North America's Indian Trade in European Commerce and Imagination, 1580-1850 (Early American History: The American Colonies, 1500-1830, 2)

In North America's Indian Trade in European Commerce and Imagination, Colpitts offers new perspectives on Europe's contact with America by examining the ideas, debates and questions arising in the trading that linked newcomers with Native people. European capitalization of the Indian Trade, beginning in the 16th century, forced newcomers to confront the meaning and legitimacy of traditional gift economies and assess the vice and virtue of the commerce they pursued in the New World. Making use of French and English colonization texts, published narratives and state colonial papers, the author explores how European capital investments, credit, profits and commercial linkages elaborated and complicated understandings of North American people in the period of colonization. Publisher's website Cover North America’s Indian Trade in European Commerce and Imagination, 1580–1850 Copyright Dedication Contents List of Illustrations Acknowledgements Abbreviations 1. Commerce and Imagination in America’s Indian Trade 2. Europe and the Gift Economies in North America 3. European Market Places in Early America 4. The Church and Just Price 5. Commerce in America 6. Gifts in the Commercializing Indian Trade 7. Animating Industriousness 8. From Commerce to Treaties Conclusion Bibliography Index In North America's Indian Trade in European Commerce and Imagination, Colpitts analyzes the imaginative and intellectual response of Europeans to their expanding trade relations with America's people in the period of colonization