To avoid being caught as an unlicenced British trader, Meares registered his ships in Macau under different names, and disguised them with Portugese flags. Meares agreed, but broke his promise almost immediately – and the encounter began a lifelong feud with Dixon. Dixon, who took a dim view of their illegal escapade, insisted Meares swear an oath never to return to North America. The wretched handful of survivors were rescued by a British captain called George Dixon, who found their ship trapped in the Alaskan ice. Out of his crew of 33 men, 23 died of scurvy. In 1786, he headed out from Calcutta for North America. Born in Dublin in 1756, he joined the Royal Navy as a teenager, before leaving for India to start his own trading company in 1785. Officially, the East India Company controlled on any trading in the Pacific done by British subjects, while the Crown regulated the fur trade through the King George’s Sound Company, by special arrangement with the East India.īut from 1785, British merchants started to ignore the regulations, and a few renegade traders headed across the world in hopes of raking in huge profits. Every part of this actually happened, and the real historical figure, Captain John Meares, led a life just as gripping as the story told on TV.įrom Captain Cook onwards, British merchants had been making a fortune on the Northwest frontier by buying cheap furs from the indigenous Americans, and selling them in China for silk, porcelain and tea. For a brief moment, this outlaw trader became the most powerful man in London. I'm looking for answers based on how the plot around Nootka and its relation to James developed in the show and maybe with a little reasoning based on the show's (supposedly accurate) historical framework.Returning to England, he found he had a unique bargaining chip in the cold war over North America’s undefined borders. (I'm also not too interested in the reality of Nootka Sound's history, as I think the show took quite a few liberties with it anyway. Does he have the right to settle there and under what jurisdiction is it? Is it completely out of both the United States and Great Britain? Would the matters around it actually calm down a little once he officially settles it (or maybe once the war is over and the borders fixed?) or is it bound to remain a constant cause for fighting? And what are his trading options? Did he make any kind of deal that I don't recollect or is he out on his own on the commercial front now? It would be helpful if I could get a little rundown of, maybe not the entire plot, but the developments around Nootka Sound during the season and what this all basically means for its current political and commercial situation. Rather I'm asking what the official state of affairs is in the Nootka Sound situation after the first season. I'm also not sure James ever cared that much about any trade monopolies anyway. Now, I'm not asking what would happen after the end of the series, I know that's speculation and I'm sure neither of the big players will leave matters be just because he left Britain (and there's apparently more seasons planned already). But he also needed the gunpowder for bargaining with the Americans and I'm not sure if he is going to sell all of it to Colonnade.
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