A Dusty Tomes Audio Book

In Cooperation with Spoken Realms

ECONOMIC BEGINNINGS OF THE FAR WEST. VOLUME I

EXPLORERS AND COLONIZERS by KATHARINE COMAN. THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1912.

A Dusty Tomes Audio Book

In Cooperation with Spoken Realms

KATHARINE COMAN Professor of History at Wellesley College

The two-volume book is today hailed as a classic and was reprinted twice; Macmillan in 1925, and Kelly in 1969. The University of Michigan's "Naming Project" notes that she was one of the first historians to use local newspaper articles and government documents as primary sources in her teaching and writing.

Coman developed and taught several new economics, history, and rhetoric courses, including Statistical Study of Economic Problems, Industrial History of the United States, and Conservation of Our Natural Resources.

To teach students about the practicality of applying economic theory to real-world economic and social problems, Coman escorted her students on field trips to Boston's tenement houses, labor union meetings, factories, and sweatshops.

(Wikipedia)

CONTENTS

VOLUME I

PART I. THE SPANISH OCCUPATION

CHAPTER I

The Explorers

Section I. The Route to the Orient

Section II. The Seven Cities of Cibola

CHAPTER II

The Colonizers

Section I. New Mexico

Great Undertakings

Misgovernment

The Pike Expedition

A Neglected Province

Section II. Louisiana

La Salle's Ill-fated Enterprise

Louisiana under France and Spain

Section III. Texas

Possession contested by France and Spain

The Coming of the Americans

Section IV. California

Colonization Attempted

Causes for Failure

Success of the Missions

Commercial Restrictions

Secularization of the Missions

The Cattle Kings

PART II. EXPLORATION AND THE FUR

TRADE

CHAPTER I

The Northwest Coast

Section I. Russian Explorers

Section II. Spanish Explorers

Section III. English Explorers Section

IV. The Americans

CHAPTER II

The Overland Search for the Western Sea

Section I. French Explorers

Section II. English Explorers

Section III. American Explorers

John Ledyard

Lewis and Clark

Pike's Expedition to the Sources of the Mississippi

CHAPTER III

The Fur Trade

Section I. Government Control vs. Laissez-faire

Spanish Policy

British Fur Traders

The American Policy

Section II. The Fur Traders of St. Louis

Missouri Fur Company

Section III. Astoria

Section IY. Fort Vancouver

Section V. Rivalry of the American Companies

The American Fur Company

The Rocky Mountain Fur Company

Section VI. Decline of the' Fur Trade

Narrated by Joseph Tabler

Audio copyright 2024

This book is in the public domain.

From the Author's Preface: Unquestionably, Spain and Great Britain would have been engaged in an unequal controversy for possession of the richest portion of North America, but for the intervention of a new claimant. The young Republic....

As to the political and diplomatic merits and demerits of this struggle for possession, a mere economist will not attempt to decide. Our province is rather to suggest the underlying economic conditions that determined the outcome of war and treaty and race competition, and to reveal the bread and butter struggle that must ever result in the survival of the fittest—the ablest to utilize the resources of virgin territory.

I have endeavored to tell the story...without bias or elaboration.

Audio cover picture—from the book—Yellow Clover, A Book of Remembrance by Katharine Lee Bates on Internet Archive.

Dusty Tomes Audio Books are public domain books retrieved from history. If today's technology had been available when first printed, they would be audio books already. I am grateful for the opportunity to record them now. Read online at archive.org

Narrator's Note: I read only as written. These old books were once solid sellers for bookmen of their time. I believe they can shed light on their times and ours. Loving obscure and remote literature, they are a distinct pleasure for me to read to you. These turn out to be distant and unknown only so long as they remain unread or unheard. Aloha.