When the world was still a fairly unknown place to us, we set out to discover it. When the brave explorers did their work and succeeded in invading the new piece of land, the next adventurers came to hunt for lady fortune. Amongst them were many trappers that hunted for fur-bearing animals to safeguard their futures.
White trappers were for instance the first ones that explored the wilderness in Canada and America. Trappers were the ones that invaded new unknown areas in the New World in order to prepare the new pieces of land for the European settlers to open them up. In fact, trappers played such a crucial role in the history of North America that wars were waged because of them. The so-called beaver war in which the French, British and Indians fought against each other in the second half of the 17th century was practically about which party should stop killing beavers, simply put.
In Russia, the trappers played a similar role. When the czardom slowly developed, trappers were in the first place responsible for invading and exploring the Siberian outback where they suppressed the indigenous peoples living there.
What was the main motivation for the trappers’ apparent lust for conquest and exploration? Well, the reason is simple. Since they weren’t able to hunt in a sustained manner in one area, they had to invade new hunting grounds for the sole purpose of making money.
