SOURCE: "A Belated Review of Harold Adams Innis, The Fur Trade in Canada," in Canadian Historical Review, Vol. LX, No. 4, December, 1979, pp. 419-41.

In the following essay, Eccles compares the historic fur trade in Canada with Innis's scholarship on it

A reappraisal of the Canadian fur trade is long overdue. For this to be done adequately there are two prerequisites: first, past misconceptions have to be cleared away; then the trade has to be placed in its historic and not just its economic context. This communication addresses it-self primarily to the first of these presumptions.

Harold Adams Innis' major work, The Fur Trade in Canada, has long been regarded as the definitive work on the subject, an impeccable piece of scholarship, and a landmark in Canadian historiography. Robin W. Winks stated in his foreword to the 1962 edition, 'The book is of the greatest significance because of Innis' fundamental...