“The Land Called Sweeds Land”: “Ancient Settlers,” “Great Capitalists,” and the Anglicization of the Delaware Valley

ABSTRACT This article considers how struggles over land shaped the process of “anglicization” in colonial Pennsylvania. It focuses on a property dispute 1720s that pitted second-generation Swedish yeoman and his fellow “Ancient Settlers” against an aspiring English Quaker entrepreneur high-placed allies. Drawing records, official minutes, contemporary correspondence to reconstruct controversy, demonstrates disputes not only mobilized population Pennsylvania as “Swedes” but also embedded them within colony property-owning rights-bearing British subjects. Their eighteenth-century cultural transformation was ultimately negotiated “Britonization” fostered appeals ethnic national forms distinction well shared attachments Englishness Britishness.