America in World History Week 4

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America in World HistoryWeek 4

• Weekly Theme
• From Rivers to Oceans
• Slaves, Horses, and Furs
• Trade on the Frontiers
• 1700-1800

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Western America Rivers to Oceans

• Lecture Pacific Coast Otter Pelts to China
• The 2nd American Fur Trade

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Lecture Objectives

• Introduce the 18th/19th Century Pacific
  Northwest-Hawaii-China Fur trade
• Role of Pacific Rim and its native peoples in
  American History
• Western US history as multi-regional and
  international

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Westward ho?oreastern Pacific?
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Nootka
Nootka
Facsimile of Louisiana by Samuel Lewis from
åAaron Arrowsmith and Samuel Lewis atlas A new
and elegant general atlas, comprising all the new
discoveries to the present time
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Figure 1 The Pacific Basin, including many of
the islands and mainland ports that became active
sites of international trade in the early
nineteenth century. Adapted from Arrell Morgan
Gibson, Yankees in Paradise The Pacific Basin
Frontier (Albuquerque, 1993). Courtesy of
University of New Mexico Press.
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Russian expansionVitus Bering 1741
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Russian Fur Trade

• Promyshlenniki (Fur traders)
• Exploited Siberian labor
• Supplied by Tribute via use of Hostages and
  Violence
• Methods applied to Aleuts
• Aleutian Population decreased Violence and
  Disease
• 20,000 to 2,000 (1800)
• Kodiak Island 1784, Fort Ross 1812

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Voyages of Science Discovery
Britain Cook 1768-1780 France La
Perouse 1785-1788 Spain Alejandro Malaspina 1789
-1794 USA Lewis and Clark 1804-1806
Cook
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China Trade The Force of Fashion

• Furs prized by Manchu nobility.
• Fashionable as belts, capes, trim on silk robes.
  Fur as badge of distinction?
• soft gold.
• Otter Pelts brought by Cook Expedition worth 120
  each in China 1779

sea otter (Enhydra lutris)
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Pacific-Bound Yankee Traders

• Cook accounts published 1783/1784
• Columbia Rediviva embarking from Boston 1787 and
  in Pacific NW
• By 1800, 100 US ships anchored in Canton

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• Figure 4 By the 1820s, Alta California was a
  central part of trading networks throughout the
  eastern Pacific Basin and across the ocean to
  Canton. This map shows the frequency of different
  destinations based on ships that stopped in Alta
  California. Adapted from Gibson, Yankees in
  Paradise. Courtesy of University of New Mexico
  Press.

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The RaincoastNootka Sound

• Tlingit, Haida, Tsimshian, Nootka, Kwakiutl,
  Chinook
• Trade networks coastal and interior.
• Maquinnas Potlatch 1803200 muskets, 200 yards
  cloth, 100 shirts, 100 looking glasses,7
  barrels of gunpowder

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Fashionable Furs Fashion/Utility
Tlingit Armor vest of caribou skin covered with
Chinese coins
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Hawaii The Pacifics Great Caravansary

• Center of Northwest-Canton Fur trade
• Supply nexus
• Kamehameha and Hawaiian Arms Race Islands united
  in 1810.
• 1806- 15 vessels, including three-masters, brigs,
  and cutters
• 1808- more than 30 ships, most under 40 tons,
  built in Hawaii

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Suggested Readings

• Alan Taylor, American Colonies (Chapter 19, The
  Pacific 1760-1820).
• Eric Wolf, Europe and the People Without History
  (Chapter 6, The Fur Trade).
• Colin Calloway, One Vast Winter Count The
  Native American West Before Lewis and Clark (pp.
  395-415).
• Wade Graham, Traffick According to Their Own
  Caprice trade and biological exchange in the
  making of the Pacific World, 1766-1825
• David Igler, Diseased Goods Global Exchanges in
  the Eastern Pacific Basin, 17701850 American
  Historical Review 109 (June 2004) 693-719.

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Presented by the University of California Santa
Cruz America in World History Group

• Sample Lecture prepared by
• Natale Zappia
• with
• Anders Otterness