The North American fur trade is the industry and activities related to the acquisition, trade/ exchange, and sale of animal furs in the North American continent.
Aboriginal peoples in Canada and Native Americans in the United States of different regions had traded among themselves in the Pre-Columbian Era, but Europeans participate in the trade beginning from the time of their arrival in the New World and extend its reach to Europe.
The French start trading in the sixteenth century, the English establish trading posts on Hudson Bay in present-day Canada in the seventeenth century, and the Dutch have trade by the same time in New Netherland.
The nineteenth-century North American fur trade, when the industry is at its peak of economic importance, involves the development of elaborate trade networks and companies.The fur trade becomes one of the main economic ventures in North America attracting, at various times, competition among the French, British, Dutch, Spanish, and Russians.
Indeed in the early history of the United States, capitalizing on this trade, and removing the British stranglehold over it, is seen as a major economic objective.
Many Native American societies across the continent come to depend on the fur trade as their primary source of income.
By the mid 1800s, however, changing fashions in Europe bring about a collapse in fur prices.
The American Fur Company and some other companies fail.
Many Native communities are plunged into long-term poverty and consequently lose much of the political influence they once had.
