What was the Hudson's Bay Company royal charter of 1670?
Answer
A royal charter granted by King Charles II of England on May 2, 1670 that gave the Hudson's Bay Company a monopoly on trade and a proprietary land claim over Rupert's Land, the vast Hudson Bay drainage basin covering about 3.9 million square kilometres of present-day Canada.
Explanation
The Hudson's Bay Company royal charter of 1670 was a royal charter granted by King Charles II of England on May 2, 1670 that created the Governor and Company of Adventurers of England Trading into Hudson's Bay (the Hudson's Bay Company, or HBC). The charter granted the Company a monopoly on trade and a proprietary land claim over the entire Hudson Bay drainage basin, the territory called Rupert's Land after the Company's first Governor, Prince Rupert of the Rhine (a cousin of King Charles II). Rupert's Land covered approximately 3.9 million square kilometres, or about 39 per cent of modern Canada.
The Company was founded by 18 English investors led by Prince Rupert. The catalyst was the 1668 to 1669 voyage of the ketch Nonsuch under Captain Zachariah Gillam, which had returned with valuable beaver pelts from a successful season at the southern shore of Hudson Bay. The voyage proved the commercial viability of trading directly with Indigenous peoples on the Hudson Bay coast, bypassing the French trade routes through the St. Lawrence. The two French defectors Pierre-Esprit Radisson and Médard des Groseilliers had promoted the venture in England after being denied support in New France.
The HBC operated for two centuries primarily through coastal trading posts (called factories), where Indigenous trappers brought furs in exchange for European trade goods. Major HBC posts included York Factory (founded 1684), Fort Albany (1684), Moose Factory (1673), and Churchill (Prince of Wales Fort, 1717). The Company exclusively used coastal posts until the late 1700s, when competition from the Montreal-based North West Company forced HBC to expand inland. The two companies fought a commercial war until they merged on March 26, 1821 under the HBC name.
The HBC's monopoly ended on July 15, 1870 when the Company surrendered Rupert's Land and the North-Western Territory to Canada under the Rupert's Land Act of 1868 in exchange for 300,000 pounds sterling and one-twentieth of fertile land in the Prairie region. This transfer was the largest single real-estate transaction in Canadian history and tripled Canada's land area. The Company became a general-merchandise retailer (still operating today as Hudson's Bay) and is the oldest commercial corporation in North America. The 1670 charter remains a foundational document of Canadian constitutional history.
Why this matters for your test
The 1670 Royal Charter created the company that would shape Canadian fur trade, exploration, and territory for two centuries. Recognising the May 2, 1670 grant by Charles II and the 3. 9-million-square-kilometre Rupert's Land claim gives candidates two specific anchors.
Source: Library and Archives Canada; Hudson's Bay Company Archives
