The early Hudson's Bay Company was in business to provide shareholders with a return on their investments. To do that, the company needed low paid, subservient workers accustomed to a master-servant relationship. Professor Edith Burley's social history of the Company reveals that while the workers never questioned that basic tenet, they did bargain for higher wages, refused work under intolerable, dangerous conditions, objected to unfair treatment, caused work stoppages when faced with insufficient food and grog, and mutinied against tyrannical ships' captains. Servants of the Honourable Company: Work, Discipline, and Conflict in the Hudson's Bay Company 1770-1879 (UBC Press $24.95) looks at the effect of the HBC on Canada's early working class.

BOOKS:

Servants of the Honourable Company: Work, Discipline, and Conflict in the Hudson's Bay Company 1770-1879 (UBC Press, 1996) $24.95 9780195412963


[BCBW 2014]