ABSTRACT
News of the value to be gained from the soft gold spread throughout the world, bringing vast changes to the economy of the Pacific Rim in an era of essentially exclusionary mercantilism. The presence of sea otters in California waters had been known for some time. The plan called for Vasadre to be the ultimate recipient of all the otter skins taken in California. By 1812 the Russians were launching their own independent hunting excursions along the California coast. The gold rush brought a virtual end to the trade's dominance as an economic factor. Trade in soft gold was a major enterprise that formed the economic basis for the acquisition of California by the United States. It was soft gold which brought the first New Englanders into the Pacific and to California. The search for soft gold monopolized the economy of the American Pacific until that remarkable find of a different gold at Sutter's Mill in 1848.
