By using our site, you agree to our collection of information through the use of cookies. To learn more, view our Privacy Policy. To browse Academia. A focus upon diplomacy and gift-giving during the British regime at Fort de Chartres, in Illinois, in the wake of Pontiac's Rebellion and the French and Indian War.
This thesis is an archaeologically informed social history of Fort de Chartres, It analyzes documentary and archaeological sources to examine the nature of identity and seeks further to understand British impact and interactions with European and Indigenous communities.
Evidence suggests that identity formation was less about Britishness and more about demonstrating status, class, or rank. It seeks to offer an understanding of the garrison as a community, with its martial nature impacted by space, structures, and available material goods.
This project integrates the archaeological collection with a rich, but ignored, documentary record. Fort de Chartres and colonial Illinois have been interpreted over the centuries as a French fort and French colony, with their assemblages as evidence of Frenchness. The British tenancy at the fort was temporally like the French garrison, with a similarly sized population, yet underemphasized historically.
Attempting to capture the stories of these British communities of identity allows for a necessary counterweight to the traditional Francocentric narrative of this area.
