| John Askin arrived in the Great Lakes in 1763 to work as a merchant in the lucrative transatlantic fur trade. By 1796, he had amassed significant personal wealth that included real estate, goods, and slaves. He also achieved social prominence and political influence both locally and within the larger fur trade milieu of the Great Lakes borderland. This dissertation reveals not only how Askin achieved such success in his lifetime, but uses Askin as a case study to examine how merchants used their social and political networks in the course of everyday business. Intermarriage with Indian women and kinship with Native groups were crucial strategies for fur trade success; so was slavery, both Indian and African, which British merchants commonly used to increase labor, capital, and social wealth. The carrying and supply trade, including agriculture, were also significant aspects of the trade. John Askin was a frontier type, whose wealth, influence, and power both created the unique characteristics of the Great Lakes borderland and ultimately helped bring about its demise at the beginning of the nineteenth century. |
