Towards a legal history of the fur trade: Looking for law at York Factory, 1714--1763 (Manitoba).

摘要

This thesis lays the groundwork for writing a legal history of the fur trade. It begins by presenting an argument that the legal history of the fur trade, and the legal histories of Aboriginal peoples more generally, should be considered part of Canadian legal history. This argument follows in the footsteps of Aboriginal rights theorists, legal historians and fur trade historians who have uncovered the agency of Aboriginal peoples in Canadian constitutional history and Canadian history more generally.; Chapter two tackles the theoretical and methodological issues that are involved in writing a legal history of the fur trade. Specifically, the challenges presented by positivist conceptions of law, the limitations of outsider perspectives in comparative studies of law and culture, and the limitations of a historical record written exclusively by European traders are addressed.; Using the framework developed in chapter two, chapters three and four present a case study of fur trade legal normativity in the eighteenth century. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)