Fur, Fortune, and Empire: The Epic History of the Fur Trade in America - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Fur, Fortune, and Empire: The Epic History of the Fur Trade in America write by Eric Jay Dolin. This book was released on 2011-07-05. Fur, Fortune, and Empire: The Epic History of the Fur Trade in America available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. A Seattle Times selection for one of Best Non-Fiction Books of 2010 Winner of the New England Historial Association's 2010 James P. Hanlan Award Winner of the Outdoor Writers Association of America 2011 Excellence in Craft Award, Book Division, First Place "A compelling and well-annotated tale of greed, slaughter and geopolitics." —Los Angeles Times As Henry Hudson sailed up the broad river that would one day bear his name, he grew concerned that his Dutch patrons would be disappointed in his failure to find the fabled route to the Orient. What became immediately apparent, however, from the Indians clad in deer skins and "good furs" was that Hudson had discovered something just as tantalizing. The news of Hudson's 1609 voyage to America ignited a fierce competition to lay claim to this uncharted continent, teeming with untapped natural resources. The result was the creation of an American fur trade, which fostered economic rivalries and fueled wars among the European powers, and later between the United States and Great Britain, as North America became a battleground for colonization and imperial aspirations. In Fur, Fortune, and Empire, best-selling author Eric Jay Dolin chronicles the rise and fall of the fur trade of old, when the rallying cry was "get the furs while they last." Beavers, sea otters, and buffalos were slaughtered, used for their precious pelts that were tailored into extravagant hats, coats, and sleigh blankets. To read Fur, Fortune, and Empire then is to understand how North America was explored, exploited, and settled, while its native Indians were alternately enriched and exploited by the trade. As Dolin demonstrates, fur, both an economic elixir and an agent of destruction, became inextricably linked to many key events in American history, including the French and Indian War, the American Revolution, and the War of 1812, as well as to the relentless pull of Manifest Destiny and the opening of the West. This work provides an international cast beyond the scope of any Hollywood epic, including Thomas Morton, the rabble-rouser who infuriated the Pilgrims by trading guns with the Indians; British explorer Captain James Cook, whose discovery in the Pacific Northwest helped launch America's China trade; Thomas Jefferson who dreamed of expanding the fur trade beyond the Mississippi; America's first multimillionaire John Jacob Astor, who built a fortune on a foundation of fur; and intrepid mountain men such as Kit Carson and Jedediah Smith, who sliced their way through an awe inspiring and unforgiving landscape, leaving behind a mythic legacy still resonates today. Concluding with the virtual extinction of the buffalo in the late 1800s, Fur, Fortune, and Empire is an epic history that brings to vivid life three hundred years of the American experience, conclusively demonstrating that the fur trade played a seminal role in creating the nation we are today.
Birchbark Brigade
Birchbark Brigade - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Birchbark Brigade write by Cris Peterson. This book was released on 2009-10-01. Birchbark Brigade available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. A history of the North American fur trade, based on primary sources. The North American fur trade, set in motion by the discovery of the New World in the fifteenth century, was this continent's biggest business for over three hundred years. Furs harvested by Ojibwa natives in the north woods ended up on the sleeves and hems of French princesses and Chinese emperors. Felt hats on the heads of every European businessman began as beaver pelts carried in birchbark canoes to trading posts dotting the wilderness. Iron tools, woolen blankets, and calico cloth manufactured in England found their way to wigwams along the remote rivers of North America. The fur trade influenced every aspect of life—from how Europeans related to the Indians, how and where settlements were built, to how our nation formed. Drawing on primary sources, including the diaries of Ojibwa, American, and French traders of the period, this Society of School Librarians International Honor Book gives readers a glimpse of a little-known story from our past.
When America First Met China: An Exotic History of Tea, Drugs, and Money in the Age of Sail
When America First Met China: An Exotic History of Tea, Drugs, and Money in the Age of Sail - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook When America First Met China: An Exotic History of Tea, Drugs, and Money in the Age of Sail write by Eric Jay Dolin. This book was released on 2012-09-10. When America First Met China: An Exotic History of Tea, Drugs, and Money in the Age of Sail available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Traces the history of the relationship between America and China back to its earliest days, when the United States traded with China for furs, opium, and rare sea cucumbers, but left an ecological and human rights disaster that still reverberates today.
Rethinking the Fur Trade
Rethinking the Fur Trade - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Rethinking the Fur Trade write by Susan Sleeper-Smith. This book was released on 2009-12-01. Rethinking the Fur Trade available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Lucrative, far-reaching, and complex, the fur trade bound together Europeans and Native peoples of North America in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Rethinking the Fur Trade offers a nuanced look at the broad range of contracts that characterized the fur trade, a phenomenon that has often been oversimplified and misrepresented. These essays show how the role of Native Americans was far more instrumental in the conduct and outcome of the fur trade than previously suggested. Rethinking the Fur Trade exposes what has been called the “invisible hand of indigenous commerce,” revealing how it changed European interaction with Indians, influenced what was produced to serve the interests of Indian customers, and led to important cultural innovations. The initial essays explain the working mechanisms of the fur trade and explore how and why it evolved in a North Atlantic context. The second section examines indigenous perspectives through primary-source writings from the period and considers newly evolving indigenous perspectives about the fur trade. The final sections analyze the social history of the fur trade, the profound effect of the cloth trade on Indian dress and culture, and the significance of gender, kinship, and community in the workings of economic exchange.
Five Fur Traders of the Northwest
Five Fur Traders of the Northwest - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Five Fur Traders of the Northwest write by Peter Pond. This book was released on 1965. Five Fur Traders of the Northwest available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle.
