| Book Review | The Western Historical Quarterly, 35.2

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| Book Review | The Western Historical Quarterly, 35.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Contested Empire: Peter Skene Ogden and the Snake River Expeditions. By John Phillip Reid. Foreword by Martin Ridge. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2002. xiii + 258 pp. Illustrations, maps, notes, bibliography, index. $29.95.)

John Phillip Reid has written an engaging volume about the history of Peter Skene Ogden and the Snake Country Expeditions during the 1820s. Reid uses these expeditions to present the British perspective of the Rocky Mountain fur trade. Although Ogden plays a central role in the book, the expeditions had as much to do with British foreign policy and exploration as with turning a monetary profit. In telling the story, the author explains the labor and social structure of the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC). Woven throughout is the impact that traditional common law had on both British and American fur trappers. In the book's foreword, Martin Ridge describes Reid as an author who "looks at the past in a different way, and he often writes with the verve and passion of a lawyer making a case" (p. xi). This methodology is precisely why Reid has written successfully about a topic exhaustively studied by previous authors.

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