Society for Historians of the Early American Republic

Fur Trade and Exploration: Opening the Far Northwest, 1821-1852 by Theodore J. KaramanskiReview by: Gary Clayton AndersonJournal of the Early Republic, Vol. 5, No. 2, Religion in the Early Republic (Summer, 1985),pp. 272-273Published by: University of Pennsylvania Press on behalf of the Society for Historians of the EarlyAmerican RepublicStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3122968 .

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272 JOURNAL OF THE EARLY REPUBLIC

Fur Trade and Exploration: Opening the Far Northwest, 1821-1852. By Theodore J. Karamanski. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1983. Pp. xxii, 330. Illustrations, maps. $22.95.)

At a time when virtually every historian of the frontier process is interested in social history, it is somewhat refreshing to discover a book done along traditional lines. Theodore J. Karamanski's Fur Trade and Exploration is, in his own words, "the story of the

explorers and their explorations of remote and distant part of the continent" (xvii), specifically the far reaches of northwestern Canada and the Yukon. While Karamanski's description is surely accurate, his title is not. Trading in furs is frequently incidental to his story. In reality, this is a book on exploration and of the men of the Hudson's Bay Company who attempted to open the far northwest, told from the viewpoint of the "Imperial School."

Karamanski picks 1821 as his starting date, for it was in that

year that the two great rivals, the Hudson's Bay Company and the Northwest Company, joined forces in order to exploit the Canadian fur trade under a monopoly. This marriage produced the profits, resources, and men necessary for expansion into the far northwestern Rockies of Canada. Hudson's Bay Company governor, George Simpson, began the push and throughout the 1830s and 1840s such unknown, but willing, traders and explorers as John McLeod, Robert Campbell, Alexander Hunter Murray, and John Bell expanded company operations nearly to the Pacific, using as avenues the Peace, Laird, Mackenzie, and Yukon rivers.

By 1853, this era of expansion ended. Native and Russian com- mercialists had consistently opposed the company; and on more than one occasion violence resulted from the competition. In addi- tion, profits from Simpson's efforts never reached the levels

necessary to sustain the company's presence and the far west con- sumed vast amounts of resources. The major benefit of the effort was the mapping of most of the far northwest.

While Karamanski's story of Hudson's Bay's push to the ocean is well told-the author even visited many of the remote locales and added photographs of them to the book-some careful readers will question his failure to adequately describe the imperial pro- cess that brought on this exploration. We learn, for example, little about the fur trade as a business or about the diplomatic

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BOOK REVIEWS 273

competition with Russia over the region. Others will undoubtedly question why the study avoided a serious discussion of inter-ethnic relations. But Karamanski did not set out to analyze such issues and what he has done will stand the test of time and be welcomed by those interested in the last frontier of the American continent.

Texas A & M University Gary Clayton Anderson

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