The Hudson's Bay Company and its critics in the eighteenth century

Glyndwr Williams

doi:10.2307/3678766

The Hudson's Bay Company and its critics in the eighteenth century

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 February 2009

Glyndwr Williams

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Glyndwr Williams: Affiliation:
Queen Mary College, London

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As the Hudson's Bay Company prepares to celebrate its tercentenary it is not mere academic perverseness which prompts a paper on a period in the Company's history when it was threatened with extinction. Longevity has its own fascination, and crucial in the story of the Company's growth into one of the great business enterprises of the modern world was its survival amid the bitter criticism directed at chartered companies in the eighteenth century. Small and apparently vulnerable, it showed unexpected stubbornness in resisting attacks which overwhelmed several of its fellows. The controversies which buffeted the Hudson's Bay Company also help to illuminate those mercantile pressure groups working against monopolies in the mid-eighteenth century, and reveal something of the friction at home which accompanied the steady expansion of British commerce overseas.

Type: Research Article
Information: Transactions of the Royal Historical Society , Volume 20 , December 1970 , pp. 149 - 171

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/3678766 [Opens in a new window]
Copyright: Copyright © Royal Historical Society 1970

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^{page 150 note 1} Rich, E. E. (ed.), Minutes of the Hudson's Bay Company 1671–1674(Toronto, Champlain Society, and London, Hudson's Bay Record Society, 1942), p. 139. Acknowledgement is made to the Hudson's Bay Record Society for permission to quote from its volumes.Google Scholar

^{page 150 note 2} On all this see Rich, E. E., The History of the Hudson's Bay Company 1670–1674 (London, Hudson's Bay Record Society, 1958), Vol. I.Google Scholar

^{page 150 note 3} Oldmixon, John, The British Empire in America (London, 1708), i. 382.Google Scholar

^{page 151 note 1} Quoted in Beckles Willson, The Great Company (London, 1908), i. 256.Google Scholar PubMed

^{page 151 note 2} HBC A.6/5, fo. 56.I am grateful to the Governor and Committee of the Hudson's Bay Company for permission to quote from the Company records at Beaver House, London.

^{page 152 note 1} HBC A.6/6, fos. 83, 110.

^{page 152 note 2} HBC A.^1/33, fo. 77d.

^{page 152 note 3} Hudson's Bay had been an active stock only during the 1690's, and its last public quotation was in 1700. The Company's records show that stock transfers in the eighteenth century were arranged privately, and that many of the transfers were from one member of a family to another, or between existing shareholders. See e.g. HBC A.43/4 (Stock Transfer Book, 1730–60).

^{page 152 note 4} A Compleat Guide to London(London, 1740), p. 134.Google Scholar

^{page 152 note 5} Oldmixon, John, The British Empire in America (2nd edn., London, 1741), i. 566–7.Google Scholar

^{page 153 note 1} Cato's Letters (London, 1724), iii. 172, 176.Google Scholar

^{page 153 note 2} Decker, Matthew, An Essay on the Causes of the Decline of the Foreign Trade (London, 1744), p. 23.Google Scholar

^{page 153 note 3} See, for example, the summary in Sutherland, Lucy S., The East India Company in Eighteenth–century Politics (Oxford, 1952), pp. 28–30, of the attack on the East India Company in 1730 by M.P.'s supported by a group of London, Liverpool and Bristol merchants.Google Scholar

^{page 153 note 4} On Dobbs, the Hudson's Bay Company and the Northwest Passage see Clarke, Desmond, Arthur Dobbs Esquire 1689–1765 Surveyor–General of Ireland Prospector and Governor of North Carolina (London, 1958), chs. 5–8Google Scholar; Williams, Glyndwr, The British Search for the Northwest Passage in the Eighteenth Century (London, 1962), chs. II–V.Google Scholar

^{page 154 note 1} S.P. Dom. (Naval) 42/81, p. 388.

^{page 154 note 2} Adm. 2/473, P. 473.

^{page 154 note 3} Middleton, Christopher, A Rejoinder to Mr. Dobbs's Reply(London, 1745), P. 119.Google Scholar

^{page 154 note 4} Castle Ward Papers, Bk. V, p. 131.I am grateful to Mr Desmond Clarke, Librarian of the Royal Dublin Society, who lent me copies of the letters of Arthur Dobbs at a time when they were preserved among the Castle Ward Papers in the possession of Viscount Bangor.

^{page 155 note 1} See Wood, A. C., A History of the Levant Company (London, 1935), P. 154.Google Scholar

^{page 155 note 2} Dobbs, Arthur, An Account of the Countries adjoining to Hudson's Bay… (London, 1744), p. 65.Google Scholar

^{page 155 note 3} Journals of the House of Commons, xxiv. 720.Google Scholar

^{page 156 note 1} The names of the subscribers are listed in Ellis, Henry, A Voyage to Hudson's–Bay by the Dobbs Gallery and California, In the Years 1746 and 1747, For Discovering a Northwest Passage (London, 1748), pp. xxiii–xxv.Google Scholar

^{page 156 note 2} See Acts of the Privy Council of England(Colonial Series) iii. 776–7. Throughout this paper dates before 1752 are given in Old Style, except that the year is taken to begin on 1 January, not 25 March.

^{page 156 note 3} The letter of 8 February 1748 is printed in Clarke, Arthur Dobbs, pp. 212–13.

^{page 156 note 4} The British Magazine(London, 1747), ii. 502.Google Scholar PubMed

^{page 157 note 1} Harris, John, Navigantium atque Itinerantium Bibliotheca: or, a compleat Collection of Voyages and Travels, revised and enlarged by John Campbell (London, 1744–1748), i. 925; ii. 288, 440.Google Scholar

^{page 157 note 2} The pleas of Dobbs and the Company are set out in HBC, E.18/1, fos. 112–19.

^{page 158 note 1} It was one made by the East India Company later in the century, at the time of Fox's India Bill of 1783 for example. See Sutherland, East India Company, pp. 401, 412.

^{page 158 note 2} Report of Ryder, D. and Murray, W. to the Privy Council, 10 August 1748. Printed in Papers presented to the Committee Appointed to Inquire into the State and Conditions of the Countries Adjoining to Hudson's Bay, and of the Trade carried on there (London 1749), p. 78.Google Scholar

^{page 158 note 3} Castle Ward Papers, Bk. VI, p. 142.

^{page 158 note 4} See Journals of the House of Commons, xxv, 810–52 passim

^{page 159 note 1} See Brit. Mus., Lansdowne MS. 846, fo. 277.

^{page 159 note 2} See Minchinton, W. E. (ed.), Politics and the Port of Bristol in the Eighteenth Century(Bristol Record Society, 1963), p. 69.Google Scholar

^{page 159 note 3} Quoted in Donnan, Elizabeth (ed.), Documents illustrative of the History of the Slave Trade to America (Washington, 1931) ii. 499.Google Scholar

^{page 159 note 4} Journals of the House of Commons, xxv, 777.

^{page 160 note 1} See list of Company of Merchants trading to Africa, and list of ship–owners engaged in the African trade, in Donnan, Documents illustrative of the Slave Trade, ii. 492–3, 496–8.

^{page 160 note 2} See Report from the Committee Appointed to Inquire into the State and Conditions of the Countries Adjoining to Hudson's Bay, and of the Trade carried on there (London, 1749).Google Scholar

^{page 161 note 1} See Hudson's Bay Company Papers, University of Toronto Library, p. 1.

^{page 161 note 2} [Dobbs, Arthur], A Short State of the Countries and Trade of North America. Claimed by the Hudson's Bay Company (London, 1749), p. 6.Google Scholar

^{page 162 note 1} Hudson's Bay Company Papers, University of Toronto Library, p. 1; Manuscripts of the Earl of Egmont, Diary of the First Earl of Egmont (Viscount Percival), Vol. III, 1739–1747 (London, Historical Manuscripts Commission, 1923), p. 314.Google Scholar

^{page 162 note 2} ibid., i. 65–71.

^{page 162 note 3} See Rich, History of Hudson's Bay Company, i. 649–53.

^{page 162 note 4} See HBC A.2/1, fo. 35d, A.2/2, fos. 5, 8, 10.

^{page 162 note 5} Annotation by John or Robert Merry in Dobbs, Short State, p. 4.

^{page 162 note 6} HBC E.18/1, fos. 190–204.

^{page 163 note 1} ibid., fo. 203d.

^{page 163 note 2} The London Magazine (London, 1749), xviii. 411.Google Scholar PubMed

^{page 163 note 3} Castle Dobbs Papers (Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, Belfast), D.O.D. 162/53, 54, 60, 61.

^{page 164 note 1} D.O.D. 162/60, p. 5.

^{page 164 note 2} See Reports from Committees of the House of Commons (1803), ii. 373–7.

^{page 164 note 3} Journal of the Commissioners for Trade and Plantations, 1750–1753 (London, 1932), p. 300. See also CO. 5/6, fos. 71–91; S.P. Dom. 44/323, fos. 41–9.Google Scholar

^{page 165 note 1} Tucker, Josiah, A Brief Essay on the Advantages and Disadvantages which respectively attend France and Great Britain with regard to Trade (London, 1750). P. 41.Google Scholar

^{page 165 note 2} See Schuyler, R. L. (ed.), Josiah Tucker: A Selection from his Economic and Political Writings (New York, 1931), pp. 166–79.Google Scholar

^{page 165 note 3} Postlethwayt, Malachy, Universal Dictionary of Trade and Commerce Translated from the French… of … Monsieur Savary… with large additions (London, 1751–1755), i– 957–61.Google Scholar

^{page 165 note 4} The Monthly Review (London, 1752), vii. 75.Google Scholar PubMed

^{page 165 note 5} Robson, Joseph, An Account of Six Years Residence in Hudson's–Bay, from 1333 to 1736, and 1744 to 1747 (London, 1752), p. 6.Google Scholar

^{page 166 note 1} See Williams, Glyndwr, 'Arthur Dobbs and Joseph Robson: New Light on the Relationship between Two Early Critics of the Hudson's Bay Company', Canadian Historical Review, xl (1959), 132–6.Google Scholar

^{page 166 note 2} See Davies, K. G. and Johnson, A. M. (eds.), Northern Quebec and Labrador Journals and Correspondence 1819–35 (London, The Hudson's Bay Record Society, 1963), pp. xxii–iii.Google Scholar

^{page 166 note 3} See Williams, Northwest Passage, ch. VI.

^{page 166 note 4} See Glover, Richard (ed.), A Journey from Prince of Wales's Fort in Hudson's Bay to the Northern Ocean 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772 by Samuel Hearne (Toronto, 1958), p. lxxGoogle Scholar. Cluny's schemes were even more prodigious than those of Dobbs. He advocated large–scale settlement around Hudson Bay, with no fewer than twelve separate colonies, and the development of a whale–fishery to employ eight hundred vessels and sixteen thousand men! Despite the evidence produced in 1749 he could write of the Company that 'they have long reaped, and do still reap a Profit, which a Capital ten Times as large could not produce in any other Channel of Commerce'. [Cluny, A.], The American Traveller: or, Observations on the present state, culture and commerce of the British Colonies in America…By an old and experienced Trader (London, 1769), p. 19.Google Scholar

^{page 167 note 1} Dobbs, Short State, annotation on p. 5.

^{page 167 note 2} Even so, Sir James Winter Lake was Deputy–Governor throughout Wegg's Governorship. Between 1710 and 1807 there were only eight years (1743–6 and 1760–5) when a member of the Lake family was not either Governor or Deputy Governor.

^{page 168 note 1} Smith, Adam, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations,.reprinted from the 6th edn. with an introduction by Scott, W. R. (London, 1921), ii. 265.Google Scholar

^{page 168 note 2} See Council Minutes of the Royal Society, Bk. V (1763–68), pp. 187 ff.

^{page 168 note 3} ibid., Bk. VI (1769–82), pp. 121, 206.

^{page 169 note 1} See Cook, James and King, James, A Voyage to the Pacific Ocean… (London, 1784), i.Google Scholar

^{page 169 note 2} The Monthly Review (London, 1784), lxx. 462Google Scholar PubMed. See also The Critical Review (London, 1784), lviii. 88.Google Scholar PubMed

^{page 169 note 3} The Monthly Review (London, 1787), lxxvii. 292.Google Scholar PubMed

^{page 170 note 1} CO. 42/72, p. 515.

^{page 170 note 2} Umfreville, Edward, The Present State of Hudson's Bay (London, 1790)Google Scholar. On Umfreville see Dr Glover's, Richard comments in Williams, Glyndwr (ed.), Andrew Graham s Observations on Hudson's Bay 1767–1791 (London, Hudson's Bay Record Society, 1969), pp. xxx–xxxiii.Google Scholar

^{page 170 note 3} HBCC.7/13, fo. 1.

^{page 170 note 4} CO. 42/72, P. 555.

^{page 170 note 5} HBC C.7/13, fo. 1d.

^{page 170 note 6} Dalrymple, Alexander, A Plan for Promoting the Fur–Trade, and Securing it to this Country, by Uniting the Operations of the East–India and Hudson's Bay Companys (London, 1789), preface.Google Scholar

^{page 171 note 1} Glover, , Journey by Samuel Hearne, pp. lviii, lxiv–lxxi.Google Scholar

^{page 171 note 2} The Gentleman's Magazine (London, 1796), lxvi. 497.Google Scholar PubMed

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