Brightening the Covenant Chain BCC

The project investigates the cultures of diplomacy from 1677-1860 between the British Crown and the Six Nations of the Iroquois - the dominant indigenous confederacy of the Northeastern Great Lakes and Canada - and in particular the Covenant Chain, a series of treaties that defined the bonds of alliance between the two. By analysing and bringing interpretative cohesion to a large, unstudied and dispersed set of UK and North American archives and material culture, the project hopes to reveal a new dimension of the British political, cultural and imperial past, and showcase examples of reciprocal ‘right relationship’ between nations.

As part of the project KDL is creating an interface which will let users explore data gleaned from colonial-era maps of the American northeast, and to follow stories which dynamically put the data into context.

Team

• Charles Prior Co-investigator
• Elliott Hall ^KDL RSE team member
• Jenson Morse Researcher
• Joy Porter Principal investigator
• Lucie Mingmei Hao RSE team member
• Matthias Wong Researcher
• Neil Jakeman ^KDL RSE team member
• Paul Caton ^KDL RSE team member
• Tiffany Ong ^KDL RSE team member

Project Status: Active