Johan Risingh

Johan Classon Risingh (1617–1672) was a Swedish politician who was the last governor of New Sweden, the Swedish colony in North America.

Biography Risingh was born in 1617 in Risinge, Östergötland, Sweden. His father was a pastor named Reverend Clas Botvidi. After gymnasium at Linköping, he attended the University of Uppsala and University of Leyden. From 1651 to 1653, he held the office of secretary of the Commercial College of Sweden under Erik Alexsson Oxenstierna. Risingh was appointed assistant councilor of New Sweden under Governor Johan Printz. This relationship was in decline due to rising hostilities over trade competition in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. Risingh wrote that the loss of Native alliances could severely impact the territorial integrity of New Sweden against the English colony of Maryland and Dutch colony of New Netherland.

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. Risingh claimed that Fort Casimir had been built on land that New Sweden had purchased from the local Native Americans. Despite this, New Sweden prompted to surrender following the fall of Fort Christina to the Dutch on August 15, 1655.

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.

In culture Risingh is a character in Washington Irving's "Knickerbocker's History of New York." Irving gives a tongue-in-cheek report of the battle for Fort Casimir.