Commerce by a frozen sea : Native Americans and the European fur trade / Ann M. Carlos and Frank D. Lewis.
2010
E98.C7 C375 2010 (Mapit)
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Details
Title
Commerce by a frozen sea : Native Americans and the European fur trade / Ann M. Carlos and Frank D. Lewis.
ISBN
9780812242317 (alk. paper)
0812242319 (alk. paper)
0812242319 (alk. paper)
Imprint
Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, c2010.
Language
English
Description
viii, 260 p. : ill., maps ; 24 cm.
Call Number
E98.C7 C375 2010
Dewey Decimal Classification
305.8970714/111
Summary
"Commerce by a Frozen Seais a cross-cultural study of a century of contact between North American native peoples and Europeans. During the eighteenth century, the natives of the Hudson Bay lowlands and their European trading partners were brought together by an increasingly popular trade in furs, destined for the hat and fur markets of Europe. Native Americans were the sole trappers of furs, which they traded to English and French merchants. The trade gave Native Americans access to new European technologies that were integrated into Indian lifeways. What emerges from this detailed exploration is a story of two equal partners involved in a mutually beneficial trade.
Drawing on more than seventy years of trade records from the archives of the Hudson's Bay Company, economic historians Ann M. Carlos and Frank D. Lewis critique and confront many of the myths commonly held about the nature and impact of commercial trade. Extensively documented are the ways in which natives transformed the trading environment and determined the range of goods offered to them. Natives were effective bargainers who demanded practical items such as firearms, kettles, and blankets as well as luxuries like cloth, jewelry, and tobacco-goods similar to those purchased by Europeans. Surprisingly little alcohol was traded. Indeed,Commerce by a Frozen Seashows that natives were industrious people who achieved a standard of living above that of most workers in Europe. Although they later fell behind, the eighteenth century was, for Native Americans, a golden age."--BOOK JACKET.
Drawing on more than seventy years of trade records from the archives of the Hudson's Bay Company, economic historians Ann M. Carlos and Frank D. Lewis critique and confront many of the myths commonly held about the nature and impact of commercial trade. Extensively documented are the ways in which natives transformed the trading environment and determined the range of goods offered to them. Natives were effective bargainers who demanded practical items such as firearms, kettles, and blankets as well as luxuries like cloth, jewelry, and tobacco-goods similar to those purchased by Europeans. Surprisingly little alcohol was traded. Indeed,Commerce by a Frozen Seashows that natives were industrious people who achieved a standard of living above that of most workers in Europe. Although they later fell behind, the eighteenth century was, for Native Americans, a golden age."--BOOK JACKET.
Bibliography, etc. Note
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Added Author
Lewis, Frank D.
Record Appears in
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Table of Contents
Native Americans and Europeans in the Eighteenth-Century Fur Trade
Hats and the European Fur Market
The Hudsons Bay Company and the Organization of the Fur Trade
Indians as Consumers
The Decline of Beaver Populations
Industrious Indians
Property Rights, Depletion, and Survival
Indians and the Fur Trade: A Golden Age?
The Fur Trade and Economic Development
Hats and the European Fur Market
The Hudsons Bay Company and the Organization of the Fur Trade
Indians as Consumers
The Decline of Beaver Populations
Industrious Indians
Property Rights, Depletion, and Survival
Indians and the Fur Trade: A Golden Age?
The Fur Trade and Economic Development