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This article conveys the power of place in global history through the multiple perceptions of space and possession in one small remote locality – Nootka Sound on the Northwest coast of Vancouver Island, British Columbia. This space was, for a brief period between the 1770s and 1790s, connected with many parts of the world. Microhistorical methodologies applied to the texts of traders and explorers and turned to the study of a locality such as Nootka Sound reveal the close global connections of agents and events and help us to challenge the frameworks of global history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This Special Issue addresses recent discussions of the potential historical approach of "global microhistory." The six articles gathered here are based in the study of Africa, South Asia, the northwest Pacific coast of North America, and Europe, as well as in the recent methodologies of global history and microhistory. They focus on methodology and on the empirical study of ways of connecting local spaces and networks with global dynamics. All are set in social and economic formations that have too often been bypassed in the cultural and literary approaches of some microhistory and the political approaches of some global history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers a global microhistory of the years 1774-1792 at Nootka Sound, exploring exchanges that took place between European merchants and the indigenous people that resided there, the Mowachaht. Much of this commercial exchange was an exchange of sea-otter furs for iron and copper. The author describes what is global about this study: research into a long-distance trade of an individual commodity and what is a micro-analysis: the exploration of a specific locality.