Hudson's Bay Company Founded
In 1670, King Charles II of England granted a royal charter to a group of investors, creating the "Governor and Company of Adventurers of England trading into Hudson's Bay." The charter gave the company a trading monopoly over all lands draining into Hudson Bay, a region called Rupert's Land after the king's cousin Prince Rupert, the company's first governor. It covered roughly a third of what is now Canada, making the company one of the largest landholders in history and one of the longest-lived corporations in the world.
The idea grew out of the experiences of two French fur traders, Pierre-Esprit Radisson and Médard des Groseilliers, who had worked in the interior of North America and concluded that the richest fur country could be reached more cheaply by sailing into Hudson Bay than by the long St. Lawrence River route controlled by New France. After failing to win backing from the French, they turned to English supporters. A trial voyage by the ketch Nonsuch in 1668-69 returned with a valuable cargo of beaver pelts, which persuaded investors and the Crown to proceed.
Beaver fur was the commodity that drove the business, since felted beaver pelt was in strong demand in Europe for making hats. Rather than pushing inland at first, the company built posts, called factories, on the shores of the bay and waited for Indigenous trappers and traders, notably the Cree and later others, to bring furs to them in exchange for goods such as metal tools, cloth, kettles, and firearms. The system depended on Indigenous knowledge, labor, and trading networks, and the relationships involved shaped the economy and politics of much of the continent.
The company's history was marked by rivalry. It clashed with French traders and, after the British conquest of New France, with the Montreal-based North West Company, a competition that at times turned violent. The two merged in 1821, giving the Hudson's Bay Company a dominant position across the northwest, extending to the Pacific. It also acted as a quasi-government in many areas where no other authority existed.
In 1869-70 the company agreed to transfer Rupert's Land to the new Dominion of Canada in return for payment and retained land, a transaction that bypassed the Indigenous and Métis people living there and helped provoke the Red River Resistance. The company continued as a retailer, becoming the Hudson's Bay department store chain, and carried on for over three and a half centuries before its Canadian retail operations entered insolvency proceedings in 2025. Its legacy remains central to debates about colonialism, commerce, and the making of Canada.