By Ann M. Carlos
Commerce through a Frozen Sea is a cross-cultural examine of a century of touch among North American local peoples and Europeans. throughout the eighteenth century, the natives of the Hudson Bay lowlands and their eu buying and selling companions have been introduced jointly via an more and more well known exchange in furs, destined for the hat and fur markets of Europe. local americans have been the only trappers of furs, which they traded to English and French retailers. The exchange gave local american citizens entry to new eu applied sciences that have been built-in into Indian lifeways. What emerges from this distinct exploration is a narrative of 2 equivalent companions occupied with a jointly precious trade.
Drawing on greater than seventy years of exchange files from the files of the Hudson's Bay corporation, monetary historians Ann M. Carlos and Frank D. Lewis critique and confront a few of the myths usually held concerning the nature and effect of business alternate. generally documented are the ways that natives remodeled the buying and selling atmosphere and made up our minds the diversity of products provided to them. Natives have been powerful bargainers who demanded functional goods corresponding to firearms, kettles, and blankets in addition to luxuries like fabric, jewellery, and tobacco—goods just like these bought by way of Europeans. strangely little alcohol was once traded. certainly, Commerce by way of a Frozen Sea exhibits that natives have been industrious those that accomplished a typical of residing above that of so much employees in Europe. even though they later fell in the back of, the eighteenth century was once, for local american citizens, a golden age.
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Extra info for Commerce by a Frozen Sea: Native Americans and the European Fur Trade
Example text
England, as just noted, received its furs mainly from Hudson Bay, New York, and New England, whereas France had access to a fur-trading region that extended north from the boundary of the Thirteen Colonies through New France, and west as far as the Mississippi River basin. 34 Figure 3 shows the pattern of beaver imports in England and France from 1725 to 1758. Apart from a few years in the 1730s when imports were similar, France received many more furs than England. From 1725 to 1740, France imported on average 105,000 beaver pelts, or 23 percent more pelts than England.
Report attributed to ‘‘George Carr,’’ London, 1665 T he flow of pelts that transformed the English felting and hatting industries in the late seventeenth century was the result of two fortuitous events. The first was the signing of the Treaty of Breda marking the end of the Second Anglo-Dutch War. England, the United Provinces, France, and Denmark signed the treaty in the Dutch city of Breda in July 1667. England had captured New Amsterdam from the Dutch, and as part of their negotiations the English commissioners had offered to return New Netherlands in exchange for Dutch sugar factories on the coast of Surinam.
French extended their trading empire and competed more vigorously, especially in the southern and later the western reaches of the Hudson Bay region. From 1741 to 1758 France imported more than twice as many beaver pelts as England. Even this comparison understates the relative supply of beaver pelts to France. Beaver was not just the premier pelt for hatters; European tailors wanted beaver for garments, especially the high-quality pelts from Hudson Bay. As a result, some of the beaver imported into England was re-exported to Holland and Germany for this purpose.