Memory of the World; 2012 - unesdoc - Unesco

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Hudson’s Bay Company
archival records
Inscribed 2007
What is it
The archives of the Hudson’s Bay Company from 1670,
when the company received a royal charter to trade in
Rupert’s Land, the huge drainage basin of Hudson Bay
in North America, to 1920, the 250th anniversary of the
company’s founding.
Why was it inscribed
The oldest company in Canada and one of the oldest in
the world, the Hudson’s Bay Company was enormously
successful with a reach spanning vast areas of the
western hemisphere. Its extensive and meticulously
kept archives are a rich source of information on its
activities in commerce and trading, in the exploration
and administration of its vast holdings, in mapping and
research and in every aspect of running an organization
that operated across 40 percent of modern-day Canada
and over two continents.
Where is it
Archives of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada
Many great merchant expeditions set out in the last four
centuries from the shores of these Islands and materially
altered the history of the lands to which they sailed.
Of these, none was more prominent than the Hudson’s
Bay Company.
Sir Winston Churchill (1874–1965)
� Company ledgers
250 Hudson’s Bay Company archival records
The Governor and Company of Adventurers of England
trading into Hudson’s Bay is the full name of the
organization established in London on 2 May 1670 by royal
charter of King Charles II. The charter gave the company
full ownership and control of the huge area of the Hudson
Bay drainage basin. The area was renamed Rupert’s Land
after Prince Rupert of the Palatinate, Charles’s cousin and
the company’s first governor.
The archives of the Hudson’s Bay Company over
the following 250 years show it involved not only the
history of the fur trade for which it was established,
but also in the exploration of North America, in
the expansion of the newly established Dominion
of Canada to whom it ceded its territory in 1870, and
in its development of its widespread business interests
– including retail, wholesale, property and natural
resources – in the 20th century.
In its cross-Atlantic trade links with London and thereby
to the world, the Hudson’s Bay Company was a pioneer
of the modern international and global economy. It added