Trade History

When Queen Elizabeth arrived in Lower Fort Garry, Manitoba, in 1970, she was, like many foreign leaders, greeted with a reception and offered tokens by her hosts. What was different about this occasion, however, were the gifts offered: live elk and beaver. In the long-standing tradition of the Hudson’s Bay Company, should the King or Queen arrive in the lands governed by the charter King Charles II granted in 1660, he or she would be presented with two elk and two beavers by the company officials.

"Life Insurance and Slavery: The Dark History of Profit and Human Commodification" by Elvin Lee Blake Thompson is a revealing exploration of the disturbing intersection between the financial industry and the transatlantic slave trade. This meticulously researched work uncovers how several prominent American insurance companies played a pivotal role in perpetuating and profiting from the institution of slavery by insuring the lives of enslaved individuals and the ships that transported them.

Peter Pond, a fur trader, explorer, and amateur mapmaker, spent his life ranging much farther than Milford, Connecticut, where he was born and died (1740-1807). He traded around the Great Lakes, on the Mississippi and the Minnesota Rivers, in the Canadian Northwest, and was a partner in Montreal’s North West Company. Knowing 18th-century North America on a scale that few others did, Pond drew some of the earliest maps of western Canada. David Chapin presents Pond’s life as part of a generation of traders who came of age between the Seven Years’ War and the American Revolution.

At a fort in Cabo Vermelho in 1779, Sisi, a West African girl with a gift for languages, works as a translator for her English enslavers. She was separated from her younger brother after they were kidnapped from their village by the ahosi, fierce female warriors who serve a neighboring king—and her guilt over her failure to protect him has never left her. When unexpected news reaches the fort, Sisi must find her voice, for her brother’s sake and for her own.

The history of the ancient incense trade routes often falls victim to the excitement of the stories of important men and women, as well as the conquest and empire building that constantly changed the organization of the ancient world. Yet the importance of these interlocking trade networks and the economies built around them cannot be denied. Ancient sources clearly delineate the immense demand for frankincense and myrrh, and later other spices and exotic products, that spanned for over a millennium, peaking between the fourth century BCE and the second century CE.

A dissident faction of the Clan, the alternate universe group of families that has traded covertly with our world for a century or more, have carried nuclear devices between the worlds and exploded them in Washington, DC, killing the President of the United States. Now they will exterminate the rest of the Clan and keep Miriam alive only long enough to bear her child, the heir to the throne of their land in the Gruinmarkt world.

In the Age of Exploration, the British began building an enormous and highly profitable foreign empire. While the British Empire initially lagged behind other European powers such as Spain and Portugal, it still managed to colonize the New World and discover highly-lucrative trade routes.

Racism and profit were driving forces in the growth of slavery. The transatlantic trade of enslaved people saw millions of kidnapped Africans sent around the world, many of them to the Americas. Even after the importation of enslaved people was banned in 1808, slavery did not end in the US. Listen to this book to learn about the Middle Passage, the triangular trade, and the people who continued fighting for change after the importation of enslaved people was banned.

Non-Fungible Token (NFT) Investing Mastery is a book primarily written to help you navigate your way through NFT investing. The book explores the basics of NFTs and how to make, buy, sell, trade, and invest in NFT crypto. Because of the complexity of crypto and NFT investment, this guide to non-fungible tokens has been specifically designed to serve the investment needs of both beginners and pros.

John Newton was the master of a slave ship, later becoming a beloved Anglican priest and an ardent abolitionist. His conversion to Christianity began in 1748, and in 1764 he was accepted in the priesthood. However, it took him a while to denounce the slave trade as the pamphlet "Thoughts upon the African Slave Trade" was only published in 1787. Its impact was immediate and it became quite influential. Graphically describing the horrors of the slave trade, the publication is a moving confession of repentance for the author’s part in the hideous trade in human beings.

A total of 305,000 enslaved Africans arrived in the New World aboard American vessels over a span of two hundred years as American merchants and mariners sailed to Africa and to the Caribbean to acquire and sell captives. Using exhaustive archival research, including many collections that have never been used before, historian Sean M. Kelley argues that slave trading needs to be seen as integral to the larger story of American slavery.

Slavery and the Slave Trade in Africa by Jerome Dowd. The Journal of Negro History V2 January 1917.

Black Hands, White House documents and appraises the role enslaved women and men played in building the US, both its physical and its fiscal infrastructure. The book highlights the material commodities produced by enslaved communities during the Transatlantic Slave Trade. These commodities enriched European and US economies; contributed to the material and monetary wealth of the nation's founding fathers, other early European immigrants, and their descendants; and bolstered the wealth of present-day companies founded during the American slave era.

Few cities epitomize the best and worst of the United States like Detroit, which started as a remote trading post and grew into an industrious town before exploding into a bustling city. That city then fell, leaving a legacy of anger and despair only recently beginning to turn things around. At the same time, the same mighty city that proved capable of arming a nation at war found itself seething with social conflict. The massive labor force fought hard for their rights, as did the African-Americans fleeing Jim Crow in the South.

Former CIA operative Robert Baer examines the dangers behind America's collaboration with Saudi Arabia. Nominally based on a "harmony of interests" - the Saudis sold their oil to the American government very inexpensively - what we offered in exchange has damaged our position in the Middle East and left our country vulnerable to economic and terrorist threats. Baer goes behind the scenes to show how the US willingly overlooked the corruption of the Saudi royal family, its financing of violent Islamic fundamentalist groups, and its bribery of American officials.

The African meaning of slavery was different in its nature and purpose from that which emerged with the Slave Trades. The native institution is at the heart of a cluster of institutions, which marked the end of the last recorded “Reorganization” process. Those among the Africans, who opted for the preservation of their environment, won the debate. Thus, they labeled the losers “insurgents”, ordered many of these ancient master smiths, masons, and scientists to be put to death.

Here eminent food historian Jeffrey M. Pilcher narrates the brewing traditions and contemporary production of beer across Europe, North America, Africa, Asia, and Latin America—from the fermented beverages of precapitalist societies to the present. Unique local products, often homebrewed by women, were transformed into homogenous global commodities as giant brewing factories exported their beers using new refrigeration technology, railroads, and steamships.

The Silk Road and the Incense Trade Route have been heavily investigated in recent decades, but the Amber Road trade network dominating northern Europe has been given far less attention. Perhaps even more interesting than the movement of the amber is regarding shifting trade operations from government controlled systems to private merchant enterprises to monopolies of guilds and orders, a return to government control, and finally, the selling of the trade to individual countries.

Like other major cities and the nation overall, the 20th century portended massive growth for Milwaukee, especially as rail and other forms of transportation helped connect the city to the rest of Wisconsin and beyond. With that growth came the growing pains of an industrial city gripped with all the plights of urban development and expansion, but despite that, the people of Milwaukee entered the new century in high hopes: hopes that survived the harsh realities of a century sundered by war, racism, and poverty.

The modern day city of Guangzhou is located in the mountainous region of south China. Near the Baiyun Mountains that rise from the edge of the city and the eastern banks of the Pearl River (Zhujiang), the city today covers approximately 7, 400 square kilometers. The location of the city provides it the opportunity to oversee the delta of the Pearl River, which is China’s third largest river.