Man Proposes: Imaginary Northwest Passages and the British Fur Trade

Abstract

This thesis proposes that the Northwest Passage is better understood as a dynamic, socially constructed cultural artefact than it is as a static fact of geography. As an object of the imagination, the meaning of the Passage naturally changed over time as those who did the imagining also changed. The ways in which the Passage was understood in public conversations and speculations, and the ways in which its explorers pictured their task and conducted themselves, therefore, changed dramatically over time. Furthermore, it argues that the study of these changes can be used to help illustrate certain changes and movements that took place within the cultures that sought after the Passage. To pursue such a study, this thesis refers to a number of case studies from the history of the British fur trade during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries - most often with reference to the Hudson's Bay Company, but also to a small number of other outfits. Fur traders launched a plethora of their own expeditions, interacted with a number of visiting explorers, and actively took part in the public debates that negotiated its changing cultural contours. In these actions they demonstrated the waxing and waning of each of the most important meanings of and motivations for pursuing the Passage, while remaining always situated within the confines of a shared history, setting, and fundamental purpose that makes effective comparisons possible. Through the actions of individuals working in the fur trade, this paper therefore demonstrates the ways in which the Passage was transformed in the public mind from a potential boon for private commerce, to a "nationalized" object intended for the public benefit, to a destination in which prestige-making science could be conducted, and to a site of emotionally-defined Romantic adventure, before finally losing its ability to serve as a tabula rasa upon which Britain could write its cultural dreams as its final contours were mapped.