Before The Company
After the French landed in Quebec in 1608 coureurs des bois spread out and built a fur trade empire in the St. Lawrence basin. The French competed with the Dutch (from 1614) and English (1664) in New York and the English on Hudson Bay (1670). Unlike the French who travelled into the interior, the English confined themselves to trading posts on Hudson Bay. After 1731 La Vérendrye pushed trade west beyond Lake Winnipeg. After the conquest in 1763 management was taken over by English-speakers. These so-called "Pedlars" began to merge because competition cost them money and because of the high costs of outfitting canoes to the far west.
Read more about this topic: North West Company
Famous quotes containing the word company:
“The Bermudas are said to have been discovered by a Spanish ship of that name which was wrecked on them.... Yet at the very first planting of them with some sixty persons, in 1612, the first governor, the same year, “built and laid the foundation of eight or nine forts.” To be ready, one would say, to entertain the first ship’s company that should be next shipwrecked on to them.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)