NATIONAL BESTSELLER A thrilling new telling of the story of modern Canada's origins. The story of the Hudson's Bay Company, dramatic and adventurous and complex, is the story of modern Canada's creation. And yet it hasn't been told in a book for over thirty years, and never in such depth and vivid detail as in Stephen R. Bown's exciting new telling. The Company started out small in 1670, trading practical manufactured goods for furs with the Indigenous inhabitants of inland subarctic Canada. Controlled by a handful of English aristocrats, it expanded into a powerful political force that ruled the lives of many thousands of people--from the lowlands south and west of Hudson Bay, to the tundra, the great plains, the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific northwest. It transformed the culture and economy of many Indigenous groups and ended up as the most important political and economic force in northern and western North America. When the Company was faced with competition from French traders in the 1780s, the result was a bloody corporate battle, the coming of Governor George Simpson--one of the greatest villains in Canadian history--and the Company assuming political control and ruthless dominance. By the time its monopoly was rescinded after two hundred years, the Hudson's Bay Company had reworked the entire northern North American world. Stephen R. Bown has a scholar's profound knowledge and understanding of the Company's history, but wears his learning lightly in a narrative as compelling, and rich in well-drawn characters, as a page-turning novel.
From 1792 to 1795, George Vancouver sailed the Pacific as the captain of his own expedition — and as an agent of imperial ambition. To map a place is to control it, and Britain had its eyes on America's Pacific coast. And map it Vancouver did. His voyage was one of history’s greatest feats of maritime daring, discovery, and diplomacy, and his marine survey of Hawaii and the Pacific coast was at its time the most comprehensive ever undertaken. But just two years after returning to Britain, the 40-year-old Vancouver, hounded by critics, shamed by public humiliation at the fists of an aristocratic sailor he had flogged, and blacklisted because of a perceived failure to follow the Admiralty’s directives, died in poverty, nearly forgotten. In this riveting and perceptive biography, historian Stephen Bown delves into the events that destroyed Vancouver’s reputation and restores his position as one of the greatest explorers of the Age of Discovery.
A Most Damnable Invention is a human tale of scientific obsession, shadowy immorality, and historical irony, and a testament to the capacity for human ingenuity during times of war. It is also a cautionary reminder of the cyclical nature of history, showing how the solutions of yesterday eventually give rise to the problems of today."--BOOK JACKET.
A thrilling new account of the engineering triumph that created a nation In The Company, his bestselling work of revisionist history, Stephen R. Bown told the dramatic, adventurous and bloody tale of Canada's origins in the fur trade. With Dominion he continues the nation's creation story with an equally gripping and eye-opening account of the building of the Canadian Pacific Railway. In the late 19th century, demand for fur was in sharp decline. This could have spelled economic disaster for the venerable Hudson's Bay Company. But an idea emerged in political and business circles in Ottawa and Montreal to connect the disparate British colonies into a single entity that would stretch from the Atlantic to the Pacific. With over 3,000 kilometres of track, much of it driven through wildly inhospitable terrain, the CPR would be the longest railway in the world and the most difficult to build. Its construction was the defining event of its era and a catalyst for powerful global forces. The times were marked by greed, hubris, blatant empire building, oppression, corruption and theft. They were good for some, hard for most, disastrous for others. The CPR enabled a new country, but it came at a terrible price. Stephen R. Bown again widens our view of the past to include the adventures and hardships of explorers and surveyors, the resistance of Indigenous peoples, and the terrific and horrific work of many thousands of labourers. His vivid portrayal of the powerful forces that were moulding the world in the late 19th century provides a revelatory new picture of modern Canada's creation as an independent state.
Traces the discovery of the cure for scurvy by three determined individuals including a navy surgeon, a sea catain, and a charismatic gentleman, tracing the recorded history of the disease, along with its research and cure.
Commerce meets conquest in this swashbuckling story of the six merchant-adventurers who built the modern world, as told by “Canada’s Simon Winchester” (Globe and Mail). Through the Age of Heroic Commerce, from the 17th to the 19th centuries, a rogue’s gallery of larger-than-life merchant kings ruled vast tracts of the globe and expanded their far-flung monopolies to generate revenue for their shareholders, feather their own nests and satisfy their vanity and curiosity. Their exploits changed the world during an age of unfettered globalization, mirroring a world we know today. Merchant Kings looks at each ruling monopoly through its greatest merchant king and considers their stories together for the first time: Jan Pieterszoon Coen of the Dutch East India Company Pieter Stuyvesant of the Dutch West India Company Robert Clive of the English East India Company Alexandr Baranov of the Russian-American Company George Simpson of the Hudson’s Bay Company Cecil John Rhodes of the British South Africa Company
This volume provides portraits of the early naturalists who explored the New World in the pre-Darwinian Age. The late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in Europe and America saw the dawn of a golden age of science in which society energetically sought to quantify, categorize, and rationally explain the world. The author profiles nine important naturalists -- both dedicated professionals and amateurs -- who set off for what is now North and South America to discover and document the natural wonders they found there. Their stories of adventure are punctuated with hardship, both in finding the financing to get their ventures off the ground, and the vagaries of the elements they encountered in the New World. Despite the odds, these explorers, either traveling with artists, or as artists themselves, chronicled their adventures in both words and pictures, providing a unique portrait of the natural world in North, South, and Central America before parts of it became widely settled.
The story of the world's largest, longest, and best financed scientific expedition of all time, triumphantly successful, gruesomely tragic, and never before fully told The immense 18th-century scientific journey, variously known as the Second Kamchatka Expedition or the Great Northern Expedition, from St. Petersburg across Siberia to the coast of North America, involved over 3,000 people and cost Peter the Great over one-sixth of his empire's annual revenue. Until now recorded only in academic works, this 10-year venture, led by the legendary Danish captain Vitus Bering and including scientists, artists, mariners, soldiers, and laborers, discovered Alaska, opened the Pacific fur trade, and led to fame, shipwreck, and "one of the most tragic and ghastly trials of suffering in the annals of maritime and arctic history.
Traversing the historic trails of the Rockies today is done in much the same manner as it was two centuries ago—primarily on foot with heavy packs, with little better defence against mosquitoes or the elements. Although accurate maps are available, and modern technology such as global positioning systems stand as a bulwark to a complete wilderness experience, in many cases it is as difficult and challenging to cross these mountain passes, or even more so, than it was two centuries ago. Routes such as Athabasca Pass are far less travelled today than they were in the golden era of the fur trade. If our society has become so rich that we continually seek out physical and mental challenges in the wilderness—adventure and eco-travel—perhaps it would be a sign of respect to follow at least for a while in the footsteps of those who in many ways paved the way for gernerations to come. We began to form the idea of hiking all the significant historical trails to see what we could learn from the early pathfinders, about the difficulty of wilderness life and travel. What window would be opened to times past in a land where the terrain has remained essentially unchanged? —from the authors' introduction
Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel's discovery of dynamite made possible the famous industrial megaprojects that transformed the countryside and defined the era, including the St. Gothard rail tunnel through the Alps, the clearing of New York harbor, the Panama Canal, and countless others. Dynamite also caused terrible injuries and great loss of life, and, in some cases, incalculable and irreparable environmental damage. Nobel was one of the richest men in a society rapidly transforming under the power of his invention, but with a troubled conscience, he left his estate to the establishment of the world-famous prizes that bear his name. As the use of explosives soared and growing populations consumed more food, nations scrambled for the scarce yet vital organic ingredient needed for both. The quest for nitrates takes us from the rural stables and privies of preindustrial Europe to the monopoly trading plantations in India and to the Atacama Desert in South America. Nitrates were as valuable in the nineteenth century as oil is in the twenty-first and were the cause of similar international jockeying and power politics. The "nitrogen problem" of creating inorganic nitrates was solved by an enigmatic German scientist named Fritz Haber. His breakthrough not only prolonged the First World War but became the foundation of the green revolution and the tripling of world population since then. Haber is also known as the "father of gas warfare" for his work on poison gas. When he was awarded a Nobel Prize for his work in chemistry, it sparked international outrage and condemnation. A Most Damnable Invention is a human tale of scientific obsession, shadowy immorality, and historical irony, and a testament to the capacity for human ingenuity during times of war.
From 1792 to 1795, George Vancouver sailed the Pacific as the captain of his own expedition — and as an agent of imperial ambition. To map a place is to control it, and Britain had its eyes on America's Pacific coast. And map it Vancouver did. His voyage was one of history’s greatest feats of maritime daring, discovery, and diplomacy, and his marine survey of Hawaii and the Pacific coast was at its time the most comprehensive ever undertaken. But just two years after returning to Britain, the 40-year-old Vancouver, hounded by critics, shamed by public humiliation at the fists of an aristocratic sailor he had flogged, and blacklisted because of a perceived failure to follow the Admiralty’s directives, died in poverty, nearly forgotten. In this riveting and perceptive biography, historian Stephen Bown delves into the events that destroyed Vancouver’s reputation and restores his position as one of the greatest explorers of the Age of Discovery.
Traces the discovery of the cure for scurvy by three determined individuals including a navy surgeon, a sea catain, and a charismatic gentleman, tracing the recorded history of the disease, along with its research and cure.
The author of "Merchant Kings" reveals the untold story of how a personal struggle between queens and kings, churchmen and explorers split the globe between Spain and Portugal and made the world's oceans a battleground.
Commerce meets conquest in this swashbuckling story of the six merchant-adventurers who built the modern world It was an era when monopoly trading companies were the unofficial agents of European expansion, controlling vast numbers of people and huge tracts of land, and taking on governmental and military functions. They managed their territories as business interests, treating their subjects as employees, customers, or competitors. The leaders of these trading enterprises exercised virtually unaccountable, dictatorial political power over millions of people. The merchant kings of the Age of Heroic Commerce were a rogue's gallery of larger-than-life men who, for a couple hundred years, expanded their far-flung commercial enterprises over a sizable portion of the world. They include Jan Pieterszoon Coen, the violent and autocratic pioneer of the Dutch East India Company; Peter Stuyvesant, the one-legged governor of the Dutch West India Company, whose narrow-minded approach lost Manhattan to the British; Robert Clive, who rose from company clerk to become head of the British East India Company and one of the wealthiest men in Britain; Alexandr Baranov of the Russian American Company; Cecil Rhodes, founder of De Beers and Rhodesia; and George Simpson, the "Little Emperor" of the Hudson's Bay Company, who was chauffeured about his vast fur domain in a giant canoe, exhorting his voyageurs to paddle harder so he could set speed records. Merchant Kings looks at the rise and fall of company rule in the centuries before colonialism, when nations belatedly assumed responsibility for their commercial enterprises. A blend of biography, corporate history, and colonial history, this book offers a panoramic, new perspective on the enormous cultural, political, and social legacies, good and bad, of this first period of unfettered globalization.
Among the explorers made famous for revealing hitherto impenetrable cultures-T. E. Lawrence and Wilfred Thesiger in the Middle East, Richard Burton in Africa-Knud Rasmussen stands out not only for his physical bravery but also for the beauty of his writing. Part Danish, part Inuit, Rasmussen made a courageous three-year journey by dog sled from Greenland to Alaska to reveal the common origins of all circumpolar peoples. Lovers of Arctic adventure, exotic cultures, and timeless legend will relish this gripping tale by Stephen R. Bown, known as "Canada's Simon Winchester.
The author of "Merchant Kings" reveals the untold story of how a personal struggle between queens and kings, churchmen and explorers split the globe between Spain and Portugal and made the world's oceans a battleground.
NATIONAL BESTSELLER A thrilling new telling of the story of modern Canada's origins. The story of the Hudson's Bay Company, dramatic and adventurous and complex, is the story of modern Canada's creation. And yet it hasn't been told in a book for over thirty years, and never in such depth and vivid detail as in Stephen R. Bown's exciting new telling. The Company started out small in 1670, trading practical manufactured goods for furs with the Indigenous inhabitants of inland subarctic Canada. Controlled by a handful of English aristocrats, it expanded into a powerful political force that ruled the lives of many thousands of people--from the lowlands south and west of Hudson Bay, to the tundra, the great plains, the Rocky Mountains and the Pacific northwest. It transformed the culture and economy of many Indigenous groups and ended up as the most important political and economic force in northern and western North America. When the Company was faced with competition from French traders in the 1780s, the result was a bloody corporate battle, the coming of Governor George Simpson--one of the greatest villains in Canadian history--and the Company assuming political control and ruthless dominance. By the time its monopoly was rescinded after two hundred years, the Hudson's Bay Company had reworked the entire northern North American world. Stephen R. Bown has a scholar's profound knowledge and understanding of the Company's history, but wears his learning lightly in a narrative as compelling, and rich in well-drawn characters, as a page-turning novel.
A Globe and Mail top 100 book of 2012 The untold story of the great polar explorer who conquered the world's last unknown places, before vanishing in a daring bid to rescue his nemesis. In the early 1900s, many of the great geographical mysteries that had intrigued adventurers for centuries remained unsolved, leaving some large blank areas on the increasingly detailed maps of the world. The polar regions -- the Northwest Passage, the South Pole, the North Pole and the Northeast Passage -- despite having claimed countless lives, were still shrouded in mystery. One man would claim all these prizes within a span of 20 years. Roald Amundsen was an adventurer and entertainer of the highest order. Larger than life, arrogant and competitive, he was also a meticulous organizer and planner, willing to learn from the mistakes of others, and humble enough to seek the advice of indigenous peoples skilled in arctic survival -- thus avoiding the early death that was so common among others who challenged the most desolate places on the planet. But Amundsen's life was one of sharp contrasts: reviled by the British for defeating Robert Falcon Scott in a desperate race to the South Pole, he was loved by his men, hailed as a hero in his native Norway and idolized as a charming and eccentric celebrity in the United States. Drawing on hundreds of recently uncovered press clippings, The Last Viking goes beyond Amundsen's conflicted legacy, revealing a humorous, self-deprecating storyteller who had unusual opinions and dreams; a visionary and showman who won over both his sponsors and his audiences with the same verve that characterized his geographical conquests.
Though less known today than contemporaries like Amundsen and Peary, Knud Rasmussen (1879–1933) was one of the most intriguing of the great early 20th century arctic explorers. Born and raised in Greenland, and part Inuit on his mother’s side, Rasmussen could shoot a gun and harness a team of sled dogs by the time he was eight. Nevertheless he was well versed in the civilized arts and came to exploration after failing to make a career as an opera singer in Europe. He was obviously more at home on the ice floes than the stage, and undertook some of the most astounding feats of endurance in the annals of polar exploration including his record-setting 18,000-mile “Great Sled Journey”—the first to traverse the Northwest Passage by dogsled. More impressively, he travelled without the elaborate preparations and large support staffs employed by other explorers, surviving with only a few Inuit assistants and living off the land. He once explained his approach by saying, “[As a child] my playmates were native Greenlanders; from the earliest boyhood I played and worked with the hunters, so even the hardships of the most strenuous sledge-trips became pleasant routine for me.” Despite his extraordinary physical prowess, Rasmussen was one of the most intellectual of the great explorers, more interested in scientific study than glamorous feats, producing (among many other works) a ten-volume account documenting Inuit spirituality and culture, an accomplishment that earned him the title “the father of Eskimology.” In this first full-length biography, Stephen R. Bown brings Rasmussen’s inspiring story to English readers in all its richness, giving White Eskimo the readability of a good novel.
Vitamin C: A 500-Year Scientific Biography from Scurvy to Pseudoscience is the compelling story of the history and science behind vitamin C. Vitamin C begins with scurvy, which afflicted Europe for four hundred years and killed millions. The reasons that a disease whose cure was known from the outset persisted over that time are at once baffling and familiar, and these trials eventually lead to invention of the science of epidemiology. Author Stephen M. Sagar MD then chronicles the discovery of vitamins at the beginning of the twentieth century, a story that encapsulates the rise of a scientific approach to nutrition but with surprising twists and turns. As vitamin science became more acquainted with the mainstream, scientist Linus Pauling reached new heights of fame and influence by popularizing the practice of taking megadoses of vitamin C to prevent colds – a claim that was not necessarily backed by data. This kickstarted the growth of the $40 billion vitamin and supplement industry, which has since prospered all while ignoring science. This unique and engrossing narrative reveals how medical science functions in the real world and how it has changed over the centuries. Featuring swashbuckling sailors, arctic explorers, penny-pinching bureaucrats, academicians with clashing egos, and intrepid scientists working in malaria-infested jungle laboratories, the story of C is in many ways the story of how science gets done (and undone). From the trial and error of early explorers to the scientific breakthroughs made by biochemists and the birth of the modern supplement industry, this revelatory book tells the story of how cherished beliefs, self-interest, and politics often intertwine with scientific progress.
Stephen R. Bown continues to revitalize Canadian history with this thrilling account of the engineering triumph that created a nation. In The Company, his bestselling work of revisionist history, Stephen Bown told the dramatic, adventurous and bloody tale of Canada's origins in the fur trade. With Dominion he continues the nation's creation story with an equally gripping and eye-opening account of the building of the Canadian Pacific Railway. In the late 19th century, demand for fur was in sharp decline. This could have spelled economic disaster for the venerable Hudson's Bay Company. But an idea emerged in political and business circles in Ottawa and Montreal to connect the disparate British colonies into a single entity that would stretch from the Atlantic to the Pacific. With over 3,000 kilometers of track, much of it driven through wildly inhospitable terrain, the CPR would be the longest railway in the world and the most difficult to build. Its construction was the defining event of its era and a catalyst for powerful global forces. The times were marked by greed, hubris, blatant empire building, oppression, corruption and theft. They were good for some, hard for most, disastrous for others. The CPR enabled a new country, but it came at a terrible price. In recent years Canadian history has been given a rude awakening from the comforts of its myths. In Dominion, Stephen Bown again widens our view of the past to include the adventures and hardships of explorers and surveyors, the resistance of Indigenous peoples, and the terrific and horrific work of many thousands of labourers. His vivid portrayal of the powerful forces that were molding the world in the late 19th century provides a revelatory new picture of modern Canada's creation as an independent state.
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