Beavers, Science, Civilization: Some reflections on how eighteenth-century ideas of natural and human history shaped modern zoology and the extractive activities of the Hudson’s Bay Company
Presentation and discussion with Sigfrid Kjeldaas
In the eighteenth century, the high market value of the beaver’s fur generated pronounced interest in this animal and its lifeways. In response to this, a range of European travellers and early natural historians offered descriptions of the beaver’s mental capacity, engineering capabilities, and societal structures in distinctly anthropomorphic terms. Much of this knowledge was acquired from Indigenous communities that made no distinction in kind between human and beaver societies. In this way, the beaver came to represent a unique challenge to Western conceptions about animals and human-animal relationships. At the same time, new ideas about human history and development – presented in Adam Smith’s ‘four stages’ theory (or conjunctural theory) – radically changed Western discourse on animals.
In this presentation, I use James Isham’s early and unique image of a beaver hunt (published in James Isham’s Observations on Hudson’s Bay, 1743) as the starting point for some reflections on the limitations imposed on the visual and textual representation of the beaver by later fur-trading natural historians, and the motivations behind them. The work Andrew Graham (1733-1815), Thomas Hutchins (1742?-1790), Samuel Hearne (1745-1792), and David Thompson (1770-1857) will be part of the discussion.
Sigfrid's chosen reading for the discussion is Wolloch, N. (2012). Animals in Enlightenment Historiography. Huntington Library Quarterly , Vol. 75(1): 53-68 (or available through Oria.no): https://uit.no/Content/827130/cache=20230410181022/Wolloch2012-AnimalsEnlightenmentHistoriography-2012.pdf
Link to Zoom for those who cannot attend in person: https://uit.zoom.us/j/67533343188?pwd=Vit3MmkrTkxJclFvdzIzdkFkc2xtZz09
Meeting ID: 675 3334 3188
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