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114 The Michigan Historical Review Justin M, Carroll. The Merchant John Askin: Furs and Empire at British Michilimackinac. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2017. Pp. 222. Illustrations. Index. Notes. Paper: $39.95. The capitulation of New France in September 1760 threw open the gates of the lucrative Michigan fur trade to British merchants and merchandise. The vanguard of the men who would transform and dominate the trade were impatient to gain access to the upper country. The first of them even arrived at Michilimackinac ahead of the British soldiers who were sent there to protect them. Despite the interruption of Pontiac’s War (1763-1764), Michilimackinac was soon the busiest fur trading post in Michigan and the place where Native American, New York, and Canadian traders gathered to exchange pelts for European manufactured goods. Although he was not among the first to rush to Michilimackinac, John Askin is today one of the best remembered of the English-speaking merchants who conducted business in the Northwest during the last half of the eighteenth century. This is in part because of the visibility he has been given in the interpretation of the reconstructed village of Michilimackinac at Mackinaw City. Askin has been presented as one of the most active and colorful members of the commercial community. He raised a large family and used traditional connections with the Native Americans of the upper lakes to further his business. More important, Askin left a large and revealing collection of business and personal papers that are accessible to be mined for information specific to him and to the Michilimackinac beaver trade. His business interests were also much broader than those of most of his fellow traders. Askin not only made his permanent home and headquarters at the Straits but also occupied and operated two farms in the area. He constructed and sailed several trading vessels of respectable size that were capable of transporting substantial cargoes of goods and furs, and he filled an official position as a garrison commissary at Michilimackinac. Given John Askin’s presence at Michilimackinac and his stature in the Great Lakes fur trade, it is particularly surprising that no serious biography of him has previously been written. Askin arrived at Michilimackinac with the British re-occupying military force in 1764, and he departed for Detroit in 1779 just as the garrison was beginning its move to a more secure location on Mackinac Island. Those fifteen years saw the trade firmly in British hands even as the storm of rebellion and revolution was forming in the English colonies. Book Reviews 115 Justin M. Carroll has done a commendable job tracing and using the documentation that reveals the public and private lives of John Askin. In doing so the author explains how the upper lakes fur trade functioned and how it and Askin’s fortunes changed during the critical years of the 1760s and ‘70s. The decade and a half after 1764 saw Askin rise to the top of his business in the region but nonetheless lose much of his stature once war came to the lakes. Carroll has written a solid biography of John Askin, at least for the period of time he was so deeply engaged in the fur trade at Michilimackinac. He does not venture far into the remaining thirty-six years of Askin’s life, his political activities in Upper Canada, and his family and business affairs following his relocation to Detroit in 1779. Askin accumulated property there and even lived on the Michigan side of the strait until leaving what was by then US soil in 1802. But that is perhaps another story. The author succeeds with his account of Askin and the fur trade, and the book is recommended for those interested in the fur trade, British-Native American relations, and eighteenth-century Michigan. Brian Leigh Dunnigan Associate Director & Curator of Maps William L. Clements Library of the University of Michigan Raymond J. DeMallie, Douglas R. Parks, and Robert Vézina, eds. A Fur Trader on the Upper Missouri: The Journal and Description of Jean-Baptiste Truteau, 1794-1796. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2017. Pp. 752. Bibliography. Illustrations. Index. Notes. Cloth: $100. A minor magnum...

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