America in World History Week 4

1. America in World HistoryWeek 4 Weekly Theme: From Rivers to Oceans Slaves, Horses, and Furs Trade on the Frontiers 1700-1800

2. Western America: Rivers to Oceans Lecture: Pacific Coast Otter Pelts to China: The 2nd American Fur Trade

3. Lecture Objectives: • Introduce the 18th/19th Century Pacific Northwest-Hawaii-China Fur trade • Role of Pacific Rim and its native peoples in American History • Western US history as multi-regional and ‘international’

4. Westward ho?oreastern Pacific?

6. Nootka Nootka Facsimile of Louisiana by Samuel Lewis from åAaron Arrowsmith and Samuel Lewis atlas: “A new and elegant general atlas, comprising all the new discoveries to the present time …

7. Figure 1: The Pacific Basin, including many of the islands and mainland ports that became active sites of international trade in the early nineteenth century. Adapted from Arrell Morgan Gibson, Yankees in Paradise: The Pacific Basin Frontier (Albuquerque, 1993). Courtesy of University of New Mexico Press.

9. Russian expansion:Vitus Bering 1741

10. Russian Fur Trade • Promyshlenniki (Fur traders) • Exploited Siberian labor • Supplied by Tribute via use of Hostages and Violence • Methods applied to Aleuts • Aleutian Population decreased: Violence and Disease • 20,000 to 2,000 (1800) • Kodiak Island 1784, Fort Ross 1812

11. Voyages of Science & ‘Discovery’ Britain: Cook 1768-1780 France: La Perouse 1785-1788 Spain: Alejandro Malaspina 1789-1794 USA Lewis and Clark 1804-1806 Cook

12. China Trade; The Force of Fashion • Furs prized by Manchu nobility. • Fashionable as belts, capes, trim on silk robes. Fur as badge of distinction? • ‘soft gold’. • Otter Pelts brought by Cook Expedition worth $120 each in China 1779 sea otter (Enhydra lutris)

13. Pacific-Bound Yankee Traders • Cook accounts published 1783/1784 • Columbia Rediviva embarkingfromBoston 1787 and in Pacific NW • By 1800, 100 US ships anchored in Canton

14. Figure 4: By the 1820s, Alta California was a central part of trading networks throughout the eastern Pacific Basin and across the ocean to Canton. This map shows the frequency of different destinations based on ships that stopped in Alta California. Adapted from Gibson, Yankees in Paradise. Courtesy of University of New Mexico Press.

15. The Raincoast:Nootka Sound • Tlingit, Haida, Tsimshian, Nootka, Kwakiutl, Chinook • Trade networks coastal and interior. • Maquinna’s Potlatch 1803:200 muskets, 200 yards cloth, 100 shirts, 100 looking glasses,7 barrels of gunpowder

16. Fashionable Furs= $ $= Fashion/Utility Tlingit Armor vest of caribou skin covered with Chinese coins

17. Hawaii: The Pacific’s “Great Caravansary” • Center of Northwest-Canton Fur trade • Supply nexus • Kamehameha and Hawaiian Arms Race: Islands united in 1810. • 1806- 15 vessels, including three-masters, brigs, and cutters • 1808- more than 30 ships, most under 40 tons, built in Hawaii

19. Suggested Readings • Alan Taylor, American Colonies (Chapter 19, ‘The Pacific 1760-1820’). • Eric Wolf, Europe and the People Without History (Chapter 6, ‘The Fur Trade’). • Colin Calloway, One Vast Winter Count: The Native American West Before Lewis and Clark (pp. 395-415). • Wade Graham, “Traffick According to Their Own Caprice: trade and biological exchange in the making of the Pacific World, 1766-1825” • David Igler, “Diseased Goods: Global Exchanges in the Eastern Pacific Basin, 1770–1850” American Historical Review 109 (June 2004): 693-719.

20. Presented by the University of California Santa Cruz America in World History Group Sample Lecture prepared by: Natale Zappia with Anders Otterness