British Empire on the North American Frontier: Fort Miamis in the Ohio Territory, 1794-1796

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Colonial Forts in Comparative, Global, and Contemporary Perspective", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

Fort Miamis, a British military outpost built in 1794 near present-day Toledo, Ohio, was an attempt to establish the British Empire and British identity in hotly contested territory. Poorly located and poorly constructed, the fort was never actually completed before it was turned over to U.S. forces in 1796. However, during its brief two-year stint as a British garrison, Fort Miamis played an important symbolic role in the conflict now recognized by some historians as the Sixty-Years’ War for the North American Great Lakes region. Analyses of Ft. Miamis on two levels – everyday life within the fort as evidenced by ceramic tableware, and the location of Ft. Miamis on the landscape – demonstrates how the British Empire tried to imprint itself both psychologically and physically, on both its own soldiers and those whom it was battling for control of this critical region.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Colonial Forts in Comparative, Global, and Contemporary Perspective   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2023

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow