Discerning Law in the Fur Trade (LAW475H1S)

This seminar seeks to discern the various legal orders (Indigenous, civil, and common law) that regulated the fur trade in Canada from the earliest period until the late nineteenth century. While focusing on Indigenous legal traditions, we will also consider law in and around outposts distant from the Imperial center, and far from Hudson Bay Company headquarters.  In addition, we will seek to understand the legal status of the Hudson’s Bay Company, the nature of Royal Charters, and their implications for the present day.  The legal capacity of the English Crown to make this grant is not certain – sovereignty and legal capacity lie at the heart of the fur trade. We will rely primarily on non-legal texts in order to understand the operation of a commercial enterprise that made no economic sense, yet turned the fate of empires Indigenous and settler alike. 

This seminar will turn heavily on student participation. There will be no lectures, and class time will be devoted to discussion of the texts, our impressions of the law, and in this way we will work together to find law in the fur trade.