The archeology of settler colonies: Ewa Magdalena Naum, ‘How to Plant a Colony in the New World. Rules and Practices in New Sweden and the Seventeenth-Century Delaware Valley’, in Barbara Hausmair, Ben Jervis, Ruth Nugent, Eleanor Williams (eds), Archaeologies of Rules and Regulation: Between Text and Practice, Berhahn, 2018, pp. 83-102 | settler colonial studies blog

The archeology of settler colonies: Ewa Magdalena Naum, ‘How to Plant a Colony in the New World. Rules and Practices in New Sweden and the Seventeenth-Century Delaware Valley’, in Barbara Hausmair, Ben Jervis, Ruth Nugent, Eleanor Williams (eds), Archaeologies of Rules and Regulation: Between Text and Practice, Berhahn, 2018, pp. 83-102

24Jan18

Abstract: The colony of New Sweden (1638–55), like other colonial settlements in America, was structured by a set of laws and regulations. The comprehensive instructions given to the subsequent governors ordered the particulars of everyday life. They dictated settlers’ means of sustenance and rights to trade, detailed rules of engagement with other European colonists and Native Americans, established a system of criminal justice and regulated religious life. Most of these regulations were unquestioned and followed because they constituted a cohesive set of rules that helped to reconstruct settlers’ lives in the colony and instilled a sense of continuity. Others, particularly those laws pertaining to moral and orderly conduct and trade with Native Americans, were frequently transgressed by the colonists, despite the risk of severe punishments. Using historical and archaeological records, this chapter examines obedience and disobedience of the Swedish population of New Sweden and colonial Delaware and Pennsylvania. To better understand the logic behind these actions, the study is set in the context of transatlantic migration as well as the geopolitical realities of the colonial settlements in northeastern America during the seventeenth century.

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