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Book Cover
E-book
Author Carlos, Ann M. (Ann Martina), 1952-

Title Commerce by a frozen sea : Native Americans and the European fur trade / Ann M. Carlos and Frank D. Lewis
Published Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, ©2010

Copies

Description 1 online resource (viii, 260 pages) : illustrations, maps
Series Book collections on Project MUSE
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
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."--Jacket
Notes OldControl:muse9780812204827
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index
Notes In English
Print version record
Subject Hudson's Bay Company -- History
SUBJECT Hudson's Bay Company fast
Subject Europeans -- Hudson Bay Region -- History
Fur trade -- Hudson Bay Region -- History
Indians of North America -- Commerce -- Hudson Bay Region -- History
HISTORY -- United States -- Colonial Period (1600-1775)
Commerce
Ethnic relations
Europeans
Fur trade
Indians of North America -- Commerce
SUBJECT Hudson Bay Region -- Ethnic relations
Hudson Bay Region -- Commerce -- History
Subject Hudson Bay Region
Genre/Form History
Form Electronic book
Author Lewis, Frank D
LC no. 2009044824
ISBN 9780812204827
0812204824
1283890984
9781283890984