and hard-headed, and the talk is of trade percentages, available stocks, staff promotions, distribution problems. Scratch, scratch goes the pen of the secretary, page after page across the foolscap, and at the end of the session the ten men file up to sign their names and ranks at the bottom of the page, in steady unostentatious hands, before following their chairman through the door into the corridor outside—down which, when the door is opened, a fragrance of wine and roast victuals comfortably drifts.
They are in an elegant white house upon a creek. It is made of painted clapboard, and it has wide shuttered windows, a belfry over the adjoining warehouse, gardens and outhouses behind: all around thickets of trees run darkly to the creek, and to the wide islet-speckled lake which lies below. It looks an urbane and cosy place—a well-stocked, warm, carefully cherished place, where men can dotheir business in a civilized way, with pleasure in each other’s company, and plenty to eat and drink.
These are the Governor-in-Chief, the Chief Factors and the Chief Traders of the Northern Department of Rupert’s Land of the Honourable Company of Adventurers of England Trading Into Hudson’s Bay, and they are meeting for their annual council meeting at the trading settlement called Norway House, which lies on the shore of Playgreen Lake in largely uninhabited, mostly unexplored, and almost inconceivably remote forest country 1,500 miles west of Montreal. They have come there by boat and canoe from the far corners of the Canadian wilderness: and Sir George Simpson, their formidable little chairman, has arrived in a canoe so splendidly accoutred, so gorgeously manned, that his immense journey through the forests has been almost a royal progress.
2
Trade and Empire had always gone together—had once, indeed, seemed virtually synonymous. That trade necessarily followed the flag was an often specious theory not yet formulated, but since the earliest days of British overseas settlement, the chance of fortune had been a prime motive of expansion. The bartering white man on the alien shore was an original archetype of empire: beads, skins, gunpowder, cowrie shells, calicos, rum and slaves were staples of English glory. Trade had first taken the British to India, and though the lost colonies of America were profit-seeking enterprises of a different kind, still the old 18th century empire had been frankly a commercial structure.
The tradition of the English merchant venturers was born in the sixteenth century, when Edward VI gave a Royal Charter to a company formed by some 100 English gentlemen, and three ladies, called ‘The Mysterie and Companie of the Merchants Adventurers for the discoverie of Regions, Dominions, Islands and places unknown’. This concern, later the Muscovy Company, set the pattern for all the chartered companies that were to follow. It was formed with royal approval to perform, at a profit to itself, some service to the State—which in those days had few ships and little cash of itsown. It was specifically a trading company, but it was incidentally an instrument of policy—the three little ships of its first expedition failed in their attempts to find a northern route to Cathay, but instead the company opened up trade with Russia, founded the first British trading stations or ‘factories’ in foreign territory, and learnt a great deal about the geography of Central Asia. The Muscovy Company never aspired to foreign dominion, but in establishing diplomatic contacts, in assembling intelligence, in exploration and in the establishment of trade routes, its merchants were in effect doing the work of the State.
By the early decades of Victoria’s reign two great exemplars of this tradition survived, and were now assuming a new role in national affairs. The relationship between trade and dominion was becoming more complex. As Disraeli said of that traditional colonial commodity, sugar, all considerations now
They are in an elegant white house upon a creek. It is made of painted clapboard, and it has wide shuttered windows, a belfry over the adjoining warehouse, gardens and outhouses behind: all around thickets of trees run darkly to the creek, and to the wide islet-speckled lake which lies below. It looks an urbane and cosy place—a well-stocked, warm, carefully cherished place, where men can dotheir business in a civilized way, with pleasure in each other’s company, and plenty to eat and drink.
These are the Governor-in-Chief, the Chief Factors and the Chief Traders of the Northern Department of Rupert’s Land of the Honourable Company of Adventurers of England Trading Into Hudson’s Bay, and they are meeting for their annual council meeting at the trading settlement called Norway House, which lies on the shore of Playgreen Lake in largely uninhabited, mostly unexplored, and almost inconceivably remote forest country 1,500 miles west of Montreal. They have come there by boat and canoe from the far corners of the Canadian wilderness: and Sir George Simpson, their formidable little chairman, has arrived in a canoe so splendidly accoutred, so gorgeously manned, that his immense journey through the forests has been almost a royal progress.
2
Trade and Empire had always gone together—had once, indeed, seemed virtually synonymous. That trade necessarily followed the flag was an often specious theory not yet formulated, but since the earliest days of British overseas settlement, the chance of fortune had been a prime motive of expansion. The bartering white man on the alien shore was an original archetype of empire: beads, skins, gunpowder, cowrie shells, calicos, rum and slaves were staples of English glory. Trade had first taken the British to India, and though the lost colonies of America were profit-seeking enterprises of a different kind, still the old 18th century empire had been frankly a commercial structure.
The tradition of the English merchant venturers was born in the sixteenth century, when Edward VI gave a Royal Charter to a company formed by some 100 English gentlemen, and three ladies, called ‘The Mysterie and Companie of the Merchants Adventurers for the discoverie of Regions, Dominions, Islands and places unknown’. This concern, later the Muscovy Company, set the pattern for all the chartered companies that were to follow. It was formed with royal approval to perform, at a profit to itself, some service to the State—which in those days had few ships and little cash of itsown. It was specifically a trading company, but it was incidentally an instrument of policy—the three little ships of its first expedition failed in their attempts to find a northern route to Cathay, but instead the company opened up trade with Russia, founded the first British trading stations or ‘factories’ in foreign territory, and learnt a great deal about the geography of Central Asia. The Muscovy Company never aspired to foreign dominion, but in establishing diplomatic contacts, in assembling intelligence, in exploration and in the establishment of trade routes, its merchants were in effect doing the work of the State.
By the early decades of Victoria’s reign two great exemplars of this tradition survived, and were now assuming a new role in national affairs. The relationship between trade and dominion was becoming more complex. As Disraeli said of that traditional colonial commodity, sugar, all considerations now
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