#768 What is the Hudson Bay Company?

What is the Hudson Bay Company? It is a company that began when two French traders set up a fur trading post on Hudson Bay in 1670. The Hudson Bay Company was started to trade furs with Britain, but it was another example for Britain that they could use private enterprise to colonize parts of the world that her armies and navies were not strong enough to take.

In the 17^th century, there was a demand in Europe for beaver pelts. They were used for many things, but one of the greatest uses was for top hats, which were becoming very fashionable. The outer hair of the pelt was removed, leaving the soft felt that could be dried, treated, and shaped into the hat. Depending on the hat, up to five adult beaver pelts were necessary. There are two species of beaver, the North American beaver and the European beaver. By the 17^th century, the European beaver had mostly been hunted to extinction and people were desperately seeking a new source of fur. Early explorers into North America noticed that there were a lot of beaver and that the indigenous people were very adept at catching them. A small trade started to flourish. Most of North America was occupied by French colonists and they had a monopoly on the fur trade.

The Hudson Bay Company was started by two French explorers and traders called Pierre-Esprit Radisson and Medard des Groseilliers. They had heard talk of a “salt sea” where there were plenty of beaver pelts to be found. They assumed this meant Hudson Bay, which is in northeastern Canada. It had been discovered and named by Henry Hudson, an English explorer who sailed for the Dutch East India Company. He also discovered the Hudson River. The two French traders journeyed to the area and did find a lot of premium felts. They took these to the French authorities and tried to get backing for an expedition. The French refused, but the two traders went anyway. They returned with even more pelts and were arrested by the French for trading without a license. After they were released, they continued trading for pelts and through a series of lucky connections, they ended up in the court of Charles II in London.

Charles II gave the men permission and funding for an expedition. He knew they would find more beaver, but he also hoped they would find gold and silver. Whatever they found, he stood to make a lot of money. Radisson and Groseilliers returned with a lot of beaver and Charles II did several things that would go on to heavily affect the way Canada formed. He gave the two men a charter for the new Hudson Bay Company to trade in all of the area around Hudson’s Bay. This charter gave the company a legal monopoly. To protect this, the King claimed 3.8 million square kilometers of land, which he named Rupert’s Land, after his cousin Prince Rupert. The land stretched from the colony in the west, called Canada, to the US border in the south, and two thirds of the way across what is modern Canada. He made Prince Rupert the governor of the new company and in one stroke of his pen dispossessed all of the indigenous people that lived in the area.

Radisson and Groseilliers did not spend long with the company they had helped to start, but the company itself flourished. They built trading posts all around the newly named Rupert’s Land area. Indigenous people brought beaver pelts from communities further inland to trade with. The pelts were then sent on to centralized points before being shipped to Britain. To make sure the pelts were always bought for the same price, a standardized currency, called the Made Beaver, was set up. 1 MB was worth so much coffee, or meat, and other pelts were priced in the same way. For example, two otter pelts were worth 1 MB. This system affected the indigenous people greatly because they became dependent on this trade system and European goods, giving up their traditional ways of life. The traders also brought smallpox and other diseases that the indigenous peoples had no defense against.

Other companies formed to compete with the Hudson Bay Company, but by 1821, with the help of the British government, all of these companies had been combined into the Hudson Bay Company and it now controlled about half of what is now modern Canada. The company slowly shifted away from dealing in furs to controlling real estate and even acting as the government in several areas. The company’s reach extended to the east coast, and they put their headquarters in Fort Vancouver, where Vancouver is now. They acted as the government in this area as well and they issued their own paper money. In the same way as the East India Company was India, the Hudson Bay Company was Canada. The British Empire was, in the beginning, founded by these private companies.

In 1863, the International Financial Society bought a controlling interest in the Hudson Bay Company and they wanted to sell Rupert’s Land, which was pretty much half of modern Canada. The United States of America was very interested in buying it and they offered $10 million (about $250 million today). If they had bought it, the modern United States would probably stretch from the border with Mexico to the top of Alaska. Still, through various machinations, the IFS sold the land to Canada for £300,000 (about $36 million today) using money loaned by the British government. Again, the indigenous people were given no say in this matter and received none of the money.

From this point on, the company started to transfer its trading posts into larger stores, and then department stores in the larger cities. In 2006, the company was bought by an American company. The history of the company is long, and it did a lot to make Canada what it is today. It also was responsible for suppressing the indigenous people, taking their land, and keeping them in perpetual debt by not paying fare prices for furs. And this is what I learned today.

Photo by Pierre Miyamoto: https://www.pexels.com/photo/eurasian-beaver-on-a-wood-12899887/

Sources

https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/hudsons-bay-company