Rupert's Land
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- This article is about the trading territory. For the ecclesiastical province of the Anglican Church of Canada, see Ecclesiastical Province of Rupert's Land. For the Anglican diocese, see Diocese of Rupert's Land.
Rupert's Land, also sometimes called "Prince Rupert's Land", was a territory in British North America, consisting of the Hudson Bay drainage basin, that was de facto owned by the Hudson's Bay Company for 200 years. The area once known as Rupert's Land is now mainly a part of Canada, but a small portion is now in the United States of America. It was named after Prince Rupert of the Rhine, a nephew of Charles I and the first Governor of the Hudson's Bay Company.
Areas once belonging to Rupert's Land include all of Manitoba, most of Saskatchewan, southern Alberta, southern Nunavut, northern parts of Ontario and Quebec, as well as parts of Minnesota and North Dakota and very small parts of Montana and South Dakota.
[edit] Colonial history
In 1670, the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) was granted a charter by King Charles II, giving it a trading monopoly over the watershed of all rivers and streams flowing into Hudson Bay, thereby making the HBC de facto owners of the whole of Rupert's Land. This covered an area of 3.9 million square kilometres (1.5 million sq mi), over one-third the area of Canada today.
In 1821, the North West Company of Montreal and the Hudson's Bay Company merged, with a combined territory that was further extended by a license to the watershed of the Arctic Ocean on the north and the Pacific Ocean on the west.
In 1870 the trade monopoly was abolished and trade in the region was opened to any entrepreneur. The company sold Rupert's Land and the North-Western Territory to the Dominion of Canada, under the terms of the Rupert's Land Act of 1868. Both territories were then combined as the Northwest Territories.
[edit] See also
[edit] Further reading
- Davis, Richard Clarke, and Richard I. Ruggles. Rupert's Land A Cultural Tapestry. Waterloo, Ont., Canada: Published by Wilfrid Laurier University Press for the Calgary Institute for the Humanities, 1988. ISBN 0889209766
- Gillespie, Greg. Hunting for Empire Narrative of Sport in Rupert's Land, 1840-70. Nature, history, society. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2007. ISBN 9780774813549
- Hudson's Bay Company. An Ordinance for the More Effectual Administration of Justice, In the Colony of Rupertsland. London: J. Brettell]
- Stubbs, Roy St. George. Four Recorders of Rupert's Land; A Brief Survey of the Hudson's Bay Company Courts of Rupert's Land. Winnipeg: Peguis Publishers, 1967.
- Tucker, S. The Rainbow in the North A Short Account of the First Establishment of Christianity in Rupert's Land. London: J. Nisbet and Co, 1851.
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