From the time of Cook, the British and their Canadian successors were drawn to the Northwest coast of North America by possibilities of trade in sea otter and the wish to find a northwest passage. The studies collected here trace how the British came to dominate the area, with expeditions sent from London, Bombay and Macau, and the Canadian quest from overland, and how commercial enterprise, the Royal Navy and British statecraft fended off American opposition and Russian and Spanish resistance to British aspirations. Elsewhere in the Americas, the British promoted trans-Pacific trade with China, conveyed specie from western