Planters, Eskimos, and Indians: Race and the Organization of Trade under the Hudson’s Bay Company in Labrador, 1830–50

Focusing on the history of the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) 1830–50, this paper examines the unsettling and reconstitution of racial categories in Labrador. It argues that in Labrador these categories reflected the particular class-based logic that emerged as the company sought to assert itself in this region in the face of resistance to encroachment. In particular, in this setting, social categories were tied to access to the distribution of credit in the prevailing system of merchant capitalism (“truck”) in the region. And, while understanding the foundations of colonial categories in Labrador is obviously important for grasping the history of this locale, the centrality of the credit system to racial distinctions in the region also has wider implications for our understanding of nineteenth century colonialism. After all, relations of exchange figured prominently as mechanisms through which Europeans asserted authority over colonial spaces in a wide variety of “contact zones,” especially in the middling years of the nineteenth century. It is likely that the pattern of relations and mode of categorization under the HBC in Labrador had parallels elsewhere.