Editing Dutch Conquest of New Sweden (section)

== English Conquest ==

Dutch rule over the former New Sweden lasted only nine years. In 1664, an English fleet arrived at New Amsterdam and demanded the surrender of all Dutch colonial possessions in North America. Peter Stuyvesant, facing another overwhelming force, surrendered New Netherland to the English without significant resistance. The entire region, from the Hudson River to the Delaware Bay, passed to English control, eventually becoming the colonies of New York, New Jersey, and (after William Penn's grant) Pennsylvania. The Swedish colonists along the Delaware thus found themselves under their third European sovereign in less than a decade, having passed from Swedish to Dutch to English rule.<ref name="gehring"/>

The English treated the Swedish population much as the Dutch had, allowing colonists to remain on their lands and maintain their community institutions. When William Penn arrived in 1682 to establish his colony of Pennsylvania, he found several hundred Swedish and Finnish colonists already settled along the Delaware River, their families having lived in the region for two or more generations. Penn incorporated these existing settlers into his new colony, and their descendants became part of the diverse population of colonial Pennsylvania. The conquest of 1655, which ended Swedish political hopes in North America, did not end the Swedish cultural presence, which persisted through Dutch and English rule and continues to the present day in institutions like [[Gloria Dei (Old Swedes') Church]].<ref name="johnson"/>