In 1661 two Frenchmen,
Medard
Chouart des Groseilliers
and
Pierre-Esprit
Radisson , reached the
southern end of Hudson Bay
overland and realized it was
the same inland sea
described by earlier
seafaring explorers. They
returned to the St Lawrence
laden down with furs, upon
which the French governor
arrested them for trapping
without a licence.
Understandably peeved, they
turned to England, where
Charles II's cousin, Prince
Rupert, persuaded the king
to finance and equip two
ships, the
Eaglet and
the
Nonsuch . After a
mammoth voyage, the
Nonsuch
returned with a fantastic
cargo of furs and this led
to the incorporation of the
Hudson's
Bay Company by Charles
II on May 2, 1670. The
Company was granted wide
powers, including exclusive
trading rights to the entire
Hudson Bay watershed - to be
called
Rupert's Land.
The HBC was a joint-stock
company, the shareholders
annually electing a governor
and committee to hire men,
order trade goods and
arrange for fur auctions and
shipping. By 1760, trading
posts had been built at
the mouths of all the major
rivers flowing into the bay;
these were commanded by factors
, who took their policy
orders from London. The
orders were often
unrealistic and based on the
concept of native trappers
bringing furs to the posts -
the direct opposite to the
Montréal-based North West
Company, whose mainly
Francophone employees spent
months in the wilderness
working with the natives.
Unsurprisingly, the NWC
undercut the Company's trade
and there was intense
competition between the
rival concerns right across
the north of the continent,
occasionally resulting in
violence. In 1821 a
compromise was reached and
the two companies merged
. They kept the name
Hudson's Bay Company and the
British parliament granted
the new, larger company a
commercial monopoly from
Hudson Bay to the Pacific.
However, the administrative
structure of the Company was
changed. A North American
chief factor was appointed
and his councils dealt
increasingly with local
trading concerns, though the
London governor and
committee continued to have
the last word.
The extensive monopoly
rights ceded to the new
company were fiercely
resented by local traders,
and, in a landmark case of
1849, a local jury found a
Metis trader by the name of
Sayer guilty of breaking the
monopoly, but simultaneously
refused to punish him.
Thereafter, in practice if
not by law, the Company's
stranglehold on the fur
trade was dead and gone.
Furthermore, the HBC's
quasi-governmental powers
seemed increasingly
anachronistic and when a
company official, James
Douglas , became
governor of British Columbia
in 1858, the British
government forced him to
resign from the HBC. This
marked the beginning of the
end of the Company's
colonial role.
In 1870 the HBC sold
Rupert's Land to Canada. In
return it received a cash
payment, but, more
importantly, retained the
title to the lands on which
the trading posts had been
built and one-twentieth of
the fertile land open to
settlement. Given that the
trading posts often occupied
land that was the nucleus of
the burgeoning western
cities, this was a
remarkably bad deal for
Canada - and a great one for
the HBC. Subsequently, the
HBC became a major
real-estate developer and
retail chain, a position it
maintains today.
