UC Merced

The story of Euro-American fur trading dates back centuries to the Age of Discovery and the first explorers, settlers and traders who ventured to the North American Atlantic seaboard. By the late seventeenth century, England's Hudson Bay Company was chartered and beaver pelts had become a major continental commodity. Partly because of this rich, deep history with ties to eastern and trans-Atlantic markets, little fur trade scholarship has centered on the Pacific conceptually or firmly placed Pacific trading in larger global contexts--Introd.