Company of One Hundred Associates
The Company of One Hundred Associates, or Company of New France, was a French trading and colonization company chartered in 1627 to capitalize on the North American fur trade and to expand French colonies there. The company was granted a monopoly to manage the fur trade in the colonies of New France, which were at that time centered on the Saint Lawrence River valley and the Gulf of Saint Lawrence. In return, the company was supposed to settle French Catholics in New France. The Company of One Hundred Associates was dissolved by King Louis XIV, who incorporated New France into a province in 1663.
Company of One Hundred Associates house in Quebec City
Memorial plaque in Quebec City
The fur trade is a worldwide industry dealing in the acquisition and sale of animal fur. Since the establishment of a world fur market in the early modern period, furs of boreal, polar and cold temperate mammalian animals have been the most valued. Historically the trade stimulated the exploration and colonization of Siberia, northern North America, and the South Shetland and South Sandwich Islands.
A fur trader in Fort Chipewyan, Northwest Territories in the 1890s
A fur shop in Tallinn, Estonia in 2019
Fur muff manufacturer's 1949 advertisement
Cossacks collecting yasak in Siberia