Trade, consumption, and the native economy: Lessons from York Factory, Hudson Bay

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: University of Colorado System; University of Colorado Boulder; Queens University - Canada
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC HISTORY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0022-0507
• DOI: 10.1017/S0022050701042073
• 发表日期: 2001
• 页码: 1037-1064
• 关键词: fur-trade; depletion; beaver

摘要

Like Europeans and colonists, eighteenth-century Native Americans were purchasing a greatly expanded variety of goods. As fur prices rose from 1716 to 1770, there was a shift in expenditures from producer and household goods to tobacco, alcohol, and other luxuries by Indians who traded furs at the Hudson's Bay Company's York Factory post. A consumer behavior model, using company accounts, shows that Indians bought more European goods in response to higher fur prices and, perhaps more importantly, increased their effort in the fur trade. These findings contradict much that has been written about Indians as producers and consumers.