Furs and Frontiers in the Far North
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The Contest among Native and Foreign Nations for the Bering Strait Fur Trade
John R. Bockstoce
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Format: PaperPrice: $30.00
e-book
With expert scholarship and a keen eye for detail, Bockstoce provides the first analysis of the historic competition among the Russians, British, and Americans for control of Alaska.
This comprehensive history of the native and maritime fur trade in Alaska during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries is without precedent. The Bering Strait formed the nexus of the circumpolar fur trade in which Russians, British, Americans, and members of fifty native nations competed and cooperated. The desire to dominate the fur trade fed the European expansion into the most remote regions of Asia and America and was an agent of massive change in these regions.
Award-winning author John R. Bockstoce fills a major gap in the historiography of the area in covering the scientific, commercial, and foreign-relations implications of the northern fur trade. In addition, the book provides rare insight into the relationship between the Western powers and the Native Americans who provided them with fur, ivory, and whalebone in exchange for manufactured goods, tobacco, tea, alcohol, and hundreds of other things. But this is also the story of the enterprising individuals who energized the Alaskan fur trade and, in doing so, forever altered the region’s history.
"There is no other work that attempts to cover this far- reaching topic, and hence it fills an important gap in the historiography of the area. What Bockstoce has produced is a worthy companion-volume to his earlier work, Whales, Ice, and Men, which is recognized as being the definitive source on the history of American whaling in the Western Arctic."—William Barr, Arctic Institute of North America, University of Calgary
“This utterly beguiling work reminds us that American history has a north along with its more familiar east, west, and south. And quite a place it is – a vast region of land, water and ice, nearly beyond all jurisdictions, not easily reached then or now. But fortunately, we have an incomparable guide in John Bockstoce. With relentless research, sensitivity, and a palpable love for his subject, he has brought considerable warmth to the study of the far north and the fur trade that drew Europeans and Americans there, from all directions.”—Ted Widmer, Director and Librarian, John Carter Brown Library
“This book is as near perfect as I think any book about the fur trade can be. . . .[It] is a gold mine of information for historians, geographers, ethnologists, and antiquarians. It shows what can be done by a perceptive scholar who has complete command of the subject and of the English language.”
--The Arctic Book Review“An important and epoch-making book.”--American Historical Review
“….. [A] remarkably comprehensive book.”—Denis J.B. Shaw, Slavonic & East European Review Vol.89 No.4
Publication Date: August 31, 2010
42 b/w illus. + 10 maps
