ch 14 (second half)

• Fur trade was a highly competitive enterprise.
• The Dutch and British were frequent rivals for the great prize: North American furs.
• Native Americans would bring skins and furs to their fortified trading posts in the interior of North America.
• Native Americans represented a cheap labor force in this international commercial effort, but they were not a directly coerced labor force.
• With no prior experience of alcohol and little time to adjust to its availability, these drinks caused binge drinking, violence among young men, promiscuity, and addiction. 
• The fur trade offered women a mix of opportunity and liability.
• The international sale of furs greatly enriched the Russian state as well as many private merchants, trappers, and hunters. 
• Slavery came in many forms.
• The slavery that emerged in America was distinctive in several ways.
• This New World slavery was largely based on plantation agriculture and treated slaves as a form of dehumanized property, lacking rights in the society of their owners.
• By the seventeenth century, slav trade became highly competitive with the British, Dutch, and French contesting the earlier Portuguese monopoly.
• Enslaved Africans often resisted their fates in a variety of ways. 
• One common act was to flee. 
• Since more men than women were shipped to the Americas, the labor demands on those women who remained increased substantially.
• The unbalanced sex ratios also meant that men could marry multiple women. 
• For much smaller numbers of women, slave trade provided an opportunity to exercise power and accumulate wealth.