Background
Johan Classon Risingh was born in Risinge, Östergötland, Sweden, the son of the local pastor, Clas Botvidi.
Johan Classon Risingh was born in Risinge, Östergötland, Sweden, the son of the local pastor, Clas Botvidi.
After completing the course in the Linkoping Gymnasium, he matriculated in 1635 at the University of Upsala and took his doctor's degree there in 1640. While at Upsala he was influenced profoundly by the historian and legal scholar, Johannes Loccenius, and found a friend and patron in Magnus Gabriel de la Gardie, the rector of the University. For the next eleven years he was engaged chiefly in study and travel.
As tutor to the young Count Clas Åkesson Tott he made a tour of northern Sweden and visited England and France. He had a passion for the study of trade and commerce, and the ambition of his life, never relinquished, was to formulate the policies and describe the methods by which Sweden would become a great commercial power.
A warm admirer of the Dutch, he made several visits to Holland and was at one time a student at the University of Leyden.
By 1651 he was recognized as an expert in his subject and was appointed secretary of the newly established Commercial College or governmental department of commerce. The College had jurisdiction over the colony of New Sweden, and when the authorities could no longer ignore the petitions of Gov. Johan Björnsson Printz for relief, Rising was appointed to succeed him. He resigned his post at the Commercial College in October 1653; was knighted by Queen Christina and received various grants; and sailed from Gothenburg Feburary 2, 1654.
A long and adventurous voyage brought him to Fort Elfsborg, on the Delaware, May 20, 1654. Rising was director (governor) of New Sweden for a little less than fifteen months. He got along well with his subjects and with the Indians and worked intelligently to advance the agricultural and commercial activities of the colony. On the first day after his arrival, however, he made a fatal blunder.
In 1651 Pieter Stuyvesant had established Fort Casimir at what is now New Castle, Delaware, and Printz, diplomat as well as soldier, let it alone, realizing that if the Dutch could be played against the English he would be the gainer. Rising, with a new broom's zeal for a clean sweep, and with no eye for the remoter complications, took the fort and renamed it Fort Trefaldighet. Stuyvesant bided his time. He seized the Swedish supply ship, the Gyllene Haj, when it put in at New Amsterdam, and in August 1655 he appeared in the Delaware with three ships and an over-whelming force of men. In the two weeks' campaign that ensued, Stuyvesant did not lose a man, and the Swedes lost only one, a deserter shot while fleeing.
On August 15 Fort Christina capitulated, the Swedes receiving easy terms, and with the loss of the colony Rising returned home by way of England and Holland. His journals and reports are the chief source of information about New Sweden during his governorship. For a few years he was in the Swedish customs service, being stationed at Elbing in East Prussia.
He had no regular source of income, was miserably poor, and died in a garret over a tailor's shop.
He was unmarried.