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Canadian history has not really considered, with adequate precision, the serious challenges that mercantilism faced in establishing and sustaining a continuity of profitable operations across not only a vast and difficult space, but also spanning the economic and social differences separating merchants and Indigenous people. For some fur trade specialists, the perseverance of cultural differences between Indigenous and European participants is assumed to reflect some continuing degree of autonomy for Native production and life. In this view, the preservation of a subsistence sector is thought to demonstrate Native capacity to maintain control over the regional economy and land; whereas elsewhere, such subsistence or self-provisioning is regarded as an unwaged contribution of labour to the larger economy.1
Apparently unaware of the material intricacies of the fur trade economy and the relationships between post populations and local environments, historian Doug Owram disparaged the fur trade, stating that "... the term 'fort,' commonly used in the trade, was a rather grandiose description for what was often a wretched cabin occupied by one or two individuals."2 Similarly, one of Canada's foremost political economists asserted ". that fur as a staple activity was a trade, not an industry. The capitalist mode of production that faced the Indian was the limited penetration of merchant capital not the fuller penetration of industrial capital characteristic of later staples."3 Whether or not the industrial staple mode of production had a greater intensity or fullness does not establish that the HBC operations in the 19th century can be properly characterized as a simple trade. Even though mercantile capital may have been more limited than industrial capital, such a comparison seems to obscure that its penetration and endurance were significant, at the time, to Native people in the subarctic.
A partial assessment of the impact of mercantile capital can be pursued by a microhistorical reconstruction of the labour process that sustained the post activities and transport networks. Labour needs to be adequately fed; in the Northern Department of the Hudson's Bay Company daily caloric needs were unbelievably high. Thus, provisioning activities were central to labour processes. The question of the influence of mercantile capital can be approached by examining its opposite: Labour. The intensity of this simple mercantile trade is reflected in the nature and character...