A Brief History Of The Fur Trade Part 3

 The North American Furs in Europe

Frans Hals - Rev John Livingstone (1603-72)

In Europe, north American beaver pelts flooded the European market.  Pelts were generally imported into either England or France, where some pelts were sold in the domestic market, and some pelts were exported to other parts of Europe for sale.  As a buyer of English and French pelts, Russia played a large role in this regard.  Imported pelts were sorted into three categories: castor gras, castor sec, and bandeau.  Castor gras pelts had been worn by Native American trappers for the hunting season and as a result of the sweat and body oil, were more pliable and easier to felt.  They were also the most expensive pelts.  Castor sec referred to pelts that had been scraped clean, but never worn, and required some extra work to prepare them for felting.  Bandeau pelts were scraped, but not necessarily clean, and could be partially rotted or decayed upon arrival in Europe.  Although known in Europe by the end of the seventeenth century, the combing technique developed by the Russians helped prepare the castor sec pelts by separating the desired beaver wool from the outer guard hairs, making them more easily feltable.   In general, the Russian market served as an outlet for pelts not sold on the French or English domestic markets.   Until the combing process was known in Western Europe, the French and English were able to export substantial quantities of castor sec to be combed in Russia, and then re-import the combed pelts.  Even after the knowledge of combing became more wide spread in Western Europe, meaning that the less expensive castor sec could be combed locally, the Russian market was able to purchase excess numbers of the more expensive castor gras, that had been passed up domestically in favor of the castor sec.  Beaver felts, made from beaver pelts, could be manufactured domestically in France or England, or imported from Russia.

Beaver felts were used to make beaver hats.  Hats, like other forms of dress, played a large role in reflecting one's social  identity.  The shape and style of one's hat indicated to a passerby one's profession, wealth, and social rank and position.  Color,  shape, and material all carried specific meaning.  In Ecclesiastical heraldry, for  example, a red, wide-brimmed hat clearly  indicated that its wearer was a cardinal, and  interactions required a specific social protocol.  In  seventeenth century England, the shape and style of one's hat reflected political and religious affiliation.  Due  to the expense of a beaver hat, being able to purchase one made a visual statement about one's wealth and social status. 

Until the latter half of the seventeenth century, makers of beaver hats were dependent on the very last of the supply of the European beaver.  In the last quarter of the seventeenth century, the influx of beaver furs from the new world increased the sheer number of beaver hats that could be made, due the increased supply of raw material.  Hats made exclusively from beaver wool, or castors, were the most expensive and of the highest quality.   What seems to have lowered the price of beaver hats was less the increased supply of pelts, than the production of demi-castor, or half-beavers.  Demi-castor hats could be mixed with wool or hare fur, to produce a hat that was lower in quality, similar in style, and less expensive in price.  The production of demi-castors was further facilitated by the development of carroting, which made hare fur felt more easily after the application of mercury nitrate. This image of 18th and 19th century variations of beaver hats is from the National Archives of Canada / C-17338.

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, beaver hats were produced for sale domestically in  the French and British markets,  as well as for export.  The French  domestic market included  military  and naval contracts, as  well as consumer products sold on  the general market.  The majority  of their exports were shipped to  French colonies in the Caribbean,  Italy, Portugal, Spain, and Spanish  South America.^[6]  Britain's  exportation of beaver hats picked  up in the eighteenth century, after  the acquisition of much of the  Hudson Bay Territory of French Canada following the War of  Spanish succession In the 1720's,  the British exported to their own  Caribbean colonies in Jamaica:  two dozen beaver hats and one  dozen half beaver hats); three  dozen half beavers to Bilbao; three  dozen beaver hats to Barbados;  and three dozen beaver hats and  three dozen felts to Calais.  By the  1730's, Britain "exported formerly by the dozens but now by the hundreds of beaver and half beaver hats to the British West Indies."^[7]  On the European continent, Britain was able to infiltrate the Iberian market.  From 1700 to 1750 the revenue from beaver hats shipped to Spain and Portugal, and then on to their colonies, increased from £44,000 to over £263,000.^[8]  Of Britain's fur exports, 85% were comprised of beaver hats, 45% of which were exchanged with Spain and Portugal for bullion.  Additional evidence regarding the sale of beaver hats in Europe demonstrates greater English sales in Holland and Germany, with French advantages in Switzerland, the Baltic, and smaller markets in Spain and Italy.^[9]

From the Perspective of World History

When following the path of the American beaver pelt, a complex network of trans-Atlantic trade networks emerge.  In the wilds of North America, beaver trapping contributed to shifting economic and political alliances between Europeans and Native Americans.  The effects of the trade came to have profound social, demographical and environmental impacts on the various inhabitants of seventeenth and eighteenth century North America.  Closely tied into the economic prosperity and viability of the colonies, exchange of furs sustained the colonies' economic systems.  Further, the transport of furs across the Atlantic and through to foreign markets, such as Russia and Amsterdam, contributed to the enrichment of the shipping industries of the Atlantic World.  Once in Europe, the beaver scattered in several different directions.  Some pelts were permanently exported across the continent, some consumed on the home market, and some exported to Russia for further processing prior to manufacture into finished products.  Once the furs entered the hatting industries of France or Britain, some were reserved for local consumption, while still others were prepared for export.  Traded through each mother country's colonial networks as well as abroad, hats were exported across the continent and back across the Atlantic to the Americas.  It is not at all inconceivable to trace the path of a beaver pelt from British Canada, to England, through to Russia via Amsterdam, back to Britain, onto Spain, and further forward, as a hat, to the Spanish colonies in South and Central America. 

The beaver exchange connected the North American and European markets through the supply and demand of one fortuitously (although not for its own sake) fuzzy animal.

For full bibliography click here.

Feinstein, Kelly. Fashionable Felted Fur: The Beaver Hat in 17th Century English Society.