Adam Smith’s survey of the Hudson’s Bay Company

Nota bene: Today’s post contains the next installment of my multi-part review of Adam Smith’s 1784 pamphlet Additions and Corrections to the First and Second Editions of Dr. Adam Smith’s Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. We revisited Adam Smith’s brief history of the Royal African Company in my previous post. Today, we will review Smith’s survey of the Hudson’s Bay Company, which appears in paragraph 21 of the last part of his 1784 pamphlet (Smith 1784, pp. 62-63). Adam Smith begins by comparing and contrasting the general good fortune of the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) with the absolute and abysmal failure of Royal African Company (RAC): “The Hudson’s Bay Company, before their misfortunes in the late war [i.e. the Seven Years’ War of 1756–1763], had been much more fortunate than the Royal African Company.” (Smith 1784, p. 62) But why was the HBC “much more fortunate” than the RAC? Smith provides several reasons for their divergent fortunes. One was the HBC’s…