Matthew D. O’Leary, Doctoral Student, Syracuse University
This presentation discusses the construction of the Anglo-French frontier in Northeastern America, with specific focus on European fortifications. Forts across the Northeast shifted from defense against Amerindian Nations during the 17th century to reflecting fears of European field-armies marching against them during the 18th century. This paper examines travel times and control over natural lines of drift through the implementation of a least-cost path geospatial analysis in ArcGIS Pro. Through this, imperial political and economic systems are reinterpreted towards an understanding of the material and geographic realities of increasing tensions across the late 17th to mid-18th century frontier. Rather than a mere subsidiary of European imperial politics, the circumstances of frontier entanglement and settler-colonialism in the Northeast resulted in a century of petite guerre between the colonists, indigenous, and imperial authorities. REGISTER: bit.ly/22signupNHAS