The Company: The Rise and Fall of the Hudson's Bay Empire

NATIONAL BESTSELLER A thrilling new telling of the story of modern Canada's origins. The story of the Hudson's Bay Company, dramatic and adventurous and complex, is the story of modern Canada's creation. And yet it hasn't been told in a book for over thirty years, and never in such depth and vivid detail as in Stephen R. Bown's exciting new telling. The Company started out small in 1670, trading practical manufactured goods for furs with the Indigenous inhabitants of inland subarctic Canada. Controlled by a handful of English aristocrats, it expanded into a powerful political force that ruled the lives of many thousands of people--from the lowlands south and west of Hudson Bay, to the tundra, the great plains, the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific northwest. It transformed the culture and economy of many Indigenous groups and ended up as the most important political and economic force in northern and western North America. When the Company was faced with competition from French traders in the 1780s, the result was a bloody corporate battle, the coming of Governor George Simpson--one of the greatest villains in Canadian history--and the Company assuming political control and ruthless dominance. By the time its monopoly was rescinded after two hundred years, the Hudson's Bay Company had reworked the entire northern North American world. Stephen R. Bown has a scholar's profound knowledge and understanding of the Company's history, but wears his learning lightly in a narrative as compelling, and rich in well-drawn characters, as a page-turning novel.

Biographies & Memoirs

Bown, Stephen

Historical

Doubleday, Canada

Anchor Canada

Dominion: The Railway and the Rise of Canada

Stephen R. Bown continues to revitalize Canadian history with this thrilling account of the engineering triumph that created a nation. In The Company, his bestselling work of revisionist history, Stephen Bown told the dramatic, adventurous and bloody tale of Canada's origins in the fur trade. With Dominion he continues the nation's creation story with an equally gripping and eye-opening account of the building of the Canadian Pacific Railway. In the late 19th century, demand for fur was in sharp decline. This could have spelled economic disaster for the venerable Hudson's Bay Company. But an idea emerged in political and business circles in Ottawa and Montreal to connect the disparate British colonies into a single entity that would stretch from the Atlantic to the Pacific. With over 3,000 kilometers of track, much of it driven through wildly inhospitable terrain, the CPR would be the longest railway in the world and the most difficult to build. Its construction was the defining event of its era and a catalyst for powerful global forces. The times were marked by greed, hubris, blatant empire building, oppression, corruption and theft. They were good for some, hard for most, disastrous for others. The CPR enabled a new country, but it came at a terrible price. In recent years Canadian history has been given a rude awakening from the comforts of its myths. In Dominion, Stephen Bown again widens our view of the past to include the adventures and hardships of explorers and surveyors, the resistance of Indigenous peoples, and the terrific and horrific work of many thousands of labourers. His vivid portrayal of the powerful forces that were molding the world in the late 19th century provides a revelatory new picture of modern Canada's creation as an independent state.

History

Americas

Stephen R. Bown continues to revitalize Canadian history with this thrilling--and bestselling--account of the engineering triumph that created a nation. In The Company, his bestselling work of revisionist history, Stephen Bown told the dramatic, adventurous and bloody tale of Canada's origins in the fur trade. With Dominion he continues the nation's creation story with an equally gripping and eye-opening account of the building of the Canadian Pacific Railway. In the late 19th century, demand for fur was in sharp decline. This could have spelled economic disaster for the venerable Hudson's Bay Company. But an idea emerged in political and business circles in Ottawa and Montreal to connect the disparate British colonies into a single entity that would stretch from the Atlantic to the Pacific. With over 3,000 kilometers of track, much of it driven through wildly inhospitable terrain, the CPR would be the longest railway in the world and the most difficult to build. Its construction was the defining event of its era and a catalyst for powerful global forces. The times were marked by greed, hubris, blatant empire building, oppression, corruption and theft. They were good for some, hard for most, disastrous for others. The CPR enabled a new country, but it came at a terrible price. In recent years Canadian history has been given a rude awakening from the comforts of its myths. In Dominion, Stephen Bown again widens our view of the past to include the adventures and hardships of explorers and surveyors, the resistance of Indigenous peoples, and the terrific and horrific work of many thousands of labourers. His vivid portrayal of the powerful forces that were molding the world in the late 19th century provides a revelatory new picture of modern Canada's creation as an independent state.

Merchant Kings: When Companies Ruled the World, 1600-1900

Business & Money

Biography & History

Douglas & McIntyre, Limited

A revealing and fresh take on the extraordinary story of Captain Vancouver, one of history's greatest explorers. From 1791 to 1795, George Vancouver sailed the Pacific as captain of a major expedition of discovery and imperial ambition. Under orders to stake Britain's claim to western North America, he valiantly charted the byzantine coastline from California to Alaska. His voyage was one of history's greatest feats of maritime daring, scientific discovery, marine cartography and international diplomacy, involving Spain, Russia, the United States and indigenous Hawaii. But the young captain was harbouring within him the kernels of an illness, not evident when he departed but growing daily like a cancer, that, before killing him, would drive him into uncontrollable rages, leaving him shamed, exhausted, and bedridden. And his triumphs were overshadowed by bitter smear campaigns initiated by enemies he made on board-well-connected gentlemen who were set on destroying his reputation. How could Vancouver have known that his actions on the far side of the world were being secretly reported on, debated and judged by the aristocratic elite? Madness, Betrayal and the Lash is a tale of adventure at sea, the struggle of empires and of one man's battle against illness, the isolation of command and Britain's polarizing class system. In it, Stephen R. Bown offers a long-overdue re-evaluation of one of the greatest explorers of the Age of Discovery. Stephen R. Bown studied history at the University of Alberta. He is the author or co-author of numerous articles and several books, including A Most Damnable Invention, which was shortlisted for the Wilfred Eggleston Award for Non-Fiction and the Canadian Science Writers Association Science in Society Book Award. He lives in the Canadian Rockies.

Madness, Betrayal and the Lash

Douglas&McIntyre

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Books by Bown, Stephen