No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
Fox Trading and the Problem of Polar Bears in the Hudson’s Bay Company: Arctic Human Ecology and Fur in a Global Value Chain, 1900–1940
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 June 2025
Abstract
Just before World War I, the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) geographically expanded its trade in the Canadian Arctic to derive profits from Arctic fox fur and secure its position in a global value chain (GVC) delivering fur to metropolitan consumers. The “problem of nature” challenged the company’s business venture. Furthermore, “nature” was made and remade by the HBC’s own capital investments. The fox trade itself changed human ecology. Technology transfers to Inuit modified their hunting regimes to increase the company’s returns of polar bear skins. Though these skins had high potential market value, modes of production introduced by the HBC to the Arctic precluded the company from sending high-quality products to metropolitan dressers. Within a changing Arctic human ecology, the HBC produced one highly valued commodity for the market while producing another from which it could derive only modest profit. The HBC’s fox and polar bear trade at the onset of the last century suggests ways that business empires can set off complex and unanticipated changes in human ecologies and, therefore, the dynamics of nature and business at their very peripheries.
Information
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Copyright
- © 2025 The President and Fellows of Harvard College
References
1 Christine Meisner Rosen and Christopher C. Sellers, “The Nature of the Firm: Towards an Ecocultural History of Business,” Business History Review 73, no. 4 (Winter 1999): 577–600.
2 See Andrew Smith and Kirsten Greer, “Uniting Business and Global Environmental History,” Business History 59, no. 7 (2017): 987–1009, and articles in their special issue of Business History, (2017).
3 Ann-Kristin Bergquist and Kristina Söderholm, “Transition to Greener Pulp: Regulation, Industry Responses, and Path Dependency,” Business History 57, no. 6 (2015): 862–884; Pierre Desrochers, “How Did the Invisible Hand Handle Industrial Waste? By-Product Development Before the Modern Environmental Era,” Enterprise & Society 8, no. 2 (June 2007): 348–374; Magnus Lindmark and Ann Kristin Bergquist, “Expansion for Pollution Reduction? Environmental Adaptations of a Swedish and a Canadian Metal Smelter, 1960–2005,” Business History 50, no. 4 (2008): 530–546.
4 Ann-Kristin Bergquist, “Business and Sustainability: New Business History Perspectives,” Working Paper 18-034 (Boston, MA, 2017), 5–26. Geoffrey Jones and Christina Lubinski, “Making ‘Green Giants’: Environment Sustainability in the German Chemical Industry, 1950s–1980s,” Business History 56, no. 4 (2014): 623–649; Keetie Sluyterman, “Royal Dutch Shell: Company Strategies for Dealing with Environmental Issues,” Business History Review 84, no. 2 (Summer 2010): 203–226; Ann-Kristin Bergquist and Kristina Söderholm, “Green Innovation Systems in Swedish Industry, 1960–1989,” Business History Review 85, no. 4 (Winter 2011): 577–698.
5 Rosen and Sellers, “The Nature of the Firm,” 589.
6 William M. Denevan, “The Pristine Myth: The Landscape of the Americas in 1492,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 82, no. 3 (Sept. 1992): 369–385; Stephen J. Pyne, “Fire Rings of Indigenous Canada,” in Awful Splendour: A Fire History of Canada, ed. Stephen J. Pyne (Vancouver, BC, 2007), 16–50; Geoff Cunfer, “The Decline and Fall of the Bison Empire,” in Bison and People on the North American Great Plains: A Deep Environmental History, ed. Geoff Cunfer and Bill Waiser (College Station, TX, 2016), 1–29.
7 William Boyd, W. Scott Prudham and Rachel A. Schurman, “Industrial Dynamics and the Problem of Nature,” Society & Natural Resources 14, no. 7 (2001): 555.
8 Boyd et al., “Industrial Dynamics and the Problem of Nature,” 561.
9 John Hamilton, Arctic Revolution: Social Change in the Northwest Territories, 1935–1994 (Toronto, ON, 1994); Michael I. Asch, “Capital and Economic Development,” in Native People, Native Lands: Canadian Indians, Inuit and Metis, ed. Bruce Cox (Montreal and Kingston, 1988), 299–308; Morris Zaslow, The Northward Expansion of Canada, 1914–1967 (Toronto, ON, 1988); on the environmental impacts of development, see John Sandlos and Arn Keeling, “Ghost Towns and Zombie Mines: The Historical Dimensions of Mine Abandonment, Reclamation, and Redevelopment in the Canadian North,” in Ice Blink: Navigating Northern Environmental History, ed. Stephen Bocking and Brad Martin (Calgary, AB, 2017).
10 Elena Baglioni, Liam Campling and Elizabeth Havice, “The Nature of the Firm in Global Value Chains,” in The Corporation: A Critical, Multi-Disciplinary Handbook, ed. Grietje Baars and Andre Spicer (Cambridge, UK, 2017), 314.
11 This article adopts “global value chain” analysis while acknowledging the important studies of “global commodity chains” (GCCs) first proposed by Terence K. Hopkins and Immanuel Wallerstein in their article, “Commodity chains in the world economy prior to 1800,” Review (Fernand Braudel Center) 10, no. 1: 157–170. See, Peter Gibbon, “Upgrading Primary Production: A Global Commodity Chain Approach,” World Development 29, no. 2 (Feb. 2001): 350–360. The more recent fur industry was analyzed as a GCC by Lise Skov, “The Return of the Fur Coat: A Commodity Chain Perspective,” Current Sociology 53, no. 1 (2005): 9–32.
12 John R. Bockstoce, White Fox and Icy Seas in the Western Arctic: The Fur Trade, Transportation, and Change in the Early Twentieth Century (New Haven, CT, 2018), 16–50. On Inuit consumerism spurred by market fox hunting, H. W. Nicholson, “Fur Trading in the Arctic: Eskimos Getting Rich,” The Central Furrier 10 (1926): 48–58.
13 Wolstenholme, Administrative History, Hudson’s Bay Company Archives, Winnipeg, MB, Canada [hereafter “HBCA”].
14 See Andrew Goodwin, “Inuit and Newcomers: Trade and Animal Resources in the Kivalliq, 1900–1945” (MA diss, University of Calgary, 2022); for a chronology and geographic location of HBC Arctic posts, see Peter Usher, “Fur Trade Posts of the Northwest Territories: 1870–1970,” (Ottawa, ON, 1970).
15 Renée Fossett, In Order to Live Untroubled: Inuit of the Central Arctic, 1550–1940 (Winnipeg, MB, 2001), 170–176; 190–193.
16 See Ann M. Carlos and Frank D. Lewis, Commerce by a Frozen Sea: Native Americans and the European fur Trade (Philadelphia, PA, 2010); Harold Innis, The Fur Trade in Canada: An Introduction to Canadian Economic History (Toronto, ON, Revised Edition, 1999); Arthur J. Ray, Canadian Fur Trade in the Industrial Age (Toronto, ON, 1990); Arthur J. Ray, Indians in the Fur Trade: Their Role as Trappers, Hunters, and Middlemen in the Lands Southwest of Hudson Bay 1660–1870 (Toronto, ON, 2nd ed., 1998); E. E. Rich, The History of the Hudson’s Bay Company, 3 vols. (London, UK, 1960).
17 Ray, The Canadian Fur Trade in the Industrial Age, 143; 166–167; on the 1920s fur industry, see Harold Innis, Fur-Trade of Canada (Toronto, ON, 1927).
18 David Damas, Arctic Migrants/Arctic Villagers: The Transformation of Inuit Settlement in the Central Arctic (Montreal and Kingston, 2002), 27.
19 George Colpitts, “The Domesticated Body and the Industrialized Imitation Fur Coat in Canada,” in Contesting Bodies and Nation in Canadian History, ed. Patrizia Gentile and Jane Nicholas (Toronto, ON, 2013), 138–140; Jonathan Faiers, Fur: A Sensitive History (New Haven, CT, 2020), 72–78.
20 Moore’s conception of “commodity frontiers” is applicable to the HBC’s Arctic trade, Jason W. Moore, “Sugar and the Expansion of the Early Modern World Economy: Commodity Frontiers, Ecological Transformation, and Industrialization,” Review (Fernand Braudel Center for the Study of Economies, Historical Systems, and Civilizations) 23, no. 3 (2000): 409–413; and Jason W. Moore, “‘Amsterdam is Standing on Norway’ Part I: The Alchemy of Capital, Empire and Nature in the Diaspora of Silver, 1545–1648,” Journal of Agrarian Change 10, no. 1 (2010): 26–68; Jason W. Moore, “‘Amsterdam Is Standing on Norway’ Part II: The Global North Atlantic in the Ecological Revolution of the Long Seventeenth Century,” Journal of Agrarian Change 10, no. 2 (2010): 188–227; on furbearer depletion, see John F. Richards, The Unending Frontier: An Environmental History of the Early Modern World (Berkeley, CA, 2003), 463–546.
21 Bruce Winterhalder and Douglas J. Kennett, “Behavioral Ecology and the Transition from Hunting and Gathering to Agriculture,” in Behavioral Ecology and the Transition to Agriculture, ed. Douglas J. Kennett and Bruce Winterhalder (Berkeley, CA, 2006), 3.
22 See the models offered in human behavioral ecology (HBE) summarized in Winterhalder and Kennett, “Behavioral Ecology and the Transition from Hunting and Gathering to Agriculture,” 6–17; Robert H. MacArthur and Eric R. Pianka, “On Optimal Use of a Patchy Environment,” The American Naturalist 100, no. 916 (1966): 603–609; for another useful summary, see Bruce Winterhalder, “The Behavioural Ecology of Hunter-Gatherers,” in Hunter-Gatherers: An Interdisciplinary Perspective, ed. Catherine Panter-Brick, Robert H. Layton and Peter Rowley-Conwy (Cambridge, UK, 2001), 12–38. Bruce Winterhalder, “The Analysis of Hunter-Gatherer Diets: Stalking an Optimal Foraging Model,” in Food and Evolution: Toward a Theory of Human Food Habits, ed. Marvin Harris and Eric B. Ross (Philadelphia, PA, 1987), 311–339. Bruce Winterhalder, “Boreal Foraging Strategies,” in Boreal Forest Adaptations: The Northern Algonkians, ed. A. Theodore Steegmann, Jr. (New York, 1983), 201–241. E. J. Smith tested the validity of HBE models in respect to modern foraging practices of Inuit in northeastern Hudson Bay in Inujjuamiut Foraging Strategies: Evolutionary Ecology of an Arctic Hunting Economy (New York, 1991).
23 Bruce Winterhalder, “Canadian Fur Bearer Cycles and Cree-Ojibwa Hunting and Trapping Practices,” The American Naturalist 115, no. 6 (1980): 870–879.
24 David Thompson recounted Dene trading only a few polar bear pelts at Fort Prince of Wales (Churchill) in the early 19th century. Joseph Burr Tyrrell, ed., David Thompson’s Narrative of his Explorations in Western America 1784–1812 (Toronto, ON, 1916), 14–16.
25 See William Row’s notes on HBC bearskin auctions between 1734–1822, in William Row Senior, Sons & Co. Fonds, E.324/1 HBCA.
26 Richard Davey, Furs and Fur Garments (London, UK, 1895), 102–103.
27 Michael Engelhard, Ice Bear: The Cultural History of an Arctic Icon (Seattle, WA, 2016), 70–94.
28 Henry Poland, Fur-Bearing Animals in Nature and Commerce (London, UK, 1892), xliv and 159.
29 Poland, Fur-Bearing Animals in Nature and Commerce, 159.
30 Final sales are recorded in the company’s catalogues for these years. Auction Catalogue of Fur Trade Produce, 14–17 Mar. 1904 A.54/715; and Ibid., 11–14 Mar. 1907, A.54/750 HBCA.
31 “Greenland Company’s Sale,” Fur Trade Review 15, no. 7 (2 Feb. 1888): 77.
32 “Exhibition at Copenhagen,” Fur Trade Review 16, no. 1 (1 Aug. 1888): 255.
33 The grading, size, and color of each skin appear in “Royal Greenland Company,” Fur Trade Review, 20, no. 6 (1893): 134; the realized auction prices are listed in “Royal Greenland Company, Fur Trade Review 20, no. 8 (1893): 174.
34 “There were no good [bear]skins in this year’s collection,” “Greenland Company’s Sales,” Fur Trade Review 18, no. 7 (Feb., 1891): 101; the highest price paid for only one of the 121 skins sold in 1905 was $151,” “Foxes and Polar Bears,” Fur Trade Review 33, no. 9 (Apr. 1905): 297.
35 Poland, Fur-Bearing Animals in Nature and Commerce, 158–159.
36 See Peary’s description of the time and effort needed to skin a bear with its head and paws attached in Arctic conditions: Robert E. Peary, Northward over the ‘Great Ice’ (London, 1898), 69.
37 The importance of using copious quantities of water to clean polar bear fur, with even a recommendation to use gasoline, and the need for salt for raised bearskins, see Albert Lord Belden, The Fur Trade of America: And Some of the Men Who Made and Maintain It (New York, 1917), 453; A. B. Farnham, Home Manufacture of Furs and Skins (Columbus, OH, 1916), 47; 132–133; A. F. Wallace, Sorting, Grading and Curing Furs (Milwaukee, WI, 1910), 62–64.
38 Nuttall, The Shaping of Greenland’s Resource Spaces: Environment, Territory, Geo-Security (London, UK, 2023), 35–36. On settlements and outposts see Jens Dahl, Saqqaq: An Inuit Hunting Community in the Modern World (Toronto, ON, 2000), 12–31; see Greenland: Handbook No. 132 (London, UK, Historical Section, 1920), 13–14.
39 Nuttall, The Shaping of Greenland’s Resource Spaces, 35.
40 Axel Kjær Sørensen, Denmark-Greenland in the Twentieth Century (Copenhagen, 2007), 16–17.
41 Finn Gad, The History of Greenland III: 1782–1808 (Kingston and Montreal, 1982) The History of Greenland, 27, 290–291.
42 Bear hunting “as a source of income was of no importance to Greenlandic populations, representing, at best, special income to an individual hunter who happened to kill one.” Gad, The History of Greenland, 290.
43 Ejnar Mikkelsen and P. P. Sveistrup, The East Greenlanders’ Possibilities of Existence, Their Production and Consumption (Copenhagen, 1944), 161, 203.
44 Gad, The History of Greenland, 191.
45 The Angmagssalik trade produced on average 78.5 skins annually between 1898 and 1939. Mikkelsen, The East Greenlanders’ Possibilities of Existence, 93–94.
46 Auction Notes, C.M. Lampson & Co. 11–28 Mar. 1912, Fur Auction Catalogues, H2-264-1-2 HBCA.
47 Robrecht Declercq, “Natural Born Merchants: The Hudson Bay Company, Science and Canada’s Final Fur Frontiers,” Business History 65, no. 5 (2023): 920–934; Anne Morton, “‘We Are Still Adventurers,’: The Records of the Hudson’s Bay Company’s Development Department and Fish and Fish Products Department, 1925–1940,” Archivaria 21 (1985): 158–165.
48 “Re: Spoilt furs such as Arctic fox, skunk, polar bear, etc.” 20 Nov. 1925, Development Department, Furs-Common, 1925–1927, A.95/31 HBCA.
49 Townsend to the Governor, “Re: Furs,” 9 Dec. 1925, A.95/31 HBCA.
50 J. Chadwick Brooks to District Manager, 30 Jan. 1929, Development Department Dossier, Polar Bears 1928–1930, A.95/9 HBCA.
51 L. J. McMillan to Mr. Townsend, 2 May 1930, A.95/9 HBCA.
52 J. Drummond-Hay to Mr. Townsend, 17 Dec. 1929, A.95/9 HBCA.
53 J. Drummond-Hay to Mr. Townsend 28 Mar. 1930, A.95/9 HBCA.
54 On the use of fox as auto fur, see Elizabeth Ewing, Fur in Dress (London, UK, 1981), 119.
55 J. Chadwick Brooks to District Manager, 30 Jan. 1929, Development Department Dossier, Bears, 1928–1930, A.95/9 HBCA.
56 Charles Townsend to Governor, “Ranger Seals and White Bears at the Public Auction Sale, 2 Feb. 1929, Development Department, Sealing, 1929, A.95/101 HBCA.
57 Charles Townsend to Governor, “Ranger Seals and White Bears at the Public Auction Sale, 2 Feb. 1929, Development Department, Sealing, 1929, A.95/101 HBCA.
58 A. Dudley Copland, “Harvesting the Northern Seas,” The Beaver 305, no. 3 (Winter 1974): 42.
59 Department Annual Reports, 1919, RG 3/1A5 HBCA.
60 William Barr, ‘White Beares of a Monstrous Bigness,’: A Historical Survey of Polar Bear Population Dynamics and Use in the Northwest Territories (Yellowknife, NT, 1996), 37–39.
61 John Bennett and Susan Rowley, Uqalurait: An Oral History of Nunavut, (Montreal and Kingston, 2004), 67–68.
62 Bennett and Rowley, Uqalurait, 67–68.
63 Wager Inlet Post Journals, 22 Mar. 1926, 1925–1926, B.492/a/1. 6 Mar. 1927, 1926–1927, B.492/a/2 HBCA. Bockstoce, White Fox and Icy Seas, 18; Kemp, “Inuit Land Use in South and East Baffin Island,” 132; Welland, “Inuit Land Use in Keewatin District and Southampton Island,” 89, Donna Naughton, The Natural History of Canadian Mammals (Toronto, ON, 2012), 392–393.
64 Carol Brice-Bennett, “Inuit Land Use in the East-Central Central Canadian Arctic,” in Inuit Land Use and Occupancy Project, Vol.1, ed. Milton Freeman Research Limited (Ottawa, ON, 1976), 64–67.
65 Chesterfield Inlet Post Journal, 20 Oct. 1938, 1938–39, B.401/a/11. Wager Inlet Post Journal, 6 Nov. 1930, 1930–31, B.492/a/7 HBCA.
66 See activities reported Sept. through mid-Oct., 1918, Coats Island Journal, B.404/a/1 HBCA.
67 Bockstoce, White Fox and Icy Seas, 43.
68 Chesterfield Inlet Post Journals, 9 Dec. 1930, 1930–1931, B.401/a/6; 4 Dec. 1933, 1933–1934, B.401/a/9; 17 Nov. 1938, 1938–1939, B.401/a/11 HBCA.
69 See 6 Mar. 1920, Cape Dorset Journal, B.397/a/2 HBCA.
70 See 21 Nov. 1910, Wolstenholme Journal, B.368/a/2, HBCA.
71 Brice-Bennett, “Inuit Land Use in the East-Central Canadian Arctic,” 64.
72 Brice-Bennett, 67.
73 Brice-Bennett, 78.
74 Welland, “Inuit Land Use in Keewatin District and Southampton Island,” 95.
75 Kemp, “Inuit Land Use in South and East Baffin Island,” 132.
76 George Wenzel, Sometimes Hunting Can Seem Like Business: Polar Bear Sport Hunting in Nunavut (Edmonton, AB, 2008), 9.
77 E. W. Hawkes, The Labrador Eskimo (Ottawa, ON, 1916), 83; Canadian Arctic Expedition, Report of the Canadian Arctic Expedition, 1913–18 (Ottawa, ON, 1919), 124.
78 George Wenzel, “Inuit and Polar Bears: Cultural Observations from a Hunt near Resolute Bay, N.W.T.,” Arctic 36, no. 1 (1983): 90–94.
79 Elmer Ekblaw noted that “Good dogs are necessary to successful bear hunting,” “The Material Response of the Polar Eskimo to their Far Arctic Environment,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 18, no. 1 (1928): 10.
80 See the bears that raided an Inuit trapping camp, 20 Oct. 1910, and a bear consistently taking trap baits, 16 Dec. 1910, and a bear eating five foxes in traps, 6 Jan. 1911, Wolstenholme Post Journal, B.368/a/2 HBCA.
81 See the bear that “paid us a call” on two nights to “feed among our fat” at Cape Dorset, 28 Feb. 1916, Cape Dorset Post Journal 1913–1938, B.397/a/1 HBCA.
82 Vilhjalmur Stefansson, The Friendly Arctic: The Story of Five Years in Polar Regions (New York, 1921), 279.
83 Chesterfield Inlet, Chimo, Lake Harbour, Coats Island and Port Burwell, Copies of Orders to Suppliers (A–E, and F–Z), Outfit Years 1920–1922, A.28/177–178 HBCA.
84 Wolstenholme House Copies of Orders to Suppliers (F–Z), A.28/177–178 HBCA.
85 Requisitions from London and Canada to Wolstenholme Post, Outfit 1920, Indents for Wolstenholme Outfit Years 1910–1924, A.28/157 HBCA.
86 4 Aug. 1919, Coats Island Post Journal, B.404/a/1 HBCA.
87 12 Aug. 1919, Coats Island Post Journal, B.404/a/1 HBCA.
88 The post’s Christmas celebrations hosted 50 Inuit in 1913, 86 in 1914, 70 in 1915, over a hundred in 1918, and over 150 in 1920. See 26 Dec. entries in these years, Cape Dorset Post Journals, B.397/a/1-2 HBCA.
89 21 Aug. 1915, Cape Dorset Post Journals, B.397/a/2 HBCA.
90 15 July 1916, Cape Dorset Post Journals, B.397/a/1 HBCA.
91 See the multiple shots needed to kill a single bear at Coats Island reported 28 Oct. 1919, Coats Island Post Journal, B.404/a/1 HBCA.
92 Coats Island Post Journal, B.404/a/1 HBCA, “Tomorrow we shall go again for the first one [sighted] and sure to take a couple of dogs.”
93 Brice-Bennett, “Inuit Land Use in the Eastern-Central Canadian Arctic,” 63.
94 Brice-Bennett, 67.
95 9 Oct. 1918, Coats Island Post Journal, B.404/a/1 HBCA.
96 24 Sept. 1920, Coats Island Journals, B.404/a/2 HBCA.
97 5 Oct. 1920, Coats Island Journals, B.404/a/2 HBCA.
98 17 Nov. 1920, Coats Island Journals, B.404/a/2 HBCA.
99 Bears skins were “put into frames” May 10 and “taken off frames” 25 May 1915, Cape Dorset Post Journals, B.397/a/2 HBCA; see the framing and drying of bearskins between 16 and 29 May 1917, Cape Dorset Post Journals, B.397/a/2 HBCA.
100 See 27–11 July 1918, Cape Dorset Post Journals, B.397/a/2 HBCA.
101 12 May 1919, Coats Island Journal, B.404/a/1 HBCA.
102 12–15 Apr. 1920, Coats Island Journal, B.404/a/1 HBCA.
103 4 May 1921, Coats Island Journal, B.404/a/1 HBCA.
104 25 Sep. 1920, Coats Island Journal, HBCA, B.404/a/1 HBCA.
105 13 Apr., 26 Apr., 26 May 1922, Coats Island Journal, B.404/a/2 HBCA.
106 Townsend to the Governor, “Re: Furs,” 9 Dec. 1925, B.404/a/2 HBCA.