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Hudson's Bay Company
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Compagnie de la Baie d'Hudson
Type Private
Founded May 2, 1670
Headquarters Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Key people Richard Baker, Governor and CEO
Revenue $7.0 billion CAD (▼ $59.7 million FY 2005)
Owner NRDC Equity Partners
Employees 70,000
Divisions The Bay
Zellers
Home Outfitters
Fields
Lord & Taylor
Fortunoff
Website www.hbc.com
Wikinews has related news: North America's oldest retailer sold to U.S. owners of Lord & Taylor
The Hudson's Bay Company (French: Compagnie de la Baie d'Hudson), abbreviated HBC, is the oldest commercial corporation in North America and is one of the oldest in the world. The company was incorporated by British royal charter in 1670 as The Governor and Company of Adventurers of England trading into Hudson's Bay; it is now domiciled in Canada and has adopted the more common shorter name as its legal moniker.[1]
It was once the de facto government in parts of North America before European-based colonies and nation states existed. It was at one time the largest landowner in the world, with Rupert's Land being a large part of North America. From its longtime headquarters at York Factory on Hudson Bay, it controlled the fur trade throughout much of British-controlled North America for several centuries, undertaking early exploration. Its traders and trappers forged early relationships with many groups of First Nations/Native Americans and its network of trading posts formed the nucleus for later official authority in many areas of Western Canada and the United States.
In the late 19th century, its vast territory became the largest component in the newly formed Dominion of Canada, in which the company was the largest private landowner. With the decline of the fur trade, the company evolved into a mercantile business selling vital goods to settlers in the Canadian West. Today the company is best known for its department stores throughout Canada. The Hudson's Bay Company Archives are located in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.
The company is owned by American-based NRDC Equity Partners, a private equity firm that also owns Lord & Taylor and Fortunoff.
History
Early years
In the 17th century, the French had a monopoly on the Canadian fur trade. However, two French traders, Pierre-Esprit Radisson and Médard des Groseilliers, learned from the Cree that the best fur country was north and west of Lake Superior and that there was a "frozen sea" still further north; correctly guessing that this was the Hudson Bay, they sought French backing for a plan to set up a trading post on the Bay, thus reducing the cost of moving furs overland. However, the recently appointed French Secretary of State, Jean-Baptiste Colbert, was trying to promote farming in the colony, and was opposed to exploration and trapping.
Radisson and des Groseilliers then approached a group of businessmen in Boston, Massachusetts to help finance their explorations. The Bostonians agreed on the plan's merits, and brought the two to England to elicit financing. In 1668, the English commissioned two ships, the Nonsuch and the Eaglet to explore possible trade into Hudson Bay. The Nonsuch was commanded by Captain Zachariah Gillam and accompanied by Groseilliers, while the Eaglet was commanded by Captain William Stannard and accompanied by Radisson. On June 5, 1668, both ships left port at Deptford, England, but the Eaglet was forced to turn back off the coast of Ireland. The Nonsuch continued on all the way to the southern portion of James Bay, where Fort Rupert was founded at the mouth of the Rupert River. After a successful trading expedition over the winter of 1668–1669, the Nonsuch returned to England.
The Governor and Company of Adventurers of England trading into Hudson's Bay was incorporated on May 2, 1670, with a Royal Charter from King Charles II. The charter granted the company a monopoly over the Indian Trade, especially the fur trade, in the region watered by all rivers and streams flowing into Hudson Bay in northern Canada, an area known as Rupert's Land after the first director of the Company, Prince Rupert of the Rhine, a first cousin of Charles. This region constitutes 1.5 million square miles (3.9 million km²) in the drainage basin of Hudson Bay, comprising over one third the area of modern-day Canada and stretching into the north central United States, but the specific boundaries were unknown at the time.
The company founded its first headquarters at Fort Nelson at the mouth of the Nelson River in present-day northeastern Manitoba. The location afforded convenient access to the fort from the vast interior waterway systems of the Saskatchewan and Red rivers. Other posts were quickly established around the southern edge of Hudson Bay in Manitoba and present-day Ontario and Quebec. Called "factories" (because the "factor", i.e. a person acting as a mercantile agent and frequently specializing in one or a small number of commodities, did business from there), these posts operated in the manner of the Dutch fur trading operations in New Netherland.
The Hudson's Bay Company's second inland trading post was established by Samuel Hearne in 1774 in Cumberland House, Saskatchewan.[2]
During the spring and summer, First Nations traders, who did the vast majority of the actual trapping, travelled by canoe and were received at the fort to sell their pelts. In exchange they typically received metal tools and hunting gear, often imported by the company from Germany, the centre of inexpensive manufacturing in that era.
The early coastal factory model contrasted with the system of the French, who established an extensive system of inland posts and sent traders to live among the tribes of the region. After war broke out in Europe between France and England in the 1680s, the two nations regularly sent expeditions to raid and capture each other's fur trading posts. In March 1686, the French sent a raiding party under Chevalier des Troyes over 1300 km (800 miles) to capture the company's posts along James Bay. The French appointed Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville, who had shown extreme heroism during the raids, as commander of the company's captured posts. In 1697, d'Iberville commanded a French naval raid on the company's headquarters at York Factory. On the way to the fort, he defeated three ships of the Royal Navy in the Battle of the Bay, the largest naval battle in the history of the North American Arctic. D'Iberville's depleted French force captured York Factory by a ruse in which they laid siege to fort while pretending to be a much larger army. York Factory changed hands several times in the next decade. It was finally ceded permanently to what was by then the Kingdom of Great Britain (following the union of Scotland and England in 1707) in the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht. After the treaty, the company rebuilt York Factory as a brick star fort at the mouth of the nearby Hayes River, its present location.
In its trade with native peoples, the company adopted the widespread use of issuing wool blankets, called Hudson's Bay point blankets, in exchange for the beaver pelts trapped by native hunters.
A parallel may be drawn between HBC's control over Rupert's Land and the trade monopoly and government functions enjoyed by the Honourable East India Company over India during roughly the same period.
19th century
In 1821, the North West Company of Montreal and Hudson's Bay Company merged, with a combined territory that was extended by a licence to the North-Western Territory, which reached to the Arctic Ocean on the north and the Pacific Ocean on the west. Before the merger, the employees of the HBC, unlike the North West Company, did not participate in its profits. After the merger, with all of its operations under the management of Sir George Simpson from 1826 to 1860, the company had a corps of commissioned officers, 25 chief factors and 28 chief traders who shared in the profits of the company during the monopoly years. Its trade covered 7 770 000 km² (3,000,000 square miles) and it had 1,500 contract employees.[3] These officers, together referred to as the Commissioned Gentlemen, would be promoted first to the rank of Chief Trader. A Chief Trader would be in charge of an individual post and was entitled to one share of the profits of the company. Chief Factors sat in council with the Governors and were the heads of districts. They were entitled to two shares of the profits or the losses of the company. The average income of a Chief Trader was £360 and that of a Chief Factor was £720.[4]
