Scholarly work on the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) has reflected larger trends in the humanities and social sciences. Social and economic history, Native history, women's history, environmental history, and historical geography have all shaped our understanding of the Canadian fur trade. The recent shift in the disciplines of history and geography towards the study of the history of science has now produced Ted Binnema's magnificent, capacious account of the role of the HBC in creating scientific networks across the Atlantic to Great Britain and south to central Canada and the United States.
Recognizing that there was no general account of the role of chartered companies in the development of science nor a history of science for a nonscientific institution, Binnema set out to write a “big picture” story of the HBC's role in science from its founding in 1670 to the company's sale of Rupert's Land to the Dominion of Canada in 1870. Drawing on the immense records in the Hudson's Bay Company Archives, as well considerable research in the published records of the HBC, Smithsonian Institution, and scientific societies, Binnema has crafted a wide-ranging and thoroughly engaging book. The HBC has frequently been overlooked by British imperial historians, whose focus on chartered companies has usually been confined to the East India Company and the Royal African Company. Binnema reminds us that the HBC once governed a territory equivalent to almost a quarter of the empire at its peak and that during the nineteenth century the territory's northern margin was the focus of sustained, though ultimately futile attempts by the British government to find a Northwest Passage. Given that only a few Europeans worked for the HBC across this vast expanse of northern North America, Binnema argues that their contributions to science were extraordinary.
Binnema divides his account into two periods. Between the founding of the company in 1670 and the Transit of Venus in 1769, the HBC had little interest in science. In the words of one of its staunchest critics, “the Company have for eighty years slept at the edge of a frozen sea.” Between 1769 and 1870, the company was forced to move inland in response to the encircling manoeuver of its great rival, the Montreal-based Northwest Company. Facing immense unknown territories, the HBC became more deeply engaged in the scientific activities of exploration and mapping. Drawing in part on the study of HBC cartography by geographer Richard Ruggles, Binnema emphasizes the considerable contribution of the HBC to the mapping of North America, particularly the series of great maps produced by Aaron Arrowsmith, which helped prod Thomas Jefferson into initiating the Lewis and Clark expedition. But there was much more. The Transit of Venus in 1769 was a major turning point in the company's relations to metropolitan science. The Royal Society sponsored several observations of the transit across the globe, including one at the HBC's Fort Churchill on Hudson Bay.
Realizing the recognition that came from such metropolitan-sponsored activities, the HBC began to actively encourage its officers, commonly well-educated gentlemen with lots of time on their hands, in the pursuit of science. This included taking meteorological observations, collecting plant, animal, and geological specimens, and compiling ethnographic material. As European travel through the northwest was hardily possible without HBC support, the company actively helped explorers, travelers, collectors, and artists. Among them were John Franklin, who made two overland surveys in search of the Northwest Passage before his last, ill-fated expedition in the Arctic; David Douglas, who collected plant specimens in the Pacific Northwest and is commemorated by that great tree, the Douglas fir; and artist Paul Kane, who recorded Native life across the Plains and through the Cordillera. The HBC also sponsored its own expeditions, notably John Rae's exploration of the continent's north coast. Well-chosen illustrations, some in color, and numerous, clearly drawn maps greatly help the reader follow Binnema's narrative.
Throughout his account, Binnema focuses on the creation of social networks between metropolitan scientists and HBC officers, rather than on the actual science. These networks were usually mediated through the HBC's governor and committee in London or, in the mid-nineteenth century, through Sir George Simpson, the HBC governor of Rupert's Land. For the HBC, the recognition or “public tribute” that resulted from these networks was of inestimable value. The HBC's monopoly had to be renewed periodically in the nineteenth century. Anything that could improve the company's image, especially among the governing elite in London, might prove immensely useful, particularly in the face of attacks by liberal free-traders. Binnema also discusses the emergence of the American metropole of Washington, DC, and the close interaction between the company and the Smithsonian Institution in the 1850s and 1860s. The knowledge networks of the British Empire in North America were increasingly being challenged by those of an expanding American empire. All these various networks flourished, Binnema argues, because they were mutually beneficial to the HBC and British, Canadian, and American scientists.
Although Binnema's discussion focuses primarily on networks between the HBC and metropolitan scientists, he does try to tease out networks that flowed in the other direction between the HBC and Native peoples who guided expeditions and collected many of the geological, zoological, and botanical specimens sent by the HBC to London and Washington. Even so, Native peoples remain shadowy figures in the background of his story. Binnema calls his account a “critical narrative history,” but it could have been given more analytical bite with some reference to Bruno Latour's work on scientific process. These criticisms aside, Binnema has produced a superbly written, thoroughly researched, and highly relevant study of the HBC's role in the development of scientific networks in the modern era. The book is an enormous achievement.
