The fur trade helped to fuel the competition for empire in North America. Colonists along the coast of the Atlantic Ocean had hoped to profit from victory in the French and Indian War (1754-63) by increasing their share of the fur trade. But with Canada in the hands of the British, most furs were traded through the St. Lawrence River valley after 1763. Even after the Revolutionary War (1776-83), the British retained posts north of the Ohio River in U. S. territory in part to control the fur trade. By the time the British evacuated those posts after Jay’s Treaty (1794), much of the region had been depleted of furs. The trade shifted westward across the Mississippi River.
Traders from the United States began to compete for western furs from two directions. First, merchant ships in the Pacific Ocean sailed to the Columbia River to obtain furs to trade in China. The Lewis and Clark Expedition in 1803-06 furthered the claim of the United States to the region of the Pacific Northwest and encouraged the fur trade. John Jacob Astor pursued this trade, organizing the American Fur Trading Company in 1808 and the Pacific Fur Company in 1810. He established his trading fort at Astoria at the mouth of the Columbia River in 1811. Astor, however, wisely sold Astoria to the British at the outbreak of the War of 1812 (1812-15). The Hudson Bay Company, the main British agent in the North American trade after 1800, soon controlled the Columbia River basin.
Second, traders from the United States began to move up the Missouri River and into the Rocky Mountains after the Louisiana Purchase (1803) and the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Based in St. Louis, these fur traders tapped into a huge territory with plenty of beaver. They also explored much of the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains in their pursuit of furs.
See also China trade.
Further reading: David J. Wishart, The Fur Trade of the American West, 1807-1840: A Geographical Synthesis (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1979).
World History
