Abstract
During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the British Crown competed with other European imperial powers for control over the land, labor, and materials of the Caribbean. The British Crown came to view the Caribbean as the geographical hub within which it would be able to obtain key resources and to challenge the rapidly growing power of the Spanish Empire. One of the most contentious ports in the western Caribbean was New Port Royal harbor on Roatán Island, Honduras, because of its strategic location across the Bay of Honduras from the Spanish settlement of Trujillo. In 1742, the settlement of Augusta was established as a British military outpost. “Royalization” refers to the strategies employed by monarchies to bring about loyalty to a state. While the royalization process was intended to instill a sense of loyalty and British identity among colonists, documentary and archaeological data suggest that multifaceted relationships emerged among British and indigenous populations at settlements such as Augusta.
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Acknowledgments
The work reported here was conducted with the permission and under the supervision of the Instituto Hondureño de Antropología e Historia. The research was carried out in collaboration with various units at the University of South Florida, including the Department of Anthropology, the Office of Education Abroad, and the Humanities Institute, which provided both logistical and financial support for the work. I wish to thank E. Christian Wells for his guidance and encouragement as I completed this research. I appreciate the kindness and generosity of Dr. David Evans of Wake Forest University for sharing his deep knowledge of the island’s history and his extensive contacts. I thank the numerous students who participated in the excavations. I am also thankful for the support and advice of several Roatán residents, including Eric Anderson, Mayor Perry Bodden, Bill and Irma Brady, Bill and Daine Etches, Errol and Mary Jackson, and Doc Radawski.
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Mihok, L.D. (2019). Landscape of Royalization: A British Military Outpost on Roatán Island, Honduras. In: Orser Jr., C. (eds) Archaeologies of the British in Latin America. Contributions To Global Historical Archaeology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-95426-4_9
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