S9E19 - Rum, Debt and Fur

Curious Canadian History

Several episodes back, season 9 episode 15, we had on as a guest Alan Greer to talk about alcohol and its role in early colonial North America. One of the areas that was touched upon, that I thought would make an excellent future episode was alcohol’s role in the fur trade. As many are probably aware much of Canada’s early interactions between First Nations and Europeans came in the form of the fur trade. Some could make a strong case that the Canada we know today owes much to that early fur trade process. In this episode we look back on how alcohol played a role in allowing Europeans to impose a credit/debt system within the fur trade, and the effects that this system had on European-Indigenous relationships. As well, how was alcohol used at the sharp end, where Europeans and Indigenous traders interacted? And was this all simply a European imposed system or did Indigenous traders act and react, resist and accept or outright reject these European tactics, tools and techniques of trade?

Book recommendation: Allan Greer’s Property and Dispossession: Natives, Empires and Land in Early Modern America, Cambridge Univ. Press in 2018

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