Knowing nature in the business records of the Hudson’s Bay Company, 1670–1840

Abstract

After being established by royal charter in 1670, the London-based Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) created an impressive environmental record of British North America in its accounting and journals. The quality and flow of environmental information to its London Committee, however, changed by the nineteenth century, when directors privileged ‘facts’ rather than mere environmental observation. Of direct use within its emerging management accounting system, explicit environmental information flows had their greatest impact within the company’s regions, rather than in London itself. The HBC’s changing quality and flow of environmental information suggest ways to rethink commercial empires of knowledge in business and environmental history.