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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In October 1666, King Charles II of England granted an audience to two men who had travelled a long way to see him. Médard Chouart des Groseilliers and Pierre-Esprit Radisson were from New France. Brothers-in-law and voyageurs, they came to tell the king about the “great store of beaver” they’d discovered west of France’s imperial claims.
If Charles II asked why they hadn’t taken their discovery to his cousin, King Louis XIV of France, they had an easy answer. After returning from an initial expedition to the region west of Lake Superior, in which they’d learned about the potential for a fur trade from the Sioux, des Groseilliers and Radisson presented their bounty of beaver fur to New France’s governor, Pierre de Voyer D’Argenson. Expecting to be rewarded for their entrepreneurial spirit, they were instead reprimanded, arrested and fined for travelling without D’Argenson’s permission and abandoning their post. After serving their sentences, the two men travelled to New England, where they met English officials who encouraged them to take their vision of an imperial company that traded in fur to Charles II.
Sailing with Charles’ backing, on the same expedition but different ships, the men attempted a journey to Hudson Bay in 1668. But des Groseilliers was the only one to make it, after a storm damaged Radisson’s ship and forced him to return to England. Des Groseilliers set up on James Bay’s southern shores, where he traded with the Cree. Upon his return to England, in October 1669, he confirmed what they had suspected, and Charles II’s papers reported: “Beaver is plenty.”