THE NORTHWEST FUR TRADE

1800. By Wayne Edson Stevens. University of Illinois Studies in the Social Sciences, Vol. XIV, No. 3. Urbana, Ill. University of Illinois Press, 1928. Pp. 204.

The influence of the frontier in our history, both colonial and national, is now one of the accepted tenets of American historians. The leader of the "western" school for the preRevolutionary period was the late Professor C. W. Alvord, whose book, The MississippiValley in British Politics, is a brilliant exposition of the thesis that the allied problems of the West and of Indian relations constituted, as Disraeli would have said, the diapason of British policy in America after 1763. Among the students trained by Professor Alvord is Professor Stevens, whose book on the fur trade illustrates and elaborates one important phase of Professor Alvord's argument.

Professor Stevens is particularly interested in two aspects of his subject: the effect that the fur trade had on British policy in America both before and after the Revolution, and the methods and organization of the trade itself. Four of his seven chapters deal primarily with diplomacy and politics, three with the trade.

The profits and regularity of the fur trade depended upon the maintenance of friendly relations with the Indians, and it was in connection with Indian policy that the colonial and home governments differed almost continuously between 1763 and 1775, the unjustly reviled Quebec Act marking the culminating point in this conflict. Already the trade had become centered in Montreal, the traders were mainly British (rather than colonials), the Indians were more friendly to them than to the Americans, and during the Revolution the course of trade was definitely fixed to the northward. But an important source of furs was in the region south of the Great Lakes, and the cession to the United States of this territory, which had an outlet through the Mohawk Valley as well as through the Lakes, caused many anxieties to the Montreal dealers who made valiant efforts to insert articles in the Treaty of Versailles which would protect their interests. Failing in this, they insisted upon protection through the maintenance of the western forts; since the United States did see fit to take over this task, the British kept up their establishments in the ceded territory, more or less by the default and tacit consent of the new government, until arrangements were made in Jay's Treaty (1795) for the withdrawal of the British garrisons.

In the meantime the trade itself was becoming highly organized. The leading firms in Montreal, composed mainly of Scotsmen, combined to form the Northwest Company, which has been described as the "most terribly efficient organization that had ever arisen in the New World." Both because of their own strength and because of their London connections these traders were able to bring considerable pressure upon the home government and to influence various negotiations between England and the United States, thus showing, as Professor Stevens writes, "a clear connection between diplomacy and big business." The most startling of several little-known proposals sponsored by this group was that the territory west of the Muskinghum and north of the Ohio be made into a permanent and independent Indian state. The boundary line controversies naturally interested them, in part because of some of the border forts, but largely because of trading posts and carrying points, especially Grand Portage. Professor Stevens, however, would emphasize in this connection not so much the political influence of the Company as the development of a practical monopoly and the decline of open competition, the actual traders being outfitted and financed on credit by the allied Montreal firms, who in turn had to get long-time credits from their London correspondents. Professor Stevens does not destroy the traditional glamour which surrounds the lone trapper in his long winter vigils, but his purpose is rather to show how and by whom he was outfitted, what his "catch" was worth, (the total export from Canada amounted to about £200,000)—in short, how the whole trade was organized.

Professor Stevens has done pioneer work; the greater part of his monograph is based on documents in the Canadian Archives at Ottawa and on collections of contemporary material in Montreal and Toronto. Intrinsically valuable because of the light thrown upon the fur trade and its influence upon politics, the larger importance of this monograph lies, as has already been suggested, in the additional material that it gives to the proponents of "western" influence.

The University of Illinois Press is to be congratulated on a fine piece of book work, but most readers would be aided by the inclusion of a map.

The issue of the Christian Century for September 1927, contains an article by Professor William A. Eddy, "Mission Colleges in Non-Christian Lands; Their Obligations of Courtesy and Fair Play Toward the People They Serve."

"The Gathering of Floods in the Connecticut River System," by Professor James W. Goldthwait, has been reprinted from the July, 1928, issue of the Geographical Review.

"The Eternal Spirit In the Daily Round; Meditations for the Modern Mind," by the late Dr. Frank C. Doan, published by Harper Brothers, contains a preface by Professor Harold E. B. Speight.

The International Journal of Ethics for October contains an article by Professor James MacKaye entitled "Convictionism vs. Non-Convictionism."