The prospect of making money drew European countries to the New World. One of the money-making businesses in the New World was the trading of fur. Since the early seventeenth century Europeans have been involved in a vast and lucrative business known as the fur trade, which took place across the isolated expanse of the Canadian wilderness. The trade was primarily focused on the trapping of beavers and other game animals in which the pelts were brought back to Europe and used as materials to make into hats and other fashionable garments. The fur trade grew into a huge business in Canada, and was carried out by the coexistence of the European fur traders and the Aboriginal peoples. The fur trade started off as beneficial and somewhat harmonious …show more content…
The investment companies in New France, specifically the company of One Hundred Associates sold the furs in France and throughout Europe for much more money than the price they were paying the Aboriginals. The Europeans would often trade material goods with the Aboriginal peoples in exchange for the furs and pelts and eventually, the Aboriginal dependency for European goods increased. The Aboriginals were subject to forced change on behalf of the Europeans, and although this benefitted them in some ways, such as using European tools to improve their daily lives, this also caused a dependency on the goods as well as on the European traders. In due time, however the Aboriginals had changed their desire to trade furs for blankets, tools, and goods because they had accumulated all of the material items they needed. With an abundance of these items, the Aboriginals developed a new …show more content…
This new commodity in the fur trade devastated the Aboriginal communities because they were not used to the effects of this drink and could not handle it as well as the European traders could. The drinking of alcohol was customary in European culture, hence the Europeans were acclimatized to it, and they saw no problem in trading it with the Aboriginals instead of the previously traded material goods. Because the consumption of alcohol was made dependent in the native culture, they traded their furs with the Europeans for a few pints of alcohol, a drink that could be depleted in a very short period of time, compared to the tools, blankets, and cutlery they had received