
The Company
The Rise and Fall of the Hudson’s Bay Empire
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Narrated by:
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Traber Burns
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Written by:
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Stephen R. Bown
About this listen
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 30 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 By the time its monopoly was rescinded after 200 years, the Hudson’s Bay Company had reworked the entire northern North American world.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 Hudson’s Bay Company’s history but wears his learning lightly in a narrative as compelling and rich in well-drawn characters as a pause-resisting novel.
©2020 Stephen R. Bown (P)2021 Blackstone PublishingYou may also enjoy...
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What listeners say about The Company
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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Performance
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- Amazon Customer
- 2021-10-15
Good story
The story of HBC is the story of the birth of Canada. This book does a good job of capturing the era and the larger than life characters that built the country… for better or worse.
The performance was marred by some very odd (non-Canadian) pronunciations. A Canadian story would have benefited from being told in Canadian English.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Michael L Pilling
- 2021-11-10
Entertaining, Challenging and Enjoyable History
This is the first book about Canadian history I’ve listened to in a long time, wow, highly recommended this. It’s kind of three books in one, an economic history of the fur trade, an adventurous account of many of the explorers of western Canada, and a history of the relationships between the First Nations and the early traders and setters of the country. It’s a complex, fascinating and informative listen/read by an author who has a novelists skill in storytelling.
It will be a challenging read for anyone who has a pre-packaged view of history, colonization or the tragedy of First Nations / European interaction in the formative years of our country. People who want a simple good guys and bad guys narrative will be dissatisfied. The story would no doubt be vastly enriched by firsthand accounts from First Nations participants but the author does make some attempts to reflect on these missing stories and how the “big man” view of history is typically false. One moment in the narrative the writer remarks that the famous “explorers” we think of in western Canadian history… Mackenzie, Hearne, Henday they weren’t explorers at all … they were baggage in the canoe of the First Nations traders who took them for a ride-along.
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4 people found this helpful
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- Lynn Wells
- 2021-05-14
Fascinaring
The author gives life and personality to a portrait of an empire. Will play it again.
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- Amazon Customer
- 2022-05-25
Follows the major characters
I learned a lot as a Canadian I was familiar with some of the stories, but this book brought it all together and helped me learn and tie things together. highly recommend and the narrator is great!
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- _i_am_that_
- 2023-01-16
excellent listen
wonderfully researched and told in an unbiased manner. narration done well with more than adequate pronunciation of french and native words and terms. recommend
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- Emre Insel
- 2024-01-08
A well written history of HBC
I enjoyed the story telling very much. It was a quick listen. I learned quite a lot from this book. It felt like a crash course on Canadian history.
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- Ned Shillington
- 2022-06-19
Company
A well written piece of Canadian history of which Canadians can be proud. It’s only slightly marked by a mangling of the place names.
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- CalgaryPT
- 2021-12-28
Worthwhile Read
I thoroughly enjoyed this title and learned a lot. With respect to the performance, like some other listeners, I occasionally got distracted by the narrator's non-Canadian pronunciations (portage, The Pas, etc.); however, this was only a minor annoyance.
I would love to see a review of this book by an Indigenous listener with some familial history of HBC—maybe as a Metis. The overall impression I got was that (at least initially) relations between the company and indigenous peoples were reasonably convivial, and that only towards the end of the monopoly did it deteriorate. I don't know if this is true, or if non-indigenous perceptions are just sugar coated. Nonetheless it is a great read.
Entertaining. Captivating. Educational. I wish Audible would negotiate and make available the maps and drawings on a website for subscribers as this would save you having to go to your computer and look things up all the time.
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3 people found this helpful
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- Ken Ono
- 2021-08-29
Canadian history comes Alive
Perhaps you recall the dry 8th grade history classes droning on about the Hudson Bay company. This book will erase that and bring all the nuances to life
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- C.
- 2024-03-30
Chronological Gold Metal!
The accurate accumulation of journals and first hand accounts. A fascinating era of foreign immigration into an already mostly inhabited north western North America. I am aware of various historical characters and events. This books merges these numerous accounts into an understandable and satisfying read. Thank you for your library of research and excellent professional narration.
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