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Rupert's Land
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Rupert's Land was a territory in British North America, consisting of the Hudson Bay drainage basin, most of it now part of modern Canada. It was named after Prince Rupert of the Rhine, nephew of Charles I and the first governor of the Hudson's Bay Company.
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 all of Rupert's Land. This covered an area of 3.9 million km² (1.5 million mi²), over one-third the area of modern-day Canada.
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 ceded Rupert's Land and the North-Western Territory to the Dominion of Canada as the Northwest Territories as part of the Rupert's Land Act of 1868.
Rupert's Land is also an ecclesiastical province of the Anglican Church of Canada covering the Canadian Prairies and much of the Canadian Arctic. It is also the name of an Anglican diocese, in Manitoba.
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1 Now the San Andrés y Providencia Department of Colombia. |
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3 Now part of the *Realm of New Zealand. |
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7 Dependencies of St. Helena since 1922 (Ascension Island) and 1938 (Tristan da Cunha). |
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