Full bibliography

Although characterized by unequal exchange, the impact of the fur trade on the aboriginal societies of what became British Columbia involved minimal disruption because the indigenous modes of production were easily articulated with mercantile capitalism. It was the problems arising from competition and increasing costs of transportation that led the Hudson's Bay Company to begin commodity production in agriculture, fishing and lumbering, thereby initiating capitalist wage-labour relations and paving the way for the subsequent disastrous decline in the well-being of Native peoples in the province.