The British Capture, Defense, and Loss of Mackinac, 1812-1828: The Key to the Northwest and Indigenous Alliances
The capture of the American fort on Mackinac Island in June 1812 by the British, with their Indigenous allies, and the acknowledgement that it secured a stronger alliance with Indigenous Nations, often lead in many accounts of the first engagements in the War of 1812. But that is where it largely stays in the history of the war. Subsequent events at this critical post are glossed over, or completely ignored.
This presentation will review that capture of Mackinac and explore the site’s importance through its defence and later surrender by the British. The gradual shift of the British forces away from the north end of Lake Huron, the nexus point for access to Lakes Superior and Michigan, was a significant loss. While Indigenous Nations were abandoned by the British in the Treaty of Ghent, the British removal from the area served as a death knell to any potential future alliance with the Indigenous Nations, in their struggle against American expansion into their territories west of Chicago.
Biography: Thomas Malcomson, PhD, was as a professor in the School of Liberal Arts and Sciences, at George Brown College, Toronto, for 32 years. He taught course in psychology, dying, death and bereavement, and in the history of labour, genocide, and eugenics. He has written and presented extensively on the British Navy at the end of the long 18th century, with a focus on the War of 1812, and the following decades on the Great Lakes. He is the current president of the Canadian Nautical Research Society, which publishes the journal The Northern Mariner/Le marin du nord.