It may have been this complaint or feelings similar to those stated therein that forced Stuyvesant to do something that would show that his rule over the colony had a stimulating effect. He had regarded for some time with jealousy the little settlement of New Sweden, or as it was known in later years, Delaware. This colony had been established by one Minuit, who had been formerly employed by the Dutch West India Company. He was a friend of William Usselinx or Ussling, who had as early as 1624 obtained a charter from Gustavus Adolphus for a trading company "to Asia, Africa, America, and Magellanica."[171] But it was not until 1638 that Minuit's Swedish following arrived in America and erected Fort Christina, named after that extraordinary royal tomboy, the Queen of Sweden. They soon had so far settled themselves as to be strong enough to drive out a party from New Haven, but they had not calculated on the hostility of the Dutch. Stuyvesant was determined to seize New Sweden, and set out in 1651 to exert Dutch rights, and for their protection established Fort Casimir on the site of what is now Newcastle, Del. This was merely the beginning of a larger policy of annexation, which was accomplished in 1655 when the Swedish settlement passed into the hands of the Dutch without bloodshed on the appearance of the Governor with an army of 700 men. The conquered territory was immediately sold to the city of Amsterdam and a colony was established there under the name of New Amstel. On the surface this energetic policy had much to recommend it from the Dutch point of view; but in reality the people of the New Netherlands gained but little, as in that colony there were no popular institutions, no true self-government, and not even the advantage of a really efficient despotism to give interior strength or possibilities of exterior advance. The fact was that Stuyvesant's action resulted only in harm to his colony, for in carrying out the extirpation of the Swedish settlement in Delaware he absolutely drained his own resources and left himself unprepared and incapable of resisting the onslaught of the English.