Contribution to Book
The Fort and the Village: Landscape and Identity in the Colonial Period of Fort Vancouver
British Forts and Their Communities: Archaeological and Historical Perspectives
(2018)
Abstract
Fort Vancouver, located in modern southwestern Washington state (USA), was the administrative headquarters and supply depot for the Hudson’s Bay Company in the Pacific Northwest, essentially the capital of its Columbia Department between about 1825 and 1845. As such, it was the nucleus of Anglo-American colonialism in the region. This chapter describes this nineteenth-century post and explores the relationship of its worker settlement to the fort proper. Historical archaeological research reveals a complex cultural context for the fort and the village, and explores how the paternalistic British fur trade system intersected with the diverse and complex lives of its employees and their families.
Keywords
- colonialism,
- historical archaeology,
- pacific northwest,
- diversity,
- identity
Disciplines
Publication Date
Spring April 10, 2018
Editor
Christopher R. DeCorse, Zachary J. M. Beier
Publisher
University Press of Florida
ISBN
978-0813056753
Publisher Statement
“A fresh approach to far-flung British forts that unravels the diverse ethnicities of each fort’s garrison and support community, thereby revealing the complex and imperfect ways British imperialists imposed colonialism across the globe.”—Gregory A. Waselkov, author of A Conquering Spirit: Fort Mims and the Redstick War of 1813–1814
“Demonstrates that the study of British forts is as diverse and complex as the communities that developed within and around these fortifications.”—Todd Ahlman, director of the Center for Archaeological Studies, Texas State University
While the military features of historic forts usually receive the most attention from researchers, this volume focuses instead on the people who met and interacted in these sites. Contributors to British Forts and Their Communities look beyond the defensive architecture, physical landscapes, and armed conflicts to explore the complex social diversity that arose in the outposts of the British Empire.
The forts investigated here operated at the empire’s peak in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries, protecting British colonial settlements and trading enclaves scattered across the globe. Locations in this volume include New York State, Michigan, the St. Lawrence River, and Vancouver, as well as sites in the Caribbean and in Africa. Using archaeological and archival evidence, these case studies show how forts brought together people of many different origins, ethnicities, identities, and social roles, from European soldiers to indigenous traders to African slaves.
Characterized by shifting networks of people, commodities, and ideas, these fort populations were microcosms of the emerging modern world. This volume reveals how important it is to move past the conventional emphasis on the armed might of the colonizer in order to better understand the messy, entangled nature of British colonialism and the new era it helped usher in.
Citation Information
Douglas C. Wilson. "The Fort and the Village: Landscape and Identity in the Colonial Period of Fort Vancouver" British Forts and Their Communities: Archaeological and Historical Perspectives (2018) p. 91 - 125 Available at: http://works.bepress.com/douglas_wilson/35/