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The Hudson’s Bay Company and the management of long-distance trade, 1670-1730

University of British Columbia

This thesis examines the Hudson's Bay Company from 1670 to 1730 focussing on its management of long-distance trade, the way it maximized opportunities and minimized risk and uncertainty. The company's involvement in the London fur market, its procurement of trade goods, the barter trade in North America, and their interrelationship are analysed almost entirely from the perspective of the Committee in London which managed the company. The organization of these commercial details in the context of the seventeenth-and eighteenth-century economic world explain how the company coordinated the disparate spheres of its operation and how it survived the drop in fur prices which occurred shortly after its advent. Historiographically the paper relies heavily on a growing body of literature dealing with long-distance trade and the expansion of Europe. In this respect the work brings a new perspective to fur trade historiography.

Text

2010-05-29

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http://hdl.handle.net/2429/25180

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University of British Columbia

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