Trading insights: new visions of colonialism from opposite ends of the northeast fur trade

Summary

Beginning in the 17th century, wampum and furs or hides traced a new system of circulation from the eastern seaboard to the interior west of the Great Lakes. These items moved across an immensely diverse field of colonial entanglements. Yet these ends of the circuit are not often brought into comparison, or are made comparable in a problematic framework of colonialism which takes the inevitability of colonial outcomes as a given. What is the utility in bringing the early and densely settled east coast colonies into conversation with the western interior and Great Lakes fur trade societies of the 18th century? Although these ends differ radically in the aims and settlement strategies of the European colonizers, what of the Algonquian aims and strategies? In this paper I will argue that the rather different setting of fur trade society in the Great Lakes yields critical insight on earlier colonialism to the east, in New England and New York.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2014   •
• Creating the Past in the Present: Critical Reflections on Fur Trade Archaeology

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): SYM-54,03