Community Politics of the Fur Trade: Relationships, Mobility, and Landscapes of Possibility

Reinterpreting the Great Lakes fur trade as a dynamic
interplay of ambition, alliances, and evolving identities

The North American fur trade was
more than a system of economic exchange. In this book, Am幨ie Allard examines
the Great Lakes region as a dynamic landscape where European traders and
Indigenous peoples negotiated clashing perspectives with the common purpose of
trade and establishing relationships. Allard portrays the interactions between
these groups as community politics and community building, highlighting both
cooperation and contentious power imbalances during the late eighteenth and
early nineteenth centuries.

Drawing on
archaeological evidence including trading posts and wrecked canoes and
historical documents such as traders' journals and memoirs, Allard unravels the
social complexities of this world. She demonstrates how processes of
place-making--through foodways, the built environment, and place-naming--as well
as both waterborne and overland mobility shaped the identities and
relationships of Euro-Canadian, m彋is, and Indigenous peoples. Community
Politics of the Fur Trade challenges traditional narratives of colonialism
by suggesting that for many Indigenous peoples such as the Anishinaabeg and
Dakota, the fur trade era represented a moment of possibility rather than an
inevitable path to subjugation.