jjares reviewed Beavers and Plumes: The History of the Trade and Conflicts Over Beaver Hats and Feathered Hats on + 3275 more book reviews
Charles Rivers Editors tends to specialize in historical figures (Stephen Hawking, the US presidents, among others) and historical events ("Black Wall Street and the Tulsa Race Massacre" and "The Greek Dark Ages," to name a couple of their more recent offerings). So I love it when Charles Rivers takes a walk on the wild side. Today, they are offering the fascinating story of the rise and fall of beaver hats (pelts) and (bird) plumes, as fashion statements.
Today, hats and plumage are fairly old-fashioned items. However, their story was deadly serious in previous generations. Beaver hats were so valued that they created conflicts between the Dutch, British, and French; and later between the Americans and Canadians. Beaver hats first appeared in Europe in the late Middle Ages. Those came from Eurasian beaver of the Scandanavian and Russian regions. As their numbers declined, they were supplanted by Canadian and American pelts from the New World. The trade of men's beaver hats lasted for centuries.
About 75% of the book is on the beaver pelt story. The section called, "Nature's Engineers" was one of the most interesting I've read in ages. Beaver and their dams had an incredible ecological effect on the territories where they resided. Amazingly, beavers were plentiful from the Rio Grande River to the Arctic! Estimates are that there were between 40 million and 400 million beaver in North America before the pillage began.
Bird plumage as fashion accessories has a much longer history. They were luxury items in global trade for centuries. Cavaliers wore floppy hats with plumes in olden times. But it was the addition of plumes to women's hats (from the 1860s to about 1920) that drove many bird species into virtual (or actual) extinction. Plume hunting was incredibly wasteful; only the breeding plumages were desired. Birds were killed for less than a handful of feathers; any infants living with the wanted birds died of starvation. The plume trade started in Florida, then decimated the birds of the barrier islands and swamps of Louisiana, Texas, and Mexico.
This is certainly an eye-opening book about fashions and how they destroyed pelts and bird plumage world-wide. Note: I found the first GOOD use of World War I -- it shut down the trade of these items because it was seen as indulgent in wartime. Other good news is that the beaver population has rebounded somewhat (although nowhere near their original numbers). Unfortunately, generations of farmers got along just fine without beaver and are reluctant to allow them on their rural land.
This 65-paged book is chockful of fascinating information about how pelt and plumage hunting affected history. This is so interesting that I finished it in one sitting.
Today, hats and plumage are fairly old-fashioned items. However, their story was deadly serious in previous generations. Beaver hats were so valued that they created conflicts between the Dutch, British, and French; and later between the Americans and Canadians. Beaver hats first appeared in Europe in the late Middle Ages. Those came from Eurasian beaver of the Scandanavian and Russian regions. As their numbers declined, they were supplanted by Canadian and American pelts from the New World. The trade of men's beaver hats lasted for centuries.
About 75% of the book is on the beaver pelt story. The section called, "Nature's Engineers" was one of the most interesting I've read in ages. Beaver and their dams had an incredible ecological effect on the territories where they resided. Amazingly, beavers were plentiful from the Rio Grande River to the Arctic! Estimates are that there were between 40 million and 400 million beaver in North America before the pillage began.
Bird plumage as fashion accessories has a much longer history. They were luxury items in global trade for centuries. Cavaliers wore floppy hats with plumes in olden times. But it was the addition of plumes to women's hats (from the 1860s to about 1920) that drove many bird species into virtual (or actual) extinction. Plume hunting was incredibly wasteful; only the breeding plumages were desired. Birds were killed for less than a handful of feathers; any infants living with the wanted birds died of starvation. The plume trade started in Florida, then decimated the birds of the barrier islands and swamps of Louisiana, Texas, and Mexico.
This is certainly an eye-opening book about fashions and how they destroyed pelts and bird plumage world-wide. Note: I found the first GOOD use of World War I -- it shut down the trade of these items because it was seen as indulgent in wartime. Other good news is that the beaver population has rebounded somewhat (although nowhere near their original numbers). Unfortunately, generations of farmers got along just fine without beaver and are reluctant to allow them on their rural land.
This 65-paged book is chockful of fascinating information about how pelt and plumage hunting affected history. This is so interesting that I finished it in one sitting.
