The untold story of the Hudson’s Bay Company
A look back at the early years of the 350-year-old institution that once claimed a vast portion of the globe
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There are many ways to tell the story of the Hudson’s Bay Company, which claimed and traded on some eight million square kilometres of the Earth’s surface, including large parts of Canada and the northwestern United States. It can start with Indigenous hunters, whose sustainable methods of trapping were exploited by HBC traders for a profit. It can start with European consumers, men and women desperate for the waterproof skins of the beaver, which had been hunted to near extinction in Europe. It can even start with the now-iconic Hudson’s Bay point blanket, something you’re bound to find in cottages and cabins across Canada. The English-made wool blanket — cream, with thick coloured stripes — harkens back to the 18th century, when it was the company’s most popular traded good.
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This telling of the HBC starts in London, the epicentre of the British Empire. It starts there because although the story of the HBC is a Canadian story, it’s a transnational one, too. It’s the story of an English company claiming and helping to colonize huge swathes of North America, inhabited by sovereign Indigenous nations. From London parlours to Cree communities to the U.S. Senate, it’s a story that connects Canadian history to world history — to the demands of European consumers, the decisions of English officials, the aspirations of Scottish traders and the futures of diverse Indigenous Peoples. It reminds us that although Indigenous history is inseparable from Canadian history, they aren’t always the same. Well before the establishment of Canada, which was never a foregone conclusion, Indigenous actors interacted with British actors as representatives of their own communities and nations. The HBC has become a part of Canadian history. But it’s a story that predates Canada, the making of which is only one small telling. In other words, the history of the Hudson’s Bay Company is a global story for our global era.
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https://www.canadiangeographic.ca/ar...ns-bay-company
https://www.firstpeoplesofcanada.com...furtrade3.html