The Stuarts and American trade; Hudson Bay

The more I look at the time of the Stuart monarchs the more amazed I am at how little of it was taught in school. School history in Britain is primarily concerned with local, and some European, politics and the doings and screwings of royalty but ignores much of what changed the world. AA great deal is made of Elizabeth, Good Queen Bess’s heroes and their voyages but they are only the preliminaries to the great trade expansion of the Stuart era. I have mentioned the East India Company and the American colonists but there is also the Hudson Bay Company which offers a whole raft of possibilities for Historical Fiction. The company was created by two Frenchmen whose ideas for trading in the far north of the American continent were turned down by the French in an attempt to protect the St Lawrence river trade. In despair, the pair went to England and through Prince Rupert, (of civil war fame yet surely this was his greatest contribution to our world), were introduced to Charles 11 and from that the Hudson Bay Company came into being. The Bay was fought over, the ‘war’ including naval actions, yet Last of the Mohicans is possibly the only well known novel that is set in the area or the era. Having listened to my boyhood friend’s mother read The Settlers in Canada, Canada and North America have always held a romantic attraction for me, much more than the ‘titanic struggles’ for the domination of Europe. Bringing the Americas into the trade of nations has surely had much more influence on the world than the Battle of Waterloo. That trade had it’s first tenuous links forged in the time of the Stuarts. The explorers have become heroes to history but it is the traders who have changed the world. The explorers may have shown the way, like so many British scientists, but it is the traders who turn opportunity into reality, often without the roar of canons and the slaughter of war but with stories of hardship and courage that are worth telling.
Mayflower and …