Hudson Bay Company, a corporation formed in 1670 by Prince Rupert and seventeen noblemen and gentlemen for importing into Great Britain furs and skins obtained by barter from the Indians of North America. The company was invested with the absolute proprietorship and the exclusive right of traffic over an undefined territory, which, under the name of Rupert's Land, comprised all the regions discovered, or to be discovered, within the entrance of Hudson Strait. This was taken as meaning all lands that drained into Hudson Bay or Hudson Strait. For more than a century, however, the grantees confined themselves to the coast districts. Down to 1713 they had also to contend against the hostile acts of the French of Canada, who destroyed their forts, ruined their goods, and captured their ships. But after Canada passed from the French to the British in 1763 adventurers from the great lakes began to penetrate, in quest of peltry, far up the Saskatchewan towards the Rocky Mountains. And their enterprises, coming to be prosecuted with more systematic energy, led in 1783 to the formation of the North-west Fur Company of Montreal. After a period of stubborn competition, the Hudson Bay Company coalesced with its formidable opponent in 1821. The sphere of their labours was now practically coincident with all British North America, between the Pacific and Atlantic, and the Arctic Ocean and the United States. In 1838 the Hudson Bay Company again acquired the sole right of trading for itself for a period of twenty-one years; on the expiry of this concession the fur trade in British North America was thrown open to the world. Finally, in 1869, the company made a formal cession to the British government of whatever territorial claims remained, receiving an indemnity of £300,000 from the Dominion of Canada, to which the whole territories were forthwith annexed. It was, however, stipulated that the company should retain all its forts, with 50,000 acres and one-twentieth of all the land lying within the 'fertile belt' from the Red River to the Rocky Mountains. Besides still carrying on the business of collecting furs, the company now derives a large income from the sale of these conceded lands.
See Butler's Great Lone Land (1872), H. M. Robinson's Great Fur Land (New York, 1879), the History by Professor George Bryce (1900), and Beckles Willson's The Great Company (1900).