is sometimes sexually dimorphic, as in many primate species.
Coat color may influence the ability to retain heat, depending on. Mammals with a darker colored coat can absorb more heat from solar radiation, stay warmer, some smaller mammals, such as voles, have darker fur in the winter; the white, pigmentless fur of arctic mammals, such as the polar bear, may reflect more solar radiation directly onto the skin. The term pelage – first known use in English c. 1828 – is sometimes used to refer to an animal's complete coat. The term fur is used to refer to animal pelts which have been processed into leather with their hair still attached; the words fur or furry are used, more casually, to refer to hair-like growths or formations when the subject being referred to exhibits a dense coat of fine, soft "hairs". If layered, rather than grown as a single coat, it may consist of short down hairs, long guard hairs, in some cases, medium awn hairs. Mammals with reduced amounts of fur are called "naked", as with the naked mole-rat, or "hairless", as with hairless dogs.
An animal with commercially valuable fur is known within the fur industry as a furbearer. The use of fur as clothing or decoration is controversial; the modern mammalian fur arrangement is known to have occurred as far back as docodonts and eutriconodonts, with specimens of Castorocauda and Spinolestes preserving compound follicles with both guard hair and underfur. Fur may consist of each with a different type of hair. Down hair is the bottom—or inner—layer, composed of wavy or curly hairs with no straight portions or sharp points. Down hairs, which are flat, tend to be the shortest and most numerous in the coat. Thermoregulation is the principal function of the down hair, which insulates a layer of dry air next to the skin; the awn hair can be thought of as a hybrid, bridging the gap between the distinctly different characteristics of down and guard hairs. Awn hairs begin their growth much like guard hairs, but less than half way to their full length, awn hairs start to grow thin and wavy like down hair.
The proximal part of the awn hair assists in thermoregulation, whereas the distal part can shed water. The awn hair's thin basal portion does not allow the amount of piloerection that the stiffer guard hairs are capable of. Mammals with well developed down and guard hairs usually have large numbers of awn hairs, which may sometimes b
Caribbean Sea
The Caribbean Sea is a sea of the Atlantic Ocean in the tropics of the Western Hemisphere. It is bounded by Mexico and Central America to the west and south west, to the north by the Greater Antilles starting with Cuba, to the east by the Lesser Antilles, to the south by the north coast of South America; the entire area of the Caribbean Sea, the numerous islands of the West Indies, adjacent coasts, are collectively known as the Caribbean. The Caribbean Sea is one of the largest seas and has an area of about 2,754,000 km2; the sea's deepest point is the Cayman Trough, between the Cayman Islands and Jamaica, at 7,686 m below sea level. The Caribbean coastline has many gulfs and bays: the Gulf of Gonâve, Gulf of Venezuela, Gulf of Darién, Golfo de los Mosquitos, Gulf of Paria and Gulf of Honduras; the Caribbean Sea has the Mesoamerican Barrier Reef. It runs 1,000 km along the coasts of Mexico, Belize and Honduras; the name "Caribbean" derives from the Caribs, one of the region's dominant Native American groups at the time of European contact during the late 15th century.
After Christopher Columbus landed in the Bahamas in 1492, the Spanish term Antillas applied to the lands. During the first century of development, Spanish dominance in the region remained undisputed. From the 16th century, Europeans visiting the Caribbean region identified the "South Sea" as opposed to the "North Sea"; the Caribbean Sea had been unknown to the populations of Eurasia until 1492, when Christopher Columbus sailed into Caribbean waters on a quest to find a sea route to Asia. At that time the Western Hemisphere in general was unknown to most Europeans, although it had been discovered between the years 800 and 1000 by the vikings. Following the discovery of the islands by Columbus, the area was colonized by several Western cultures. Following the colonization of the Caribbean islands, the Caribbean Sea became a busy area for European-based marine trading and transports, this commerce attracted pirates such as Samuel Bellamy and Blackbeard; as of 2015 the area is home to borders 12 continental countries.
The International Hydrographic Organization defines the limits of the Caribbean Sea as follows: On the North. In the Windward Channel – a line joining Caleta Point and Pearl Point in Haïti. In the Mona Passage – a line joining Cape Engaño and the extreme of Agujereada in Puerto Rico. Eastern limits. From Point San Diego Northward along the meridian thereof to the 100-fathom line, thence Eastward and Southward, in such a manner that all islands and narrow waters of the Lesser Antilles are included in the Caribbean Sea as far as Galera Point. From Galera Point through Trinidad to Galeota Point and thence to Baja Point in Venezuela. Note that, although Barbados is an island on the same continental shelf, it is considered to be in the Atlantic Ocean rather than the Caribbean Sea; the Caribbean Sea is an oceanic sea situated on the Caribbean Plate. The Caribbean Sea is separated from the ocean by several island arcs of various ages; the youngest stretches from the Lesser Antilles to the Virgin Islands to the north east of Trinidad and Tobago off the coast of Venezuela.
This arc was formed by the collision of the South American Plate with the Caribbean Plate and includes active and extinct volcanoes such as Mount Pelee, the Quill on Sint Eustatius in the Caribbean Netherlands and Morne Trois Pitons on Dominica. The larger islands in the northern part of the sea Cuba, Hispaniola and Puerto Rico lie on an older island arc; the geological age of the Caribbean Sea is estimated to be between 160 and 180 million years and was formed by a horizontal fracture that split the supercontinent called Pangea in the Mesozoic Era. It is assumed the proto-caribbean basin existed in the Devonian period. In the early Carboniferous movement of Gondwana to the north and its convergence with the Euramerica basin decreased in size; the next stage of the Caribbean Sea's formation began in the Triassic. Powerful rifting led to the formation of narrow troughs, stretching from modern Newfoundland to the west coast of the Gulf of Mexico which formed siliciclastic sedimentary rocks. In the early Jurassic due to powerful marine transgression, water broke into the present area of the Gulf of Mexico creating a vast shallow pool.
The emergence of deep basins in the Caribbean occurred during the Middle Jurassic rifting. The emergence of these basins marked the beginning of the Atlantic Ocean and contributed to the destruction of Pangaea at the end of the late Jurassic. During the Cretaceous the Caribbean acquired the shape close to that seen today. In the early Paleogene due to Marine regression the Caribbean became separated from the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean by the land of Cuba and Haiti; the Caribbean remained like this for most of the Cenozoic until the Holocene when rising water levels of the oceans restored communication with the Atlantic Ocean. The Caribbean's floor is composed of sub-oceanic sediments of deep red clay in the deep basins and troughs. On continental slopes and ridges calcareous silts are found. Clay minerals having been deposited by the mainland river Orinoco and the Magdalena River. Deposits on th
Wilmington, Delaware
Wilmington is the largest and most populous city in the U. S. state of Delaware. The city was built on the site of the first Swedish settlement in North America, it is at the confluence of the Christina River and Brandywine River, near where the Christina flows into the Delaware River. It is the county seat of New Castle County and one of the major cities in the Delaware Valley metropolitan area. Wilmington was named by Proprietor Thomas Penn after his friend Spencer Compton, Earl of Wilmington, prime minister in the reign of George II of Great Britain; as of the 2017 United States Census estimate, the city's population is 72,846. It is the fifth least populous city in the U. S. to be the most populous in its state. The Wilmington Metropolitan Division, comprising New Castle County, DE, Cecil County, MD and Salem County, NJ, had an estimated 2016 population of 719,876; the Delaware Valley metropolitan area, which includes the cities of Philadelphia and Camden, New Jersey, had a 2016 population of 6,070,500, a combined statistical area of 7,179,357.
Wilmington is built on the site of Fort Christina and the settlement Kristinehamn, the first Swedish settlement in North America. The area now known as Wilmington was settled by the Lenape band led by Sachem Mattahorn just before Henry Hudson sailed up the Len-api Hanna in 1609; the area was called "Maax-waas Unk" or "Bear Place" after the Maax-waas Hanna. It was called the Bear River because it flowed west to the "Bear People", who are now known as the People of Conestoga or the Susquehannocks; the Dutch heard and spelled the river and the place as "Minguannan." When settlers and traders from the Swedish South Company under Peter Minuit arrived in March 1638 on the Fogel Grip and Kalmar Nyckel, they purchased Maax-waas Unk from Chief Mattahorn and built Fort Christina at the mouth of the Maax-waas Hanna. The area was known as "The Rocks", is located near the foot of present-day Seventh Street. Fort Christina served as the headquarters for the colony of New Sweden which consisted of, for the most part, the lower Delaware River region, but few colonists settled there.
Dr. Timothy Stidham was a prominent doctor in Wilmington, he was born in 1610 in Hammel and raised in Gothenburg, Sweden. He is recorded as the first physician in Delaware; the most important Swedish governor was Colonel Johan Printz, who ruled the colony under Swedish law from 1643 to 1653. He was succeeded by Johan Rising, who upon his arrival in 1654, seized the Dutch post Fort Casimir, located at the site of the present town of New Castle, built by the Dutch in 1651. Rising governed New Sweden until the autumn of 1655, when a Dutch fleet under the command of Peter Stuyvesant subjugated the Swedish forts and established the authority of the Colony of New Netherland throughout the area controlled by the Swedes; this marked the end of Swedish rule in North America. Beginning in 1664 British colonization began. A borough charter was granted in 1739 by King George II, which changed the name of the settlement from Willington, after Thomas Willing, to Wilmington after Spencer Compton, Earl of Wilmington.
Although during the American Revolutionary War only one small battle was fought in Delaware, British troops occupied Wilmington shortly after the nearby Battle of Brandywine on September 11, 1777. The British remained in the town until they vacated Philadelphia in 1778. In 1800, Eleuthère Irénée du Pont, a French Huguenot, emigrated to the United States. Knowledgeable in the manufacture of gunpowder, by 1802 DuPont had begun making the explosive in a mill on the Brandywine River north of Brandywine Village and just outside the town of Wilmington; the DuPont company became a major supplier to the U. S. military. Located on the banks of the Brandywine River, the village was annexed by Wilmington city; the greatest growth in the city occurred during the Civil War. Delaware, though remaining a member of the Union, was a border state and divided in its support of both the Confederate and the Union causes; the war created enormous demand for goods and materials supplied by Wilmington including ships, railroad cars, gunpowder and other war-related goods.
By 1868, Wilmington was producing more iron ships than the rest of the country combined and it rated first in the production of gunpowder and second in carriages and leather. Due to the prosperity Wilmington enjoyed during the war, city merchants and manufacturers expanded Wilmington's residential boundaries westward in the form of large homes along tree-lined streets; this movement was spurred by the first horsecar line, initiated in 1864 along Delaware Avenue. The late 19th century saw the development of the city's first comprehensive park system. William Poole Bancroft, a successful Wilmington businessman influenced by the work of Frederick Law Olmsted, led the effort to establish open parkland in Wilmington. Rockford Park and Brandywine Park were created due to Bancroft's efforts. Both World Wars stimulated the city's industries. Industries vital to the war effort – shipyards, steel foundries, machinery, a
Peter Englund
Peter Mikael Englund is a Swedish author and historian. Englund writes non-fiction books and essays about history, about the Swedish Empire, but about other historical events, he writes in a accessible style, providing narrative details omitted in typical books about history. His books have gained popularity and are translated into several languages, such as German and Czech, he was the permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy from 1 June 2009 to 31 May 2015, when he was succeeded by Sara Danius. In January 2019 Englund announced that he, fellow academy member Espmark, would return as active members of the Swedish academy, where they had been inactive since April 2018. Englund was born in Boden and studied a preparatory course for the caring professions for two years and humanistic subjects for another two years in secondary school, he was conscripted and served 15 months in the Swedish Army at the Norrbotten Regiment located in Boden. He was politically active in his youth and supported the FNL. Englund studied archaeology and theoretical philosophy at Uppsala University, completing a bachelor's degree in 1983, after which he began doctoral studies in History.
He was awarded his Ph. D. in 1989 for his dissertation Det hotade huset, an investigation of the worldview of the 17th-century Swedish nobility. During his period as a doctoral student, he had worked for some time for the Swedish Military Intelligence and Security Service, the year before receiving his doctorate he had published the bestselling Poltava, a detailed description of the Battle of Poltava, where the troops of Swedish king Charles XII were defeated by the Russian army of Tsar Peter I in 1709. Englund has received the August Prize and the Selma Lagerlöf Prize for Literature, he was elected a member of the Swedish Academy in 2002. On 1 June 2009 he succeeded Horace Engdahl as the permanent secretary of the Academy. In 2009, to distance himself from Engdahl, the previous Nobel secretary, Englund, "criticized the jury panel as being too "Eurocentric,'" and "told the Associated Press that it was easier for Europeans to relate to European literature.". In December 2014 he announced his retirement from the post of secretary of the Swedish Academy and was succeeded by Sara Danius May 31, 2015.
On 1 June 2015, Sara Danius succeeded Peter Englund as permanent secretary. On 6 April 2018, Englund announced. On the same day, Klas Östergren and Kjell Espmark declared that they would become inactive members of the Academy. I On 10 January 2019 Englund announced, through his blog, that he and fellow Academy member Kjell Espmark would be returning as active members of the Academy. Holowczyn: Battle of the Moscow Road Peter the Great Poltava Det hotade huset Förflutenhetens landskap, collection of essays Ofredsår, Sweden during Thirty Years' War with Erik Dahlberg at the centre of the book Brev från nollpunkten, collection of essays about modern history Den oövervinnerlige, on Sweden's period as a Great Power. Sequel to Ofredsår Erik Lönnroth: inträdestal i Svenska akademien Tystnadens historia och andra essäer Jag skall dundra Tystnadens historia, collection of essays Spegelscener: minnesfragment från fyra krig Silvermasken, a short biography of Queen Kristina of Sweden Stridens skönhet och sorg, a biography-based book about 19 people who lived during World War I Det stora svalget: en finlandssvensk i första världskriget 1914 Stridens skönhet och sorg: Första världskrigets inledande år i 68 korta kapitel 1915 Stridens skönhet och sorg: Första världskrigets andra år i 108 korta kapitel 1916 Stridens skönhet och sorg Biography Englund's website
Delaware River
The Delaware River is a major river on the Atlantic coast of the United States. It drains an area of 14,119 square miles in five U. S. states: Delaware, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania. Rising in two branches in New York state's Catskill Mountains, the river flows 419 miles into Delaware Bay where its waters enter the Atlantic Ocean near Cape May in New Jersey and Cape Henlopen in Delaware. Not including Delaware Bay, the river's length including its two branches is 388 miles; the Delaware River is one of nineteen "Great Waters" recognized by the America's Great Waters Coalition. The Delaware River rises in two main branches that descend from the western flank of the Catskill Mountains in New York; the West Branch begins near Mount Jefferson in the Town of Jefferson in Schoharie County. The river's East Branch begins at Grand Gorge near Roxbury in Delaware County; these two branches flow west and merge near Hancock in Delaware County, the combined waters flow as the Delaware River south. Through its course, the Delaware River forms the boundaries between Pennsylvania and New York, the entire boundary between New Jersey and Pennsylvania, most of the boundary between Delaware and New Jersey.
The river meets tide-water at the junction of Morrisville and Trenton, New Jersey, at the Falls of the Delaware. The river's navigable, tidal section served as a conduit for shipping and transportation that aided the development of the industrial cities of Trenton and Philadelphia; the mean freshwater discharge of the Delaware River into the estuary of Delaware Bay is 11,550 cubic feet per second. Before the arrival of European settlers, the river was the homeland of the Lenape Native Americans, they called the river Lenapewihittuk, or Lenape River, Kithanne, meaning the largest river in this part of the country. In 1609, the river was first visited by a Dutch East India Company expedition led by Henry Hudson. Hudson, an English navigator, was hired to find a western route to Cathay, but his discoveries set the stage for Dutch colonization of North America in the 17th century. Early Dutch and Swedish settlements were established along the lower section of river and Delaware Bay. Both colonial powers called the river the South River, compared to the Hudson River, known as the North River.
After the English expelled the Dutch and took control of the New Netherland colony in 1664, the river was renamed Delaware after Sir Thomas West, 3rd Baron De La Warr, an English nobleman and the Virginia colony's first royal governor who defended the colony during the First Anglo-Powhatan War. The Delaware River is named in honor of Thomas West, 3rd Baron De La Warr, an English nobleman and the Virginia colony's first royal governor who defended the colony during the First Anglo-Powhatan War. Lord de la Warr waged a punitive campaign to subdue the Powhatan after they had killed the colony's council president, John Ratcliffe, attacked the colony's fledgling settlements. Lord de la Warr arrived with 150 soldiers in time to prevent colony's original settlers at Jamestown from giving up and returning to England and is credited with saving the Virginia colony; the name of barony is pronounced as in the current spelling form "Delaware" and is thought to derive from French de la Guerre. It has been reported that the river and bay received the name "Delaware" after English forces under Richard Nicolls expelled the Dutch and took control of the New Netherland colony in 1664.
However, the river and bay were known by the name Delaware as early as 1641. The state of Delaware was part of the William Penn's Pennsylvania colony. In 1682, the Duke of York granted Penn's request for access to the sea and leased him the territory along the western shore of Delaware Bay which became known as the "Lower Counties on the Delaware." In 1704, these three lower counties were given political autonomy to form a separate provincial assembly, but shared its provincial governor with Pennsylvania until the two colonies separated on June 15, 1776 and remained separate as states after the establishment of the United States. The name became used as a collective name for the Lenape, a Native American people who inhabited an area of the basins of the Susquehanna River, Delaware River, lower Hudson River in the northeastern United States at the time of European settlement; as a result of disruption following the French & Indian War, American Revolutionary War and Indian removals from the eastern United States, the name "Delaware" has been spread with the Lenape's diaspora to municipalities and other geographical features in the American Midwest and Canada.
The Delaware River's drainage basin has an area of 14,119 square miles and encompasses 42 counties and 838 municipalities in five U. S. states—New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Delaware. This total area constitutes 0.4% of the land mass in the United States. In 2001, the watershed was 18% agricultural land, 14% developed land, 68% forested land. There are 216 tributary streams and creeks—an estimated 14,057 miles of streams and creeks—in the watershed. While the watershed is home to 4.17 million people according to the 2000 Federal Census, these bodies of water provide drinking water to 17 million people—roughly 6% of the population of the United States. The waters of the Delaware River's basin are used to sustain "fishing, power, cooling and other industrial and residential purposes." It is the 33rd largest river in the United States in terms of flow, but the nation's most used rivers in daily volume of tonnage. The average annual flow rate of the Delaware is 11,700 cubic feet per s
Sweden
