The Origins of the North American Fur Trade

When Europeans first came to the New World, the vast wilderness of North America was the most extensive field in the world for harvesting furs: 200 million beaver, 50 million buffalo, 30 million deer, and countless others. Not surprisingly, for the next two centuries, the fur trade was the principal business and primary export of North America. In the late 1600s, the power struggle between the British and the French to control the fur trade began in earnest, most notably in 1670 after England’s King Charles II granted the Hudson's Bay Company a monopoly to trade in Rupert’s Land, a vast territory encompassing the drainage basin of Hudson’s Bay. This dispute reached its climax with the French and Indian War, which left the British in sole possession of the fur trade.