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Hudson Bay Company Essay

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The Hudson Bay Company (HBC), Canada’s oldest company, has an incredible history ranging from the mid 1600’s to recent times. It changed the fur trading industry in Canada dramatically. Many events which are significant to Canadian history are directly related, or can be traced back to the Hudson Bay Company. The company also changed the lives of many people living in Canada, in both good and bad ways. This paper will cover the major impact and rich history of the Hudson Bay Company in Canada. It all started with the company’s founders, Radisson and Groseillier. The company’s founders, Pierre-Esprit Radisson, and his brother-in-law Médard Chouart des Groseilliers were the first to propose an idea of a fur trading company. They were French …show more content…

At first, the Hudson Bay Company’s “... main competition in the 1700s were French fur traders. Then, in 1713, the French recognized the right of the HBC to trade in Hudson Bay exclusively. After this, the main competition the HBC faced was with the North West Company” (Ray, n.d). Many conflicts in Canadian history such as the Pemmican Wars and the Battle of Seven Oaks are associated with the HBC and NWC. “The North West Company (NWC) was the main rival in the fur trade. The competition led to the small Pemmican War in 1816. The Battle of Seven Oaks on 19 June 1816 was the climax of the long dispute” (Dyre, 2001). The Pemmican War began when Governor Miles Macdonnell issued what became known as the Pemmican Proclamation. The proclamation was created to stop the exports of pemmican to NWC forts, and was seen as an attack in the eyes of the NWC. The following battle was the Battle of Seven Oaks, which was a “culmination of the Pemmican Wars and the escalating fur trade disputes between the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) and the North West Company (NWC)” (Barkwell, 2006). Although the rivalry between the two trading companies was at its peak, it all came to an end when they were forced to …show more content…

One reason why they united was because violence and legal fees alarmed the two companies, another being that the feud drained all the money of the NWC ultimately allowing the HBC to buy them out. They proceeded to use the name HBC. The merger of the two trading companies gained the approval of the British Parliament, due to them wanting to end the conflict. “After 1821, a group of independent free traders among the Métis population at the Red River Colony opposed the company’s monopoly rights…” (Ray, 2009). This would build up to the Sayer Trial in 1849, in which a Metis man, Pierre-Guillaume Sayer, “...was tried and convicted of trading with Indigenous groups in violation of the company’s legal privileges” (Ray, 2009). Fearing a revolution from the Metis people, the court never passed the

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