The co-op bookstore for avid readers
Book Cover for: Community Politics of the Fur Trade: Relationships, Mobility, and Landscapes of Possibility, Amélie Allard

Community Politics of the Fur Trade: Relationships, Mobility, and Landscapes of Possibility

Amélie Allard

Reinterpreting the Great Lakes fur trade as a dynamic
interplay of ambition, alliances, and evolving identities

The North American fur trade was
more than a system of economic exchange. In this book, Amélie Allard examines
the Great Lakes region as a dynamic landscape where European traders and
Indigenous peoples negotiated clashing perspectives with the common purpose of
trade and establishing relationships. Allard portrays the interactions between
these groups as community politics and community building, highlighting both
cooperation and contentious power imbalances during the late eighteenth and
early nineteenth centuries.


Drawing on
archaeological evidence including trading posts and wrecked canoes and
historical documents such as traders' journals and memoirs, Allard unravels the
social complexities of this world. She demonstrates how processes of
place-making--through foodways, the built environment, and place-naming--as well
as both waterborne and overland mobility shaped the identities and
relationships of Euro-Canadian, métis, and Indigenous peoples. Community
Politics of the Fur Trade
challenges traditional narratives of colonialism
by suggesting that for many Indigenous peoples such as the Anishinaabeg and
Dakota, the fur trade era represented a moment of possibility rather than an
inevitable path to subjugation.

Book Details

  • Publisher: University Press of Florida
  • Publish Date: Mar 10th, 2026
  • Pages: 250
  • Language: English
  • Edition: undefined - undefined
  • Dimensions: 0.00in - 0.00in - 0.00in - 0.00lb
  • EAN: 9780813079561
  • Categories: ArchaeologyAnthropology - Cultural & SocialUnited States - State & Local - Midwest(IA,IL,IN,KS,MI,MN,MO

About the Author

Allard, Amélie: - Amélie Allard is associate professor of anthropology and archaeology at Rhode Island College.