Fur, Fortune, and Empire: The Epic History of the Fur Trade in America

by Eric Jay Dolin

From the best-selling author of Leviathan comes this sweeping narrative of one of America’s most historically rich industries.

Beginning his epic history in the early 1600s, Eric Jay Dolin traces the dramatic rise and fall of the American fur industry, from the first Dutch encounters with the Indians to the rise of the conservation movement in the late nineteenth century. Dolin shows how the fur trade, driven by the demands of fashion, sparked controversy, fostered economic competition, and fueled wars among the European powers, as North America became a battleground for colonization and imperial aspirations. The trade in beaver, buffalo, sea otter, and other animal skins spurred the exploration and the settlement of the vast American continent, while it alternately enriched and gravely damaged the lives of America’s native peoples. Populated by a larger-than-life cast—including Dutch governor Peter Stuyvesant; President Thomas Jefferson; America’s first multimillionaire, John Jacob Astor; and mountain man Kit Carson—Fur, Fortune, and Empire is the most comprehensive and compelling history of the American fur trade ever written. 16 pages of color and 16 pages of black-and-white illustrations, as well as a two-page, endpaper map of the American fur trade beyond the Mississippi.

Starred reviews from Publisher's Weekly and Kirkus Reviews.

"Nobody writes about the link between American history and natural history with the scholarly grace of Eric Jay Dolin. Fur, Fortune, and Empire is a landmark study filled with a cast of eccentric Western-type characters. Dolin's research is prodigious. Not since the days of Francis Parkman has a historian analyzed the fur trade industry with such brilliance. Highly recommended!" -- Douglas Brinkley, Author, Cronkite and The Wilderness Warrior

"Fur, Fortune, and Empire is no melancholy affair. The book bursts with colorful characters, venal corporations, and violent confrontations, all presented with sharp-eyed clarity in a narrative that clips right along. . . . One of the great pleasures of Eric Jay Dolin's work in both Leviathan and Fur, Fortune, and Empire comes in discovering centuries old antecedents of the economic and natural resource issues that we struggle with today. . . . there are plenty of insights as well as much reading pleasure to be had here." Bruce Barcott, Audubon Magazine

"A superb one-volume examination of an era when American ingenuity and its competitive spirit began to flourish. . . Dolin describes in marvelous detail . . . colorful figures of the American fur trades' western expansion. . . . at last, we now have a book that properly accounts for America's rise as a fur-trade power." -- Michael Taube, The Wall Street Journal

"Though guns, germs and steel certainly played their parts, Dolin's "Fur, Fortune, and Empire" leaves little doubt that the trade in pelts "was a powerful force in shaping the course of American history from the early 1600s through the late 1800s, playing a major role in the settlement and evolution of the colonies, and in the growth of the United States." Dolin puts forth a compelling and well-annotated tale of greed, slaughter and geopolitics as the Dutch, English, French, Spanish, Swedes, Russians and the American colonists fought for a slice of the profit." -- Art Winslow, The Los Angeles Times

Genres: History, Nonfiction, American History, Economics, Audiobook, American, Animals

442 pages, Hardcover

First published July 1, 2010

About the author

I grew up near the coasts of New York and Connecticut, and since an early age I was fascinated by the natural world, especially the ocean. I spent many days wandering the beaches on the edge of Long Island Sound and the Atlantic, collecting seashells and exploring tidepools. When I left for college I wanted to become a marine biologist or more specifically a malacologist (seashell scientist). At Brown University I quickly realized that although I loved learning about science, I wasn't cut out for a career in science, mainly because I wasn't very good in the lab, and I didn't particularly enjoy reading or writing scientific research papers. So, after taking a year off and exploring a range of career options, I shifted course turning toward the field of environmental policy, first earning a double-major in biology and environmental studies, then getting a masters degree in environmental management from Yale, and a Ph.D. in environmental policy and planning from MIT, where my dissertation focused on the role of the courts in the cleanup of Boston Harbor.

I have held a variety of jobs, including stints as a fisheries policy analyst at the National Marine Fisheries Service, a program manager at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, an environmental consultant stateside and in London, an American Association for the Advancement of Science writing fellow at Business Week, a curatorial assistant in the Mollusk Department at Harvard's Museum of Comparative Zoology, and an intern at the National Wildlife Federation, the Massachusetts Office of Coastal Zone Management, and the U.S. Senate.

Throughout my career, one thing remained constant--I enjoyed writing and telling stories. And that's why I started writing books--to share the stories that I find most intriguing (I have also published more than 60 articles for magazines, newspapers, and professional journals). My most recent books include:

***A Furious Sky: The Five-Hundred-Year History of America's Hurricanes (Liveright, 2020), which was chosen by:

The Washington Post -- One of 50 Notable works of Nonfiction for 2020

Library Journal -- One of the Best Science & Technology Books of 2020
​
Kirkus Reviews -- One of the top 100 nonfiction books of 2020 (it was also a finalist for the Kirkus Prize)
​
Booklist -- 10 Top Sci-Tech Books of 2020
​
Amazon.com -- One of the Best Science Books of 2020

And also was an Editor's Choice by the New York Times Book Review.

New York Times -- Editor's Choice

***Black Flags, Blue Waters: The Epic History of America's Most Notorious Pirates (Liveright, 2018), which was chosen as a "Must-Read" book for 2019 by the Massachusetts Center for the Book, and was a finalist for the 2019 Julia Ward Howe Award given by the Boston Author's Club.

***Brilliant Beacons: A History of the American Lighthouse (Liveright, 2016), which was chosen by gCaptain and Classic Boat as one of the best nautical books of 2016.

***When America First Met China: An Exotic History of Tea, Drugs, and Money in the Age of Sail (Liveright, September 2012), which was chosen by Kirkus Reviews as one of the ten best non-fiction books of Fall 2012.

***Fur, Fortune, and Empire: the Epic History of the Fur Trade in America (W. W. Norton, 2010), a national bestseller, which was chosen by New West, The Seattle Times, and The Rocky Mountain Land Library as one of the top non-fiction books of 2010. It also won the 2011 James P. Hanlan Book Award, given by the New England Historical Association, and was awarded first place in the Outdoor Writers Association of America, Excellence in Craft Contest.

***Leviathan: The History of Whaling in America (W. W. Norton, 2007), which was selected as one of the best nonfiction books of 2007 by The Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, and The Providence Journal. Leviathan was also chosen by Amazon.com's editors as one of the 10 best history books of 2007. Leviathan garnered the the 23rd annual (2007) L. Byrne Waterman

Reviews

[Matt · Rating 3 out of 5]

In most failed relationships, it’s pretty easy to pinpoint the reasons things went wrong. One party or the other was unfaithful, or dishonest, or hygienically challenged, or possessed of a knife collection that includes more knives than you feel necessary.

Sometimes, though, things just don’t work out, and you can’t explain why. The chemicals aren’t present; there is no spark. Even though your partner showers regularly, never steals from your purse when you aren’t looking, and only has enough knives to cut a proper steak, the relationship just fizzles.

That’s where I’m at with Eric Jay Dolin.

After Leviathan, Fur, Fortune, and Empire is the second of his books I’ve read that tells the story of voracious capitalists hunting creatures into near-extinction in order to harvest those creature’s marketable byproducts. Both books are commendable, well-written, peppered with enjoyable anecdotes. Indeed, if pressed, I couldn’t really suggest any changes, structurally or stylistically, that Dolin could’ve made. However, the highest praise I can come up with is that his books are just fine.

Fur, Fortune, and Empire purports to tell “the epic history of the fur trade in America.” The book’s subtitle, though, comes with some caveats. First, the time covered time period starts with the early exploration of America and ends well before the 20th century. Next, “fur trade” is tightly defined to mean, essentially, seal, beaver and buffalo. The slaughter of seals is given one chapter, and the massacre of buffalo another, briefer chapter. On the whole, this is a beaver book. (At this point, I should mention that I am not unaware of the potential jokes that could be made, only that I have chosen to save those jokes for other venues).

Dolin tells his story in three parts. Part I covers the early exploration and settlement of the New World by the likes of Henry Hudson, John Smith, and the Pilgrims. In this section, Dolin tries to show – with some success – that it was the lure of furs that drew European attention to America. Part II covers the period of the French and Indian War and the American Revolution. During this time period, the formation and expansion of the United States gradually forced the French from the fur trade, and greatly circumscribed the dealings of the British. Part III tells the story of the period most people associate with the American fur trade: the era of the Mountain Man.

The difficulty in writing a book like this is that you are telling the story of an industry, not relating an event or series of events. There are really only two ways to go about doing this. First, you write it like any other history book, except that events are told from the viewpoint of, and analyzed for their effect on that particular industry. This gives you the general overview of things. Second, you can highlight individual stories to give the reader a flavor of how the industry operated.

Dolin tries to do a bit of both.

In Parts I and II, Dolin takes a general approach. Essentially, he gives the reader a brief primer on early American history that is peppered with quotes about the fur trade. The problem is that this story has already been told, and told better, with more detail, in hundreds of other books. For instance, Dolin spends a lot of time on the Pilgrims. While they sometimes engaged in the fur trade, that was only a secondary feature of their settlement (their primary purpose being the consumption of turkey and the wearing of buckled hats).

I had the feeling of treading familiar ground throughout Fur, Fortune, and Empire. I suppose that is the nature of tackling an industry like the fur trade, which is woven into America's history. Still, a lot of Dolin's contributions are redudnant. While it may be true that furs brought people to America, and into the American interior, it’s just as true that the fur traders’ ultimate goal of trading cheap trinkets for beaver pelts was subordinate to their crucial achievements in mapping rivers, claiming land, and forging alliances with the Indians. And if you're anything like me, you've read of those exploits elsewhere.

Every author has a tendency to overemphasize his or her subject. Dolin is not immune to this. He tries to frame the fur trade as a motivator for western expansion, but undercuts his own position by acknowledging that it never accounted for a large percentage of the American economy. What the trade really amounted to (though for some reason, Dolin spends very little time on it) is a case study in the dangers of laissez faire capitalism. A small group of men grew very wealthy, at little personal risk; the rich got to buy fancy hats; the traders were cheated and never made a profit; and a number of ecosystems were destroyed.

Where Dolin succeeds is in the second half of the book, in detailing the adventures and travails of the American mountain men. Here, Dolin chooses a raconteur’s approach, spinning yarns about Indian fights, chases, and escapes. I’ve read these stories – many of them more legend than fact – in a lot of other books, and Dolin doesn’t add any special flare. However, it is literally impossible to screw up stories about Jebediah Smith, Kit Carson, and John Colter. These guys were so much larger than life, due in part to their own self-mythmaking, that you can’t help but get caught up in their escapades. I’m always game for tales of mountain men: deadly grizzlies; stalking panthers; marauding Blackfoot and Gros Ventres; and of course, the Rendezvous, filled with drinking, gambling, dueling, and whoring. (It sounds more fun than it actually was).

The one area in which Dolin adds something unique is in his understanding of the animals that were being trapped and killed. As he did with Leviathan, Dolin does a good job describing his central character, in this case, the beaver. Coming into this book, my knowledge of the beaver was limited to homespun aphorisms and The Chronicles of Narnia. (In other words, I was under the impression that beavers were workaholics, and also that beavers could talk and help little girls undertake magical quests). Dolin helped to expand my knowledge of this bucktoothed little creature, and also gave me one indelible image:

Alone or sometimes in pairs, the beaver sets to work with its powerful incisors, gnawing, cutting, and chipping away the wood near the base of the tree in a V-shaped pattern, often laboring for hours at a time, until the tree is left balancing precariously on a narrow point or wedge of wood, often no thicker than a pencil. With one more cut or a providential gust of wind, the connecting wood fibers rupture as the tree begins to fall. Sensing the vibrations through its teeth or hearing the wood crack, the beaver scampers out of harm’s way. Some people claim that beavers can predict which way a tree will fall, or that they cut the trees so that it falls in the direction of their choosing. This is not true, and a small number of beavers are so clueless on this account that, failing to get out of the way of the crashing lumber, they end up serving as their own executioners, crushed to death by the tree they have just felled.

As I noted above, there is nothing really wrong with this book. It is fine, from start to finish. It’s also short, so you won’t be spending a great deal of time moving from one cover to the next.

Upon final reflection, and upon changing metaphors, I’d conclude that Fur, Fortune, and Empire is like a breakfast of oatmeal, with a little cinnamon on top. You will end up full, a few spoonfuls will taste sweet, and you’re generally better off than if you’d eaten three strips of bacon, three sausage links, and a fried egg sandwiched between two pancakes. However, as a rule, I will never pay for oatmeal. What I’m saying, I suppose, is that if someone hands you this book, you could do worse than reading it. On the other hand, if you are going to purchase a book covering the same topics, it might be worthwhile going elsewhere.

[Ash Jogalekar · Rating 5 out of 5]

A marvelous and highly revealing history of the fur trade in America, right from the first permanent European settlements in the 17th century to the end of the 19th century. A story of inspiring doggedness against an incredibly unforgiving environment and of the tragic clash of civilizations.

Dolin's basic thesis is that fur was to the 17th and 19th centuries what oil was to the 20th, and it was the possibility of buying beaver furs in unprecedented quantities for fashion-hungry Europe from Indians that largely drew first the Dutch and French and later the English to North America, so the settling and expansion of North America especially to the West tracks very closely with the fur trade. Having access to the Mississippi and the Hudson rivers, the former were much better placed to buy fur in exchange for European goods, at first trinkets like utensils and clothing but later deadlier commodities like guns and alcohol. The Dutch started trading for beaver pelts in their New Amsterdam colony, while the French swept in from Canada and controlled the Mississippi. This led to an inevitable clash between the British and the French for control of the Great Lakes region. After the French and Indian War, clashes arose between the British and the colonies regarding jurisdiction over the newly-opened vast Ohio territory and its lucrative fur possibilities, and this was at least one of the factors leading to the American Revolution. Americans continued to duke it out with the British even as both expanded into the Northwest, this time killing sea otters in unprecedented numbers for trade with China with brutal techniques and gleeful avarice. The Lewis and Clark expedition was at least in part a quest to map lucrative locations for the fur trade.

One of the highlights of the book is the light it sheds on early European-Indian relations which were much more benign compared to later years. In almost every case the Indians welcomed the Europeans at first contact and were in awe of their guns and other modern technology. Partly out of necessity - the Europeans were completely dependent on the natives at first for fetching furs from the deep interior - and partly out of genuine respect and curiosity, Europeans established trading relationships with the Indians through trading posts, and the Indians were often canny enough to play competing French and British trappers and companies against each other to get the best price. The relationship started changing when the Europeans became more land-hungry and when they started taking advantage of the Indians by plying them with alcohol; the independent forays of European trappers also started reducing their dependence on native fur acquisition. But there were violent clashes on both sides, sometimes instigated by Indians but more often invoked by European greed.

The book has memorable portraits of key fur trappers, sailors and soldiers who braved unbelievable rigors of starvation, predation and hostile engagements with Indians to get the furs, living for months in inhospitable, sub-zero temperatures in the Midwest and the Great Plains. One of these "mountain men" was Hugo Glass who was mauled by a grizzly bear and left for dead before he endured an astonishing foot journey to reach civilization; Glass was the inspiration for the movie "The Revenant". The mountain men are fascinating; mostly originating from Kentucky, Tennessee and other border states, they were the most free-lancing among the free-lancing trappers, traveling with aplomb whenever and wherever they wanted, yet 80% of them were married and a third took Indian wives. What is truly interesting is that these uneducated, hardy men were often as well read as an East Coast businessman and practiced a kind of equality among themselves and their wives, often living in communal camps, that might have been unique on the continent for the times. Other memorable characters include John Jacob Astor, one of America's first millionaires who thrived on and greatly expanded the fur trade, Captain James Cook who was the first to discover the Northwest before he was killed in Hawaii and frontiersmen like Kit Carson, Daniel Boone and Manuel Lisa.

The last part of the book deals with the tragic effects the fur trade had on America's fauna as well as on the Indians. By the 1850s or so Europeans and Indians had both hunted the beaver nearly to extinction before they discovered a new source of fur: the American buffalo or bison. With that discovery began probably the greatest episode of manmade carnage in history. At the beginning tens of millions of buffalo roamed the Great Plains and the Southwest; by the end of 1890 there were a few hundred. The building of the transcontinental railroad sealed the fate of both the buffalo and the Indians in whose life the buffalo was so intimately integrated that they would use and consume every single part of it, including the scrotum and the tail, the heart and the blood. Meanwhile, Europeans started killing the animal for sport, sometimes lazily shooting it from train compartments and leaving the carcasses rotting. The long-range rifle made it possible for a single hunter to kill dozens in a day and waste most of their meat. Soon the plains were literally dotted with rotting carcasses and skulls for as far as the eye could see. The westward expansion also split the Indian population into small groups which were at the mercy of settlers and the U.S. Army, leading to their complete subjugation. This was truly a sad chapter in the history of the United States, and one that frankly brought tears to my eyes.

Not just the buffalo but the beaver and the sea otter were killed in the tens of millions and hunted to near extinction, so it's perhaps a miracle that they are still around. While the history of the fur trade tells the story of expansion, greed, killings and conquest along with one of resilience, doggedness and adventure, its aftermath tells a story of hope even as Teddy Roosevelt, John Muir, Thoreau and others reminded Americans of humans' deep connection to nature, made a strong push for conservation and assigned large areas of the country to conservation where bison, otters and other animals killed during the fur trade started thriving again. A few years ago a beaver was spotted on the Bronx River in New York for the first time in two hundred years. Perhaps there is a kernel of compassion and hope in the gnarly undergrowth of man's cruelty after all.

[Pbwritr · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another fantastic book! What a lot of things I never knew! I wish schools presented history this way. I think this book really gets to the heart of why and how certain events happened in our country. To say that there were French and Indian wars is not enough. To say the British fought the French and Indians is not enough. What were they fighting over? The impression in my mind from eons ago was simply land. But it was what the land signified, and it wasn't land for land's sake or simply for colonization. It was for the fur trade. I had no idea that the fur trade was so enormous in our economy for much of our history. Most of us grew up hearing about the triangle trade between Africa, the West Indies, America, and Europe (which is actually 4 places, if you ask me). This book also raises the question: How come we learned mostly about Plymouth Rock and the Puritans, and/or Jamestown, Virginia, but scarcely anything at all, if anything, about the Spanish in Florida, the British and French in Quebec, the Russians in Alaska and California? The huge emphasis on our special 13 colonies leaves the very skewed impression that this was the only populated area on the continent. But the Spaniards settled here 100 years before the Puritans. We need a more cohesive history that pulls all the strings of this country's beginnings together, and this book does a marvelous job. Besides that, it's an adventurous and interesting ride.

[Lauren Albert · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well-researched look at the fur trade from its earliest days. It was painful to read; I almost gave up half way through when he got to the clubbing of Sea Otters. Thankfully, most of the book focuses on the business and politics of the trade. A central, if depressing, part of American history.

One thing I forgot to include was a small critique of the author's overemphasis on the role of the fur trade in the War of 1812. He barely mentions impressment, for instance, which is central according to Alan Taylor in The Civil War of 1812.

I also thought it was very interesting that the fur trade increased Native American dependence on the trade--they traded furs for tools and weapons and then became dependent on them as the skills required to make their own failed to be passed down.

[Noreen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Readable, fascinating 500 year global view. Starts post Cromwell. Ends in US, after almost extinction of beaver, otters, buffalo.

Numbers of animals slaughtered astounding.

Similar economic dynamics around tobacco, sugar, cotton, guns, alcohol, opium(drugs)???

[Robert Cox · Rating 2 out of 5]

Informative, thorough and dry. Great reading for your next doctoral thesis.

[Jack · Rating 4 out of 5]

Maybe just the St. Louis in me, or the PNW idolizer in me (probably both!) but this period is such a fascinating time. Full of so much adventure, horror, 'honor,' and a fascinating intersection of ecological, economic and territorial concerns. Not a happy time to read about of course, and full of awful treatment towards indigenous peoples.

I'm shocked there isn't a movie about the Tonquin explosion yet, or of John R. Jewitt, or of William Becknell and the establishment of the Santa Fe trail. Come on, someone dramatize this for me! I will also accept a Ken Burns documentary. Dealers choice.

[Christopher · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Nice beaver!" // "Thanks, I just got it stuffed."

If you get the reference, you are good people. That being said, Dolin's 2010 history of the fur trade in North America from the 1600s to the late 19th century is a fairly interesting look at one of the major (and unappreciated in modern times), elements of colonial trade and politics: pelts.

It's hard to appreciate the sheer scale of the fur trade in the 17-19th centuries where millions upon millions of beavers, otters, and buffalo were killed for little more than fashion. The critical role that trade took in international politics during that time (everything from the French and Indian war to Jefferson's motivations in the Lewis and Clark expeditions) remains hard to fathom given how sparse (if not socially shunned) the fur trade is today.

Dolin does a good job of helping the reader get at least some sense of it all by focusing not just on beaver, but also on the fur trade as it expanded to the Pacific Northwest (sea otters) and the Great Plains (buffalo). The best parts are when Dolin gives some time to the "mountain man" mythos but falters a bit by claiming more than a few times that certain areas -- that the fur trade clearly was clearly relevant to -- are "outside the scope" of his history (it feels like a dodge, to be honest).

Overall though, "Fur, Fortune, and Empire" is a lively little history that excels when it ventures off unhindered into the wilderness, like a mountain man, to tell its story.

[Anne · Rating 3 out of 5]

I saw this book at the library and decided to read it because I had been to the Museum of the North American Fur Trade in Chadron, NE and wanted to know more. As a side note, this MNAFT is a fantastic small museum and well worth a detour from a trip to The Badlands and the Black Hills. It started, or perhaps I started, off strong, but it quickly became repetitive. The argument didn't really seem to build through the book and I ended up skimming the last 60 pages or so because I had pretty much gotten the author's point - fur was important; the fur trade was a source of conflict; we killed all the beaver, sea otters, and buffalo. The information on the animals was interesting, and in general, I appreciate a nonmilitary approach to history. There are some interesting anecdotes and colorful characters, but not enough to make the book great.

[David R. · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent, and eye opening treatment of the oft-overlooked mainstay of colonial and early republican America: the fur trade (mostly beaver, but also otter and buffalo). Dolan considers a grand sweep from the 16th through 20th centuries, with especial emphasis on the fur wars of the northeast (1600s through 1780s) and the combat between Astor's American Fur Company and British interests in the early 18th Century. In addition, Dolan sensitively examines the complex relationships between traders and the Native Americans who so often serve multiple roles as suppliers, rivals, victims, and opponents.

[Bruce Greene · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is very readable but the author makes an unforgiveable mistake on page 212 by identifying James Monroe as the US President in 1812 who declared war on Great Britain. That type of mistake creates doubt in my mind over the veracity of the entire book. Thus I gave it 3* instead of 4.

[Adam · Rating 2 out of 5]

I knew going in that this wasn't a thesis-driven book but it's been long enough since I read a book like that that I'm not sure I was prepared for what that meant. It's like an extended, high-quality Wikipedia article: full of summaries, context, and anecdotes spanning the centuries of fur trading in the present-day US, but assiduously avoids drawing any conclusions from it. This would be fine, even great, if you were reading this book for the raw data and had your own theories to test, and while I kind of did and found some interesting info especially early on (especially on the role of trade in colonial geopolitics), that requires more effort and cross-comparison to deliver than I was ready or willing to do while reading this. So while I certainly became more familiar with the events and broad patterns of the fur trade, most of it just went in one ear and out the other. Probably should have quit reading it early on but it is more or less readable and relatively short so I never felt like it was worth quitting.

[Christopher · Rating 2 out of 5]

Just the facts, ma'am.

[Matt Blanchard · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent history of the United States demonstrating the importance of the fur trade to its settlement and development as a nation. An enjoyable read, with many notable characters.

[Rhonda Hankins]

excellent. i got it because i was curious about astor(ia), but found the book compelling from cover to cover.

[Clare · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have been busy as all get-out so it took me way longer than I’d have liked to finish my April nonfiction commitment, Eric Jay Dolan’s Fur, Fortune, and Empire: The Epic History of the Fur Trade in America.

This book, as you can probably guess from the title, covers the fur trade on the North American continent, from the first European fur trappers (mainly the French) to start kicking around Canada as early as the 1500s, up through the beginning of the conservation movement in the late 19th century, once the near-extinction of the buffalo managed to shock even jingoistic American capitalist types into noticing what destruction they had wrought. Dolin brings his characteristic naturalist’s eye to this story, focusing on the ecological effects of the fur trade nearly as much as the political and cultural ones, and giving the fur animals themselves their due–beavers, buffalo, fur seals, and sea otters are nearly as well-developed characters here as the various humans.

Fur trading was often the “tip of the spear” for European colonization in North America, which lacked the huge and immediately findable gold and silver mines of Mexico and Peru, where the Spanish set up shop early in the 1500s. The history of the fur trade in what would become Canada, the U.S., and the northern parts of the Mexican territory is therefore basically synonymous with the history of European colonization of those parts, and many of the events recounted here were familiar to me from Alan Taylor’s American Colonies, including the complex trade relationships with Indian tribes, and the Russian colonization of Alaska (they did it to obtain fur seals after they’d basically wiped out sable in Siberia).

The story is tragic on basically every level: the fur trade massively upset the ecological balance that Indian nations who hunted fur-bearing animals had lived in pre-colonization, leading to devastation of the habitats and populations of the animals in question; it rendered the Indians dependent on European trade goods and simultaneously vulnerable to European-introduced diseases, gun violence, and alcohol abuse, which facilitated the seizure of their land; it led to the growth of big monopolistic fur companies that mistreated their workers and put them into debt peonage. Lots of human beings died in addition to the animals being hunted. Also, I’ve been watching Blue Planet II when I need some downtime, and have you seen sea otters? They’re so cute! How could you kill so many of these lil guys?

https://www.montereybayaquarium.org/g...

That said, it’s still quite a fascinating set of stories, and I certainly feel much more educated about stuff I didn’t really know much about before, like the settling of the Southwest and California. Someday I need to read a proper history of California.

Originally posted at Ecocide for hats.

[Wendy · Rating 2 out of 5]

We read this for an animal rights reading group. I did not expect it to be really animal-friendly, but I was interested in this history. But not only is the book not overly friendly to animals (following the speciesist but accept language tradition of referring to a species of animals in the singular; i.e., beaver were being trapped, rather than beavers, which removes any semblance of individuality from the lives being [brutally] taken and lumps them together as a a unit or, in this case, product), but the author also seems uninterested in newer scholarship (there are one or two exceptions) -- particularly from the point of view of Native Americans. Although he does mention at the outset that it is troubling that most contemporary sources are from the white/European/American perspective, he does not make any effort to find pretty much anything from other points of view. This becomes particularly apparent in the over-long, rather boring chapter(s) on the Mountain Men, and one gets the feeling the author, like many before him, romanticized these people.

Although Dolin's history shows that Native Americans (and he mainly refers to them as Indians, occasionally distinguishing between one tribe/nation and another, and frequently lumping them all together) welcomed the European traders and trappers, and Dolin makes some effort to show how, once a number of Native Americans became indebted to the Europeans (and later, to the American traders) and thereby were forced to sell off the only thing they had to pay their debts - their land - and even if this seems plausible for the earliest of traders, by the time large numbers of English people start appearing in North America, there is the question of how much resistance there might have been by the Native Americans, and it is a question that is either not thought about by the author or glossed over. Dolin takes some time to explain how Native chiefs at points wrote and plead with European traders to stop providing alcohol as a trade and how the Europeans and Americans did not heed those wishes, but again, he does not spend much time on this.

I still found this book pretty interesting and was fairly accepting of the facts Dolin presents up until page 178, where he writes of fur trader Manuel Lisa, engaging in unnecessary editorializing about this trader/trapper's characteristics: born of Spanish parents in New Orleans, Lisa nevertheless has a "Mexican" face, with "rascality" written all over it. If one turns to the pictures in the book and finds the painting of Lisa, he looks like any other tightly-wound white man from 1818. It was at this point I began to really distrust Dolin's history, and realized that by his using mainly contemporary sources, or sources -- for the most part, I didn't count -- dating to the very early 20th century, he is not presenting a full picture of the history of the fur trade. Further, he takes letters written by Mountain Men and presents them as truth (well, he does in one instance, for trapper Jedidiah Smith, who writes the most ridiculously transparent piece of self-serving bullshit I have read in a while to describe why he is a fur trapper. Dolin writes in all sincerity: "Grueling, extensive, and dangerous expeditions were typical of Smith's entire career as a mountain man. He was driven not only by the desire to find beaver and explore new lands but also by his devotion to those he left behind." (Italics are mine.) Dolin's source is this letter: "It is, that I may be able to help those [of the family] who stand in need...that I face every danger...traverse the mountains covered with eternal snow...pass over the Sandy Plains in heat of summer, where I may cool my overheated body...that I go for days without eating, & am pretty well satisfied if I can gather a few roots, a few snails...." (239). When you read about Smith's refusal to leave California at the direction of its then-Spanish governor (among other things), you do not get the feeling this is a self-sacrificing young man who would have preferred to stay home and keep books or something. For Dolin to take this really rather self-aggrandizing letter at face value of proof of Smith's intentions makes me question a lot of other facts presented in this book - particularly, again, as so much is based on early history and personal narrative.

Dolin also presents many of the Native Americans who oppose the trappers and explorers as bent on revenge; particularly in the chapter about the mountain men and their exploits, he seems to use the fact that other Native tribes were against, say, the Blackfeet or Mojave as a kind of justification for the European/white expansion, though he doesn't put it in quite those terms. The way Dolin words these passages reflects this: "a few...[Mojave were] eager for revenge..." (p. 237) and in cases where trading posts were disputed by the Americans and British over the Oregon Territory, Dolin makes no mention of what the Native Americans of those lands thought, did, or felt. He doesn't even say "the resources on the Native reaction were not easy to locate, and therefore I have left it out rather than speculate" or something of such nature. When Dolin writes of Nez Perce and American trappers coming against the Blackfeet, he gives no context for this, and comes at it from the perspective mainly of the Lewis and Clark expedition and one guy named Colter, who receives over two pages of description for what he went through.

There is also, of course, the millions, if not billions, of individual animals who were murdered for fashion and other things - particularly beavers, buffaloes, and sea otters, according to Dolin. His chapters on beavers and sea otters are where the book really becomes interesting, but I have to wonder why the other millions of animals who were killed for fur appear only in the epilogue, and why buffaloes only rate mention at the end of the book. There are also a couple of footnotes and passages that tell of entertainment the mountain men engaged in while visiting the Spanish-run territories, or just things they did for fun, such as pitting bears against bulls. The descriptions are so violent I had to skim through them (there is also a small section describing a beaver trap, and it's written in a rather dry, academic way; Dolin reserves his horror for the treatment of the mountain men by others, it seems. He doesn't even seem too horrified that the mountain men would sometimes trade their wives - usually Native American - during a card game). He does describe some things as "carnage," I will give him that; particularly the slaughter of the buffaloes and of seals, but even though this is definitely not an animal rights or pro-animal book, I didn't expect quite so little about the animal victims themselves. They are the very ones who the fur trade was/is literally built on, and yet they rate the least mention within the cast of characters. As I read, I became quite angry at times at the way these people - John Jacob Astor, who, if I thought of at all, I thought was probably involved in banking or something -- whose fortunes were made literally off the backs of beavers and otters and seals and bears (oh yeah, and there is that passage where a mountain man runs into a mama grizzly and she and her cubs end up dead) and raccoons and squirrels and rabbits and on and on and on. Occasionally he alludes to some of this - as in the years when the trappers couldn't find any beavers to kill because they had killed them all.

The history of the fur trade is complicated, and trying to fit in several hundred years of one aspect of American history must have been a pretty daunting task. Nevertheless, Dolin's book is uneven, and if he wanted to keep it at its current length, he certainly could have removed a lot of the stories of mountain men and individual traders and their journey up the Missouri River. There could be more current scholarship from the point of view of various Native Americans, and certainly a little more information on the carnage and devastation of the animal victims. There could be less infatuation or romance of the mountain men.

[Russ · Rating 2 out of 5]

Riveting at first. Quite eye-opening about the founding of Plymouth. It's not just that Christians were migrating from European persecutors. The pilgrims were being bankrolled by European fur trade investors.

This book had me enthralled throughout the 1600s and early 1700s. The English, French, Dutch, and Spanish colonizers and their trade with the Indians were explained with greater context and made more sense than anything the old high school history textbooks conveyed.

However, I began losing interest by the French & Indian War, which I think was literally described in one paragraph. That conflict was one of the few world historical events that I remember involving fur in some way. But this book totally glossed over it, saying there was too much detail about that war to go into. I felt like there was a big set-up with the different European powers jockeying for control of the fur trading posts and the North American rivers. But once it reached the level of armed conflict, the explanations stopped.

And on it went like that, with major events written off as beyond the scope of the author's research. I suppose the author wanted to focus on lesser known aspects of the fur trade that have not been written about. But it seemed a bit awkward and incomplete this way.

My second problem with the book was that it didn't engage me the way other historical nonfiction books have. This book was similar in concept to Daniel Yergin's The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money, and Power, in that it dealt with the pioneers of a major industrial sector. However, this came nowhere close to Yergin's ability to create quick, fascinating mini-biographies of the men who built an economic empire. It mimicked the style by giving mini-bios of fur traders and mountain men, but the stories were not as engaging, funny, or informative as they could have been. A lot of the fur traders came across as jerks--not because they dealt in furs--but because we were rarely told about the skills or strengths they had which helped them tame the wilderness. The fur traders explored the West, but I did not come away with an understanding of where their zeal or drive came from.

I did learn a lot through this book about the beaver, buffalo, and sea otter: their natural history, why and how they were hunted & trapped, etc. I knew how the buffalo population had been decimated, but I had not known the extent to which the sea otter was nearly obliterated, and has yet to recover.

And I came to appreciate the depth and magnitude of trade relations with Indian tribes. American history wasn't just about dislocation, contagious diseases, and broken treaties. There were a lot of cordial relations and trade benefits obtained from both sides. And each tribe's relations with the U.S. were different, and this book did a great job of sussing all that out.

That being said, I didn't learn too much about human nature from this book.

[Blake · Rating 3 out of 5]

Expansive and far-reaching, Dolan's history of the fur trade in North America covers from the earliest European trading with Native Americans for the very skins they were wearing, all the way to the birth of the conservation movement in the late 19th century, with special focus on the beaver, sea otter, and buffalo industries, and the trajectory of the American Fur Company under its various permutations.

Of particular interest to me were the early competition between the Dutch and Swedish colonizers of what would later be termed New England, Captain James Cook's and later Captain Vitus Bering's early explorations of the opportunities evident in what's now known as the Pacific Northwest (both with regards to the markets of not-so-far-away Canton Provence of China), and John Jacob Astor's efforts in the same region to follow (which were contemporaneously chronicled in nonfiction by Washington Irving), the nature of the Rendezvous System employed by the Columbia and Rocky Mountain Fur Companies, the culture and lifestyle of the relatively few (3,000 at most, ever, with a peak of 1,000 at any one time) and ultimately short-lived generation of "Mountain Men" fur trappers and de facto explorers, the history of southern-route overland travels to Spanish California by trappers and later up the Californian coast (which began long before I suspected any Americans had been there without arriving by sea), the existence of the Southern trade based out of Taos, in what's now New Mexico, and how early and frequently it was remarked by many people in the industry that what they were doing was wholly unsustainable.

I'd recommend this book if you're looking for a broad overview of the industry that spans centuries and contains mini-biographies too numerous to list, but would direct you to more focused works if there are any particular localities, sub-eras, or actors you're interested in.

[Josh Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

I listened to the audiobook, and it was fairly interesting.

Much of the book is a narrative history of the various troubles fur traders got into. Dolin seems to generally accept these narratives unquestioningly, which gives the book an inevitable European-centric gloss, since the recorded narratives are almost all based on the testimony of European traders, rather than the Indian peoples who did most of the actual trapping.

Dolin made a few interesting points that I had not thought much about before:

1. The view that Europeans systematically took advantage of indigenous people in fur trading doesn't hold up to scrutiny, at least for land based trading posts. European traders depended on good relations with Indigenous tribes, for continued trade.

2. Shipborne traders tended to be much worse behaved than land based ones because they had no need to maintain long-term relationships and could flee quickly if pissed off the local indigenous population.

3. The growth of U.S. trading power was significantly increased by the withdrawal of the East India Company from the U.S. market at the beginning of the U.S. revolution. Americans had become enthusiastic consumers of Chinese tea and porcelain during the colonial period and when those imports were suddenly cut off it create an opening for American traders who sent ships filled with furs to the east and returned with ships full of porcelain and tea.

One thing I didn't get from this book is why fur enjoyed such an enormous boom in the 18th and 19th centuries. People have been wearing furs since prehistoric times. I suppose part of the reason may be simply a knock on effect of the global population and economic boom, combined with the novel luxury of American animals, like beavers.

[Josh Liller · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the history of the fur trade in the lands compromising what is now the United States from colonial times through the 19th century. (The author says up front that he is not getting into modern issues like the anti-fur movement.) This mostly regards hunting beavers, although there is a chapter about sea otters in the Pacific Northwest and a chapter at the end about bison. Going into this book I thought of the fur trade as predominately something out west, but 40% of the book covers the colonial era. For example, the fur trade was basically the reason New Amsterdam and New Sweden existed and had an important role in Massachusetts too.

The American fur trade had the same problem with whaling, plume hunting, and logging. There was a mentality to get as much as possible to try to get as rich as possible, with no regard for sustainability. The short-sighted greed running amok is pretty obvious, even if not called out as such in the text.

Having seen "The Revenant" several years ago it was good to see the fact behind the fiction come up here. I also read a book last year about Lewis & Clark and part of this book is a defacto epilogue to that expedition.

Dolin is a reliably good writer as usual. Recommended to anyone interested in the subject and/or that has read and enjoyed the author's other books.

[Jerry · Rating 4 out of 5]

In Fur, Fortune, and Empire author Eric Jay Dolin does a measure above commendable in his extensive and in depth history of the fur trade in nineteenth century America. Dolin gives a synoptic case by case description of the primary animals ( beaver, sea otter, buffalo ), and then proceeds on a rather all encompassing chronicle of same. Dolin's reveals not only the effect trapping had on the animal in question, but the litany of consequences that bore on the human trappers. From the Native American early zeal towards trade with the white man for British goods ( to the detriment of remembering how to generate themselves, i.e. cookware, weapons, etc. ), through the inevitable encroachment on Indian land and the subsequent merciless fighting. Dolin describes the classic Mountain Man, i.e. Jeremiah Johnson, not just in general detail but through numerous individual examples, such as Kit Carson. The business end of the fur trade is covered thoroughly , in fact it is the center of the book as all other factors orbit around. Finally, Dolin covers the international conflicts that were in some measure attached to the fur trade. An excellent read for anyone who has a desire to acquaint themselves with a critical part of an infant United States and it's westward expansion.

[Matt · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was well-written, enjoyable, and I learned a lot from it. The author writes with clear diction and the ability to distill large amounts of material into a flowing, readable narrative. He wisely decided to only briefly touch on the Lewis and Clark expedition (which has been much discussed) and spend more time on the history of Astoria, which is much less well-known. Dolin shows solid judgment in pacing and scope.

In retrospect, I now realize that much of what I thought of as "the fur trade" was simply the "mountain man" era of the much larger and longer fur trade. Much of the fur trade involved the Native Americans catching and prepare the furs, and European colonists simply trading for them (hence the fur "trade"... duh for me!). The pursuit of furs drove much expansion and conflict amongst the European colonizing powers. Still, the author doesn't overstate his case, noting at periods when furs were just a small percentage of what we would now call GDP.

I of course enjoyed the lengthy chapter on the mountain men the best. There are so many fascinating stories here, and Dolin covers them capably, including their complex relations with Native Americans.

This is a solid book that weaves much knowledge into the tapestry of American history.

[Cam Larsen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well researched and well written, this met my expectations after reading Dolin's Leviathan . I had read about 80% of this content before through a variety of texts including but not limited to Stephen R. Brown's The Company about Hudson Bay Company and Dreams of El Dorado by H.W. Brands. Despite most of the content not being new to me, I thought this was a really well done easy flow read. I liked how it's broken up in between chapters into bite-size pieces. Too many non-fiction novels have daunting 30 page chapters with no breaks. The one paragraph summaries at the end of each chapter were also a nice touch. I appreciate how Dolin doesn't try to over impress readers with an esoteric vocabulary. There is nothing more frustrating when reading nonfiction (which tends to be dryer anyway) than an author using blatantly rare words.

The 20% or so I had not read before was really interesting to me, especially the chapter about buffalo at the end.

If you're a well-versed fur trade reader then you might want to pass on this as it doesn't go super in depth to any of the parts mentioned (as it really shouldn't because it's a full aggregate piece), but this is an excellent book for beginners on the subject.

[Richard Thompson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Much of this book is a recapitulation of the things that we all learned about fur trading in our high school American history classes - how fur trading was an important part of the early colonial economy in North America, how it was the medium for both friendly commerce and cruel exploitation with the Native Americans, how the French came to dominate the business, particularly around the Great Lakes, the Mississippi and the old Northwest Territory, and then the story of John Jacob Astor's rise to untold wealth and monopolistic domination of the fur business before its collapse in the first half of the 1800s. But there were also things that I didn't know. I didn't know that fur trading was important for the Pilgrims. I didn't know that the Lewis & Clark expedition was in no small part about seeking new areas for trapping. I and I knew nothing at all about the Mountain Men and Taos Men who did much of the early exploration of western North America as they trapped and traded furs.

So there were some things I learned here, but the book offered nothing special beyond the historical facts - no new historical theories, no sparkling portrayals of colorful people, no compelling writing style. It was worth reading but could have been more.

[Liam Sullivan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Eric Jay Dolin explores three centuries of North American history through the lens of the fur trade.  Focusing primarily on trapping beaver, the book also mentions how sea otters and nutria were hunted for their pelts, and a brief chapter at the end squeezes in the hunt for bison to make "buffalo robes."  The search for beaver pelts to provide furs to Europe plays a key role in the European powers making claims on land in North America.  Fur trappers blaze the trail for settlement and make profits for some of the continent's first big businesses.  Dolin gives special attention to the Hudson Bay Company and its voyageurs, John Jacob Astor and the Missouri River trade, the age of the Mountain Men, and the trappers of Taos.  While there's a good premise to this book and some interesting details, the book overall feels like Dolin took an outline of North American history and plug in any time that beaver trapping was relevant.  He misses numerous opportunities to explore the people involved in the fur trade and their motivations, or why any of this happening.  Dolin doesn't cite a single primary document but relies entirely on other historical works. 

[Shannon · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good history book, only occasionally slow, filled with interesting tidbits. It looks at the history of most of North America through the lens of the fur trade, but focuses more on what is now the US than I would have preferred. Not enough time was spent in what is now Canada for my personal preference. The Hudson's Bay Company was only mentioned a few times and not explored in depth, though many pages were spent on the Mountain Men and other trappers of US land west of the Mississippi. I also very much missed out on good maps. The only map in the book is only of the US from the Mississippi River to the West Coast, completely cutting out Canada and the Eastern US, which dominates the first half of the book. There is much talk of the early settlers in New Netherlands, New England, and New France, but there are no maps of those places. If not for the maps and the lack of non-US focused history, I would have given the book four stars as it actually is quite interesting.

[Nate · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was looking for a good survey on the North American Fur trade and found this book at the library. I found less a survey and more a narrative of the founding and westward expansion of the US told through the lens of the fur trade. For example, there is a lot of early focus how the English elbowed the Dutch and then French out of North America, but little about how the Dutch and French conducted their trade (the coureur de bois and voyageurs are barely mentioned). Likewise, there is little mention of what is happening in Canada. The section on the Mountain Men focuses less on their practices and more on a few select mountain men-turned westward explorers.

This is not intended as criticism as I enjoyed what I read, just didn't find what I was looking for in the book (which is no fault of the author)- overall, it was informative and worth reading.

If you are looking to understand the fur trade of the United States of America rather than of North America, this is your book.

[Shay · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don't normally write reviews for nonfiction, especially stuff I read for my job, but this book was just very... interesting in the way it portrays indigenous peoples in America, especially the Blackfeet. It definitely feels like the author feels like the expansion of the fur trade to the Western half of the modern United States was a natural thing and that any resistance against it from indigenous people was unwarranted especially if it got violent. Like I don't know man, their lives and homes have been completely turned on their heads and its not like most of the "traders" were all that kind to anyone who wasn't just giving furs or women over to them. The turn in the epilogue towards talking about modern issues within these communities in a 20th and 21st century fur trading world just felt hollow with how the rest of the book presented things.
It also was very meandering at parts, telling stories about specific fur traders just because they were cool when they probably didn't need to be there and were just not adding anything to the discussion in my opinion.

[Steve Fox · Rating 3 out of 5]

I listened to the audio book -probably a good idea for me. It would have felt like a bit of a chore in paper form and coming off the holidays I probably would have avoided it and dragged it out or simply passed it aside for something more interesting. Now, I surely made my dad proud. I know more than I ever imagined I would about the impact of the fur trade on North American fur trade involving Europeans and Native Americans. Primarily focused on the impact of beaver trapping and pelt trading, author Eric Jay Dolin also includes other influential animals such as the sea otter and ultimately the mighty bison (or buffalo) which is a tragic story of more than 30 million of the beasts roaming the plains down to near extinction in short order. We are the biggest threat to animals and the environment - we always have been.