For 150 years the Nation State has been the dominant for of government. People today can hardly imagine anything else. But for most of history a host of other forms have thrived. The Company State was both fully business and fully government. The Hudson Bay Company and East India Company were the largest. Between them they governed ten percent of the Earth’s surface and population. As governments they held the title “Honorable”. Their headquarters were next to each other in London. They shared both people and ideas. These Company States protected their interests from the Nation State. They occasionally turned their guns on the Royal Navy and had different foreign policies. The HBC government was neutral toward Russia in Alaska while Britain fought it in the Crimea. Company States were not just state-like or quasi-governmental nor “imitations” or ”extensions” of the Nation State. They should be understood as governments on their own terms. The Honorable Hudson Bay Company was the legal government in the Hudson Bay watershed and it governed Columbia to the Pacific Ocean through 21-year agreements. In proto-British Columbia it created and defended settlements, managed the economy and administered transportation, communication and legal systems. It was not a Nation State with total sovereignty over bound territory. It shared overlapping heteronomy with First Nations and it respected their legitimacy. Its economic success depended on healthy Native communities and cultures. Many Aboriginal people embraced the global economy, welcomed manufactured products and provided export goods. Some became the Home Guard around each trading community, acting as middlemen for trade and providing defence. The Hudson Bay Company state was secular Banned missionaries, encouraged mixed-race marriages and restricted European settlement. It practised harm reduction over prohibition and it managed resources to protect the environment, refusing to purchase endangered… Read More »Government in Proto-British Columbia
Many languages lent words to Chinook Wawa: Nootka Jargon, French Canadien, Salishan Chehalis, English, and, of course, Chinook. | Kumtuks videos
Can You Speak British Columbian? Part II
Britain expanded the borders of British Columbia to almost one million square kilometers and paid the cost to defend it
The Borders of British Columbia
During the Caribou Gold Rush, a ship with hundreds of miners from San Francisco arrived in Victoria. One of them had smallpox. It takes 12 days to get symptoms and become infectious; the trip had taken 4 days. The infected miner shared a room with others who got sick. Dozens of settlers and one third of all First Nations people would die. When the Hudson Bay Company governed western Canada Governor James Douglas had inoculated indigenous people and quarantined ships. But settlers petitioned London to end Company government and make the Governor accountable to an elected Assembly. When Douglas announced that smallpox had arrived and ‘strongly recommended…instant measures be adopted’, the House resisted, refusing to reinstate quarantine. Douglas warned native leaders and soon Dr. John Helmcken vaccinated five hundred. All the Songhees people moved to an island. Douglas had Helmcken send vaccine around the province. To Hudsons Bay Company officials in Fort Rupert and Kamloops, To a missionary in Nanaimo. Priest Fouquet in the Fraser Valley visited one hundred communities vaccinating thousands. The Lytton Police Commissioner hired a doctor to inoculate along the Fraser and Nicola Rivers. Douglas reimbursed him. Smallpox infection worst in northern British Columbia Southern and some interior First Nations avoided the worst. The north was a catastrophe. Douglas had an aboriginal wife and children; but anti-Company settlers spread rumours that Douglas was infecting them with blankets. Smallpox is an airborne disease spread through breathing and dies quickly when cold, making infection by blanket unlikely. Every summer hundreds of northerners camped near Victoria for work and trade. Newspaper editor Amor De Cosmos criticized Douglas for allowing this. Douglas refused to move them citing ‘faith of solemn engagement’ and benefits to native people. When the body of a white settler washed ashore, the… Read More »BC’s Deadly Smallpox Epidemic
BC’s Deadly Smallpox Epidemic
King George III and British Columbia: Canadian history, slavery, French language and loyalty
King George III and British Columbia
The loss of the heartland of what was Columbia and then became British Columbia was the defining drama of our history. Yet it is largely ignored in many history books.