The North-American Fur Trade 1804-1821
(1983) , 11 pages
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- Abstract
- Recent work by Ann Carlos has provided new insights into the nature of the North-American for trade in the period 1804-1821. Carlos argues that competition between the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) and the North-West Company (NWC) in this period was not one of intense rivalry as suggested by earlier writers, but rather consisted of three distinct phases, These stages can be briefly summarized as follows 1. 1804-1810 - This has been described by Carlos (1981) as a period of passive non-aggresive behaviour, This is in stark constast to its description as a "bitter war" by some early writers 2. 1811-1816 - Carlos (1982) describes this as a period in which the NWC continued to act as before while the HBC initiated aggressive, expansionary policies as part of its retrenchment program. 3. 1816-1821 - This has been described by Carlos (1982) as a period of intense predatory competition by both companies that eventually led to their merger in 1821 to form the present day Hundson's Bay Company. Though providing an excellent description of the period and a useful taxonomy of the stages of the rivalry, Carlo's analysis leaves unanswered the issue of whether the firms were actually acting rationally. The enigma is that as early as 1805-1806 the HBC and the NWC held discussions on the possibility of cooperative exploitation of the fur trade. This, quite clearly, was motivated by the fact that their were gains to such an agreement. Given that there were no legal battiers to collusion theoretical work, such as Osbourne (I976), would suggest that cooperation was the only rational outcome.
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Citations
MacLeod, W. B. (1983). The North-American Fur Trade 1804-1821 (Working Papers Institut des sciences économiques 8306). https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/279026