Commodity Frontier as Contested Periphery: The Fur Trade in Iroquoia, New York and Canada, 1664–1754

Abstract

This chapter examines the fur trade commodity frontier in northeastern North America as a contested periphery, involving an evolving process of conflict and cooperation between North American indigenous groups and European powers. Native people used European powers for help in their battles with other native groups, and European colonial authorities attempted to use native people as proxies in their attempts to make up for often low European populations in the various North American colonies. Within the colonies there were also splits between commercial/trading interests and more purely geostrategic concerns. This chapter will explore these various conflicts involving the Iroquois, English and French, and will consider how the trade's fundamental material, environmental and geographical structure shaped the evolution of this peripheral extractive political economy and the efforts of those in the core seeking to exploit the area's resources.

Citation

Leitner, J. (2005), "Commodity Frontier as Contested Periphery: The Fur Trade in Iroquoia, New York and Canada, 1664–1754", Ciccantell, P.S., Smith, D.A. and Seidman, G. (Ed.) Nature, Raw Materials, and Political Economy (Research in Rural Sociology and Development, Vol. 10), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 231-252. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1057-1922(05)10011-0