Image – Fur Traders

Fur Traders Page 300

Chapter 9

Fur Traders

By the 1790s, Beaver pelts were in high demand because of the demand for beaver hats, which had become fashionable among American and European men. This eighteenth-century engraving depicts the fur trade in North America.

Questions for Analysis

1. How realistic is this depiction of the fur trade?   Even though fur traders pursued friendlier relations with indigenous people than many explorers, do you think the actual exchange was as leisurely as the scene portrayed here?

2. What detail in the engraving speaks to another item of exchange that transformed societies around the world in the early modern period?

 
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