North American Fur Trade and Industrialization of the North

• The fur trade in North America began almost as soon as Europeans began their explorations of the North American mainland. This is a brief description of the most significant events in the 250 years during which the fur trade flourished. This period of time can be roughly divided into three sections, the "French Era" from 1600 to 1760. The "British Era" from 1760 to 1816. And the "American Era" from 1816 to 1850.


• The North American fur trade was a central part of the early history of contact in The New World (North America) between European-Americans and American Indians. In 1578 there were 350 European fishing vessels at Newfoundland and sailors began to trade metal implements (particularly knives) for the natives' well worn pelts. The worn pelt was always highly desired by the Europeans as the outer coarse guard hair was worn off and the addition of human oils combined to make a particularly soft and beautiful result.
  
• Fur (especially beaver) was prized and very expensive in European markets
• At first, fur was not the most important thing that was traded. Then, around the year 1600, something happened: hats made from beaver felt became very fashionable. Everybody wanted one! At the same time, beavers were becoming extinct in Europe.
• Explorers continued to look for the Northwest Passage. In 1576 Martin Frobisher sailed on the first of his three voyages. John Davis continued the search, and Henry Hudson discovered the bay that was named after him.
  These men and others began mapping the land and the waterways. This would become important for both the fur trade and the exploration and settlement of Canada.
• the first commercial corporation in North America and largest fur trading company in the world, The Hudson's Bay Company.
  

(Student Note: I chose the region of Finland to discover the settlement and idustrilization of this country because I know little information on this country, and it is an interesting place in the circumpolar world.)

Settlements and Industrialization of Finland

Population trends in Finland in the 18th and 19th centuries were characterized by powerful fluctuations. The birth rate was close to 40 per 1000 inhabitants and the death rate about 25 per 1000. The development of agriculture and the expansion of urban trades accelerated population growth, while wars between Sweden and Russia, and disease and food shortages reduced the rate. It has been said that the last natural disaster to befall a European people took place in Finland at the end of the 1860s. The reasons for the disaster in question are to be found in the climate; summers were wintry and frosts destroyed the harvests in two consecutive years. Widespread famine ensued and the death rate rose temporarily to almost 80 per 1000.

Increased industrialization in Finland has steadily raised the proportion of the population living in urban areas; by the late 20th century about three-fifths of the total population lived in cities and towns. Farms are most commonly located in the meadowland regions of the southwest, where the fertile land is suitable for mixed farming. In the north farmers usually concentrate on small dairy herds and forestry. In Finnish Lapland there is some nomadic life based mainly on the reindeer industry. The major urban settlements are all in the southern third of the country, with a large number of cities and towns concentrated on the coast, either on the Gulf of Finland, as is the capital, Helsinki or on the Gulf of Bothnia, as are Vaasa and Oulu (Uleåborg). The only town of any size in the north is Rovaniemi, capital of the lääni of Lappi. Helsinki is the largest city, with a population about three times that of Tampere (Tammerfors) and of Turku, the country's capital until 1812.

Secondary Societies: European Contact and Theories of Change

Expeditions and Explorers

• The first known Europeans to contact the Americas were the Vikings ("Norse"), who established several colonies in the Americas.
• Leif Erikson established a short-lived settlement in Vinland, present day Newfoundland. Settlements in Greenland survived for several centuries, during which the Greenland Norse and the Inuit people experienced a mostly hostile contact. By the 15th century the Norse Greenland settlements had collapsed.
• In 1492 Christopher Columbus reached the Americas, after which European exploration
  and colonization rapidly expanded. The post-1492 era is known as the Columbian Exchange period.


• The European lifestyle included a long history of sharing close quarters with domesticated animals such as cows, pigs, sheep, goats, horses, and various domesticated fowl, which had resulted in epidemic diseases unknown in the Americas.
• Thus the large-scale contact after 1492 introduced novel germs to the indigenous people of the Americas. Smallpox (1525, 1558, 1589), typhus (1546), influenza (1558), diphtheria (1614) and measles (1618) epidemics swept ahead of initial European contact killing between 10 million and 112 million people, about 95% to 98% of the indigenous population.
• The population loss and the cultural chaos and political collapses it caused greatly facilitated both colonization of the land and conquest of the native civilizations.

European Encounter with Inuit
Inuit and Norse encounters are known through Norse legends and archaeological evidence. The Norse crossed Greenland to reach the Arctic and there they traded with the Inuit whom they called skraelings, Norse for heathen. In Newfoundland, considered part of the Arctic region because of the Beothuk who inhabited the island, the Norse built a settlement at L'Anse aux Meadows. Norse documentation indicates that they settled there around 1,000 years ago to facilitate trade with the Natives. According to Norse legend, the Beothuk were open to trade and enjoyed the iron goods they received in exchange for furs. The L'Anse aux Meadows site was abandoned shortly thereafter, but the Norse continued to trade with First Nations peoples along the Atlantic coast. Timber, fish, walrus, and polar bear meat were sought after by the Norse traders, but this trade declined after the fourteenth century.
European explorers captured or lured Inuit, and later, First Nations, onto their ships and brought them back with them to Europe

Sub-Arctic: Chippewyan and Dene
The various peoples of the Sub-Arctic region had either relatively early or relatively late contact with Europeans, some as late as the twentieth century. Those bands that occupied territories in coastal regions were more likely to come into earlier contact. Athapaskans participated in the fur trade, and in the whaling and fishing industries. For the interior bands, sustained contact often did not occur until the nineteenth century.

Short Time Line
waterborne exploration and expansion

1450-1559 Laying the foundation of early modern Europe

• Rise of modern science
• Portuguese’s voyages of exploration
• Discovery of the new world Development of industrial capitalism
• Humanism and new learning Revolution and reformation of the church
  
• 1450-1499
• 1473-6 Christian 1 of Denmark sends an expedition to Greenland to resume contact with Norse there; also looking for NW Passage
• 1480- Bristol merchants send out ships to prospect across the Atlantic (the Iceland trade lay behind this, and the knowledge of Greenland)
• 1480- Alphonse V of Denmark sends another expeditions west
• 1488- Cape of good hope is rounded
• 1492- Christopher Columbus reaches the west Indies
• 1492-Arctic thought to consist of four large land masses around the North Pole; two are extensions of Lapland and Greenland 1493-John Cabot to Newfoundland
• 1494-Treaty of Tordesillas
  
• 16TH CENTURY: Sailing the World
• 1500-Brazil is described
• 1504-First Breton fishers on Grand Banks
• 1513- America is recognized as a separate continent
• 1516- Proposal for a search for NWP fails for lack of willing crew
• 1517- Martin Luthers 95 Thesis signal beginning of reformation
• 1520-Magellan sails discovers straits of Magellan
• 1527- First English proposal for projects to reach china via north given to Henry 7th rejected
  
• A hundred Years:
• 1689-1789 New forms of government emerging From wars for control in Europe
• 1688-1721 From decline of some monarchies (Holland and Sweden) From new ideas about human and states Origin of enlightenment
• 1687-1715 Early enlightenment
• 1715-1748 Mature enlightenment
• 18th century
• 1712- American vessel takes a sperm whale: inaugurates American deep-water whaling treaty of Utrecht
• 1721- Hans Egede colonizes Greenland and establishes community; trade expands Bering
• 1725-42: Vitus Bering explores the bring strait and north cost of Siberia Russian GNEX led by Bering, Chirikov, Khariton, and Dmitri, Laptev, Cheelyuskin and others to the Bering sea and Arctic Siberia.