Gendered Mobilities: Performing Masculinities in the Late Eighteenth-Century Mobile Fur Trade Community

Ethnohistory ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 65 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-99 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amélie Allard
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Great Lakes ◽  
Fur Trade ◽  
Complex Dynamic ◽  
Archaeological Data ◽  
Trading Posts ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
Western Great Lakes ◽  
Multiple Levels

AbstractDrawing from archaeological data collected from Réaume’s Leaf River Post (Minnesota) and fur traders’ journals, this article considers the ways in which mobility impacted the performance of masculine ideals within the colonial spaces of the western Great Lakes trading posts of the late eighteenth century. It is argued that in this overwhelmingly male environment, the gendering of daily practices such as foodways and use of space worked in complex, dynamic ways and at multiple levels along lines of rank, experience, and, to some extent, ethnicity. Differing masculine ideals and the impacts of a mobile lifeway on their performance are particularly evident in the differences between men of high and low ranks: where the former struggled to attain ideals of civility and respectability in the interior, mobility enabled the latter to value independence and physical prowess. The case of Joseph Réaume illustrates how a man occupying a middle position was able to navigate both ideals of masculinity.

Picturing Prosperity

2018 ◽  
pp. 162-209
Author(s):  
Susan Sleeper-Smith
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Great Lakes ◽  
Indigenous People ◽  
Fur Trade ◽  
River Valley ◽  
Ohio River ◽  
Ohio River Valley ◽  
Luxury Goods ◽  
Western Great Lakes ◽  
Crucial Part

This chapter examines the stereotypes associated with the fur trade and contends that, in the Ohio River valley, an Indian-controlled fur trade was associated with increased levels of prosperity. This chapter also analyzes the types of trade goods transported into the Ohio region and shows how cloth became the most desirable object of trade. Europeans wove cloth to meet specific Indian demands, and traders transmitted instructions detailing the color, style, and even the weave of cloth meant for Indian consumption. By the mid-eighteenth century, luxury goods became a crucial part of the trade, and when the Seven Years’ War ended, the fur trade entered an expansionary period. Detroit emerged as one of the most prosperous fur trade posts in the western Great Lakes. This chapter is filled with dramatic illustrations of how cloth was transformed into the increasingly elaborate dress that characterized the diverse Indigenous people who lived in this region.

Slavery and Ransom

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Will Smiley
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Young Men ◽  
Individual Characteristics ◽  
The State ◽  
Customary Law ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
The Law

This chapter explores captives’ fates after their capture, all along the Ottoman land and maritime frontiers, arguing that this was largely determined by individuals’ value for ransom or sale. First this was a matter of localized customary law; then it became a matter of inter-imperial rules, the “Law of Ransom.” The chapter discusses the nature of slavery in the Ottoman Empire, emphasizing the role of elite households, and the varying prices for captives based on their individual characteristics. It shows that the Ottoman state participated in ransoming, buying, exploiting, and sometimes selling both female and male captives. The state particularly needed young men to row on its galleys, but this changed in the late eighteenth century as the fleet moved from oars to sails. The chapter then turns to ransom, showing that a captive’s ability to be ransomed, and value, depended on a variety of individualized factors.

Historical Romance

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ina Ferris
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Literary History ◽  
Literary Form ◽  
Private Life ◽  
Distinct Form ◽  
Literary Field ◽  
History Writing ◽  
Historical Romance ◽  
Late Eighteenth Century ◽  
Late Eighteenth

This chapter looks at historical romance. Late eighteenth-century historiography began to expand its purview to unofficial spheres of social, cultural, and private life typically cultivated by informal genres such as memoirs, biographies, and novels. The ‘matter’ of history was being increasingly redefined, and this had two key effects that bear on the question of historical romance. First, the ‘reframing’ of the historical field generated a marked reciprocity among the different historical genres in the literary field, as they borrowed material and tactics from one another; second, it led to a splintering albeit not displacement of ‘general’ history, as new branches of history writing took shape, notably that of literary history as a distinct form of history. Hence romance now denoted not only the realm of ‘fancy’ but a superseded literary form of renewed interest in the rethinking of the national past.

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