May 312013
Fur, Fortune, and Empire: The Epic History of the Fur Trade in America
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 TimesAs Henry Hudson sailed up the broad river that would one day bear his name, he grew concerned that his Dutch patrons would be
List Price: $ 29.95
Price: $ 29.95
5-stars for effort, 3 for writing,
Eric Jay Dolin, author of Leviathan: The History of Whaling in America, now explores the history of the American fur trade in Fur, Fortune, and Empire: The Epic History of the Fur Trade in America. I’ll be honest, I wasn’t crazy about Leviathan – it had an amazing amount of detail, but I felt it was more a collection of anecdotes than a historical analysis. Fur, Fortune, and Empire suffers from similar defects, but also has a more focused narrative. I felt like the book was a typical freshman college report – an A for the amount of effort and research, but a B for the depth of analysis and writing.
First, the book: Fur, Fortune, and Empire follows some of the pivotal events of the American fur trade. While the book claims to cover the period from 1550-1900, in reality it focuses on the early 1600s and early 1800s. Dolin argues that the fur trade was integral to American history, leading to the founding of cities like Springfield, MA (my dad’s hometown) and encouraging British settlers to expand into Dutch and French territory. I think Dolin is right about this and makes a good case for the importance of the fur trade in U.S. history. For that alone, Fur, Fortune, and Empire is worth reading.
Now the bad. At times when reading Fur, Fortune, and Empire, I felt almost like I was reading a World Bank report. It is brimming with the traditional elements of history: “names, dates, and places,” dryly recited. However, there’s no exciting characters, little analysis, and at times just becomes just a forgettable collection of anecdotes. I’ve read many, many academic history books, many much longer than this book’s 300 photos, but the best books have one central theme or argument and stick with it. By contrast, Fur, Fortune, and Empire could really have benefitted from an timeline and/or a conclusion that outline the key points of the fur trade (such as when and why certain developments took place). Much of this is in the book, but it’s hidden in between all of the anecdotes. Some other way of highlighting important developments would have given Dolin’s work more of an impact – a memorable takeaway because, let’s face it, I don’t have a photographic memory and probably won’t remember most of the anecdotes in the book a year from now.
Overall, Fur, Fortune, and Empire will probably be a difficult read, but is packed with anecdotes. If you frequently read histories of early America, this would be a worthwhile addition to your list (or, if you liked Leviathan, you’ll probably love this book). But I wouldn’t recommend the book to general audiences – the narrative is simply too dry, too much a collection of trivia to excite most readers. I suspect the book’s greatest appeal will be for professional historians who focus on early America or natural resource consumption. For general audiences, I’d give the book 3.75 stars.
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|Soft Gold,
SOFT GOLD. Today furs are often regarded as politically incorrect, and the only mention of beavers is the occasional local newspaper article re the nuisance of a dam to someone’s property. However for over 250 years in North America, from the late 1500s to circa 1840, the beaver was a valuable commodity (main market: top hats for European gentlemen), often referred to as “soft gold”. Dolin’s aptly-titled book persuasively traces the driving force of acquisition of beaver and other furs on U.S. history, from the huge influence on the first colonies of the French (indeed, the fur trade was the primary motivation); British (beaver fur was the Pilgrims’ first cash crop); and Dutch. But the influence didn’t cease with the colonies. The fur trade also was a major factor in the French and Indian War, the Revolutionary War, and the War of 1812 (and vice-versa–i.e. laws etc. were passed because of the fur trade), and in general drove westward transcontinental expansion.
But there were many other influences. One was that the fur trade was probably the largest factor in defining the final U.S.-Canadian border. Two examples: The border through the middle of 4 of the Great Lakes preserved the (canoe) transport route of furs from the interior of Canada to Montreal; the wagon trains led to the Oregon Territory by the (ex) mountain men swung the balance of power in this co-occupied(U.S. and British)region to the U.S., bringing to the U.S. the land west of the continental divide, north of the Columbia river, and below the 49th parallel (the current state of Washington, the Idaho panhandle, and western Montana).
Dolin has scoured hundreds of sources, summarizing key information in a compelling succinct narrative for the general reader. For the history buff, there are about 980 footnotes, fascinatingly amplifying interesting points and/or putting them into context with other contemporary events. Bottom line: read this book to know more about an under-appreciated part of American history. Recalling the saying: the business of America is business, the fur trade was a primary early American business (making John Jacob Astor America’s first milionaire).
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|The Bible and the Beaver,
This book simply had to be written…and it is a surprise that it took so long. Different authors have attempted to write about the influence of a commercial product in the making of America…eg. rum, but the argument in favor of the beaver, the otter, and later the Buffalo really makes sense. The author tracks the story from early European penetration of the New World to the end of the 19th century when the herds of buffalo were nearly all killed off and the animal rights movement was born. My title for this review comes from the story of the Pilgrims who were almost as interested in the “beaver” for making a living as they were in the “Bible” for choosing how to make life meaningful. But, as the author explains, New England exhausted its fur trade even before the end of the 1600′s by excessive trapping. This caused the Native Americans to trade what they had left…their land. A sorry experience for native peoples.
I was pleased with the author’s selection of pictures to illustrate the book. The picture that inflamed my humanity was a Harper’s Weekly drawing of 1874 which depicted a lone buffalo giving up its skin to a hunter, saying – “Don’t shoot, my good fellow! Here, take my ‘robe’, save your ammunition, and let me go in peace.”
The French and Indian Wars (which pre-dated the American Revolution and generated the need for the British Empire to tax the colonists) was fought primarily to control the fur trade. To stir up revolutionary passions, Benjamin Franklin argued to the colonists that this was a conflict between the British and the French, not a conflict involving the Americans. Thomas Jefferson’s desire to push his country westward was ignited by the hope of making the country rich off the lucrative fur trade and to beat the French, the English, and the Spanish to control all the land west of the Mississippi. To that end, he compromised his own constitutional scruples in order to acquire the “Louisiana Purchase.” (It certainly was not tobacco – after all – that he expected from the new territories). Jefferson engaged Lewis and Clark to study the lands for scientific AND commercial reasons and to mislead the Indians to believe that the United States had only “innocent” objectives in going through the native lands. The story continues. Canada and America raced to own the rich furs of the West. Obviously, the United States beat them to the punch. John Jacob Astor formed the lucrative American Fur Company and later Mountain Men continued shooting animals, even zealously killing the bears that they encountered. Southwestern trappers invaded the Mexican territories; lands that once belonged to Spain ultimately became part of the growing West.
The book ends on a note of qualified optimism. Some of the magnificent fur animals are returning, but only as a wisp of their former strength. New York City saw its first beaver in two hundred years. In conclusion, I would recommend the book highly to everyone interested in ecology, economic history of the United States, American Myth, and the interplay of all these factors.
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