$21.95
Contested Empire – Peter Skene Ogden and the Snake River Expeditions
In Contested Empire, John Phillip Reid explores the implicit notions of law shared by American and British fur traders in the Snake River country of Idaho and surrounding areas in the early nineteenth century. Both the United States and Great Britain had claimed this region, and passions were intense. Focusing on Canadian explorer and trader Peter Skene Ogden, Reid finds that both sides largely avoided violence and other difficulties because they held the same definitions of property, contract, conversion, and possession.
Description
Contested Empire – Peter Skene Ogden and the Snake River Expeditions
In 1824, the Hudson’s Bay Company directed Ogden to decimate the fur-bearing animal population of the Snake River country. By making the region a “fur desert,” Great Britain hoped to neutralize any interest American fur trappers could have in the area. Such a mandate set British and American fur interests on a collision course, but Ogden and his American counterparts implicitly followed an unwritten law and procedure and observed a mutual sense of property and rights even as the two sides vied for control of the fur trade.
ISBN – 978-0-8061-4932-5
258 Pages
Softback
6″ x 9″
University of Oklahoma Press, 2002