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185 I t is hard to imagine a more apposite opening paragraph than that which graces Harold adams innis’s monumental The Fur Trade in Canada: “The history of Canada has been profoundly influenced by the habits of an animal which very fittingly occupies a prominent place on her coat of arms. The beaver (Castor Canadensis) was of dominant importance in the beginnings of the Canadian fur trade. it is impossible to understand the characteristic developments of the trade or of Canadian history without some knowledge of its life and habits.”1 so it is, with the lowly beaver, that the nation of Canada rises from the beaten plains and icy fjords of far-north america. at first glance, innis’s logic—that a single animal can be given so pivotal a role in a modern nation’s past—seems strikingly quaint. Can it really be said that any animal—let alone the waddling beaver—can be so central to a nation’s history? While there may be some exaggeration in innis’s particular characterization , it turns out that, in fact, the modern world has been to a very large extent shaped by the habits and characteristics of mammals. in addition to the beaver, we might add the horse, the pig, and the dog to the list of historically important mammals. and if we move into the nineteenth century we find at least one upon which an entire, integrated industrial economy was built: that is of course the whale.2 it may seem perverse to begin an essay about Thomas paine and Thomas jefferson with a disquisition on the historical impact of mammals, but in fact, the particular episode i wish to describe centers on fur-bearing mammals. Empire without Colonies Paine, Jefferson, and the Nootka Crisis Y e d wa r d g . g r ay 186 edward g. gray Those mammals—or really, one particular mammal, the sea otter (Enhydra lutris)—accounts for the first serious diplomatic crisis faced by the young United states. That crisis—familiarly known as the nootka sound Crisis— involved a standoff between spain and Britain over a tiny, incredibly remote fur-trading factory on the pacific coast of Vancouver island. Had it not been for other concurrent events that distracted spain’s principal Bourbon ally— the convening of the estates General, the declaration of independence of the Assemblée Nationale, the storming of the Bastille, and the effective imprisonment of the french monarch—the flap over nootka could well have sparked the eighteenth-century’s third world war. To anybody concerned with the prospects of the new american republic, the whole affair was enormously unsettling. for jefferson, the dangers were fairly obvious. There was, on the one hand, the ever-present fear of foreign entanglement. should Britain declare war on spain, was neutrality at all a realistic option for the United states? The dilemma was particularly acute in light of the continued presence of British troops in the west and the likelihood that those troops would seek passage through american-claimed territory. But perhaps of equal concern was the possibility that whatever lay between north america’s pacific Coast and the Mississippi river, if not the appalachian spine, was becoming an arena for european colonial conquest. Would the new nation survive the colonization of its vast western flank? The question lingered for jefferson like a bad cold. for paine, the issues were quite different. He cared little or not all about the affairs of a distant colonial periphery—or its fur-bearing treasures. nor was he particularly fearful for the fate of the new United states in a world at war. republicanism, he presumed, had already survived such trials in america and would likely do so again. What concerned paine, rather, was the possibility that the pitt government would exploit the conflict to crush reform at home.3 nothing about any of this is particularly surprising. paine, the transatlantic radical, was pleased with events in france, but by 1790 the prime target of his radical ambition was increasingly Britain. and insofar as war against spain, and possibly its Bourbon “friend” france (whom the pitt administration was feverishly and covertly trying to draw to its side by claiming, among other things, that spain was much more dangerous to the cause of republicanism than the constitutional monarchy across the english Channel ) could strengthen reactionary forces in Britain, the prospect of such a war deeply troubled him. similarly, jefferson, while he had much invested in the...

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