Rupert's Land

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Rupert's Land (also called Prince Rupert's Land) is a vast historical colonial territory in northern North America, covering the full watershed of all rivers draining into Hudson Bay, roughly equivalent to one third of modern Canada's total land area. It operated as a semi-autonomous proprietary territory for 200 years, and its 1870 transfer to newly confederated Canada formed the geographic backbone of the modern Canadian state.

Key moments

1670British King Charles II formally granted the entire Hudson Bay watershed territory to the newly chartered Hudson's Bay Company (HBC), naming it after Prince Rupert, the company's first appointed governor
1821HBC merged with rival fur trade operator the North West Company, expanding its effective jurisdiction over the territory further north to the Arctic Ocean and west into parts of the modern Pacific Northwest of the United States
1868The UK Parliament passed the Rupert's Land Act to formalize the legal framework for transferring the territory's control to the newly established Dominion of Canada
1869The Canadian government reached a formal purchase agreement with HBC, paying £300,000 in exchange for full territorial rights over Rupert's Land, while reserving small portions of land for HBC's ongoing commercial operations
1870The transfer of Rupert's Land to Canada took full legal effect, ending HBC's 200 years of quasi-governmental rule over the region

Nation-building Impact

The acquisition of Rupert's Land transformed Canada from a small cluster of eastern British colonies covering only 1.6 million square kilometres right after 1867 Confederation, into a transcontinental nation spanning nearly the full width of North America. This single transaction accounted for roughly 70% of Canada's modern total land area, removing the risk that the western prairie regions would be annexed by the rapidly expanding United States in the 19th century.

Unresolved Indigenous Sovereignty Legacy

Neither the 1670 royal grant to HBC nor the 1870 transfer to Canada involved any formal consultation or treaty negotiation with the dozens of First Nations communities that had inhabited Rupert's Land for thousands of years. The unilateral land transfer sparked the 1869-1870 Red River Resistance led by Métis communities in the Red River settlement, which directly led to the creation of the province of Manitoba shortly after the territory entered Canadian jurisdiction, and set the stage for over a century of subsequent Indigenous land claim settlements across the prairie and subarctic regions.

Fur Trade Governance Precedent

For two centuries, Rupert's Land operated as a uniquely commercial-focused jurisdiction: HBC exercised full governing authority, enforced trade rules, issued its own paper currency, and administered justice across hundreds of scattered fur trading posts. This system created an early interdependent economic and cultural relationship between European settler traders and Indigenous trappers that defined the social and economic structure of northern Canada long after HBC ceded formal territorial control.

conventional long name	Prince Rupert's Land
common name	Rupert's Land
subdivision	colony
nation	United Kingdom
status text	Territory of British America and British North America
government type	Trading company
title leader	Monarch
title deputy	HBC Governor

leader1	Charles II

year leader1	1670–1685 (first)

leader2	Victoria

year leader2	1837–1870 (last)

deputy1	Rupert of the Rhine

year deputy1	1670–1682 (first)

deputy2	Stafford Northcote

year deputy2	1870 (last)

today	* Canada Alberta Manitoba Northwest Territories Nunavut Ontario Quebec ** Saskatchewan * United States Minnesota North Dakota South Dakota Montana

year start	1670

year end	1870

date end	15 July

era	Age of Discovery Early Modern Period Victorian Era

flag type	Flag of the Hudson's Bay Company (1801–1965)

symbol type	Coat of arms of the Hudson's Bay Company

s1	Canada

flag s1	Canadian Red Ensign 1868-1921.svg

Rupert's Land, or Prince Rupert's Land , was a territory in British America (British North America after 1783) based on the Hudson Bay drainage basin. The right to "sole trade and commerce" over Rupert's Land was granted to the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC), based at York Factory, effectively giving that company a commercial monopoly over the area. The territory operated for 200 years from 1670 to 1870. Its namesake was Prince Rupert of the Rhine, who was a nephew of King Charles I and the first governor of the HBC. In December 1821, the HBC monopoly was extended from Rupert's Land to the Pacific coast.

The areas formerly belonging to Rupert's Land lie mostly within what is today Canada, and included the whole of Manitoba, most of Saskatchewan, southern Alberta, southern Nunavut, and northern parts of Ontario and Quebec. Additionally, it also extended into areas that are now parts of Minnesota, North Dakota, and Montana. The southern border, west of Lake of the Woods to the Rocky Mountains was the drainage divide between the Mississippi and Red/Saskatchewan watersheds until the Anglo-American Convention of 1818 substituted the 49th parallel.

History

Under the principles of the European doctrine of discovery, after the English visited and explored Hudson's Bay, they could claim any lands found that were not already owned or possessed by other European or Christian nations. England claimed ownership of the lands surrounding Hudson's Bay. After explorations in 1659, Prince Rupert took interest in the Hudson's Bay region. The 1668–1669 expedition of the Nonsuch to the Hudson's Bay area returned with GB£1400 worth of furs. However, England was not ready to organize a government on those lands. Instead, a "Company of Adventurers of England" was formed to administer those lands for England, thereby taking possession.

English Royal Charter of 1670

In 1670, King Charles II of England granted a royal charter to create the Hudson's Bay Company, under the governorship of Prince Rupert, the king's cousin. According to the Charter, the HBC received rights to:

"The sole Trade and Commerce of all those Seas, Streights, Bays, Rivers, Lakes, Creeks, and Sounds, in whatsoever Latitude they shall be, that lie within the entrance of the Streights commonly called Hudson's Streights, together with all the Lands, Countries and Territories, upon the Coasts and Confines of the Seas, Streights, Bays, Lakes, Rivers, Creeks and Sounds, aforesaid, which are not now actually possessed by any of our Subjects, or by the Subjects of any other Christian Prince or State [...] and that the said Land be from henceforth reckoned and reputed as one of our Plantations or Colonies in America, called Rupert's Land.[1]"

The Charter applied to all lands within the drainage basin of Hudson's Bay. It spanned an area of about 3861400 km2, more than a third of all of today's Canada.[2]

The royal charter made the "Governor and Company ... and their Successors, the true and absolute Lords and Proprietors, of the same Territory", and granted them the authority "to erect and build such Castles, Fortifications, Forts, Garrisons, Colonies or Plantations, Towns or Villages, in any Parts or Places within the Limits and Bounds granted before in these Presents, unto the said Governor and Company, as they in their Discretion shall think fit and requisite".

Economy

The Hudson's Bay Company dominated trade in Rupert's Land during the 18th–19th centuries and drew on the local population for many of its employees. This necessarily meant the hiring of many First Nations and Métis workers. Fuchs (2002) discusses the activities of these workers and the changing attitudes that the company had toward them. While George Simpson, one of the most noted company administrators, held a particularly dim view of mixed-blood workers and kept them from attaining positions in the company higher than postmaster, later administrators, such as James Anderson and Donald Ross, sought avenues for the advancement of indigenous employees.[13]

Morton (1962) reviews the pressures at work on that part of Rupert's Land where Winnipeg now stands, a decade before its incorporation into Canada. It was a region completely given over to the fur trade, divided between the Hudson's Bay Company and private traders, with some incursions by the rival North West Company based in Montreal. There was strong business and political agitation in Upper Canada for annexing the territory; in London the company's trading license was due for review; in St. Paul there was a growing interest in the area as a field for U.S. expansion. The great commercial depression of 1857 dampened most of the outside interests in the territory, which itself remained comparatively prosperous.[14]

Governance

Before 1835, the Hudson's Bay Company had no formal legal system in Rupert's Land, creating "courts" on an ad hoc basis. The Hudson's Bay Company's "laws" in the 17th and 18th centuries had been the regulations setting out the rules governing the relationships between various employees in the company's posts in Rupert's Land and to interact with Indigenous peoples. The 1670 charter granting the company control of Rupert's Land had said trials were to be conducted by the governor of Rupert's Land together with three of his councillors. There were only three cases before the 19th century with the one with the most detailed notes being the trial of one Thomas Butler in 1715 at the York Factory who was convicted of theft, slander and fornication with a native woman. In the early 19th century, the HBC had waged the Pemmican War with the rival North West Company based in Montreal for the control of the fur trade culminating in the Battle of Seven Oaks of 1816, which led to an investigation by the House of Commons of the United Kingdom, and which in turn led to the Second Canada Jurisdiction Act 1821, ordering the Hudson's Bay Company to establish justice of the peace courts in Rupert's Land. Instead of establishing courts, the company directed the governor and the council of Assiniboia to mediate disputes as they arose.

In 1839, the Hudson's Bay Company were convinced of the need to dispense formal justice throughout Rupert's Land and established a court at the Red River Colony, in the "District of Assiniboia", south of Lake Winnipeg. A recorder and president of the court would act as legal organizer, adviser, magistrate, and councillor and be responsible for the rationalization and formalization of Rupert's Land's judicial system.

Religious missions

Peake (1989) describes people, places, and activities that were involved in 19th-century Anglican missionary activities in the prairie areas of Rupert's Land, that huge portion of Canada controlled by the Hudson's Bay Company and inhabited by few Europeans. Early in the century, fur trade competition forced the company to expand into this interior region, and some officials saw advantages in allowing missionaries to accompany them. Officially they did not discriminate among denominations, but preference was often granted to the Anglicans of the Britain-based Church Missionary Society. The prairie missions extended from the area of 20th-century Winnipeg to the Mackenzie River delta in the north. Notable missionaries included Revd. John West, the first Protestant missionary to come to the area in 1820, David Anderson the first Bishop of Rupert's Land,[18] William Bompas and the Native American Anglican priests: Henry Budd,[18] James Settee, and Robert McDonald.[19]

There were also Roman Catholic missions in Rupert's Land. One notable missionary was Alexandre-Antonin Taché, who both before and after his consecration as bishop worked as a missionary in

Bibliography

" Summer.

External links

The Centre for Rupert's Land Studies - The University of Winnipeg
"Canada Buys Rupert's Land", CBC
Stout Hearts for Stey Braes: Life, People and Events in an outside Rupert's Land in the Closing Years of the Hudson's Bay Company and a Glance at the Group of Sturdy Men Who Labored to Hold the Fort for the Fur Trade Manuscript at Dartmouth College Library

References

Royal Charter of the Hudson's Bay Company Hudson's Bay Company, retrieved 3 January 2017^
Canada Drainage Basins The National Atlas of Canada, Natural Resources Canada, 1985, retrieved 24 November 2010^
Hudson's Bay Company, Struggle for Control of the Fur Trade: 18th Century