Harold Innis

Context: Harold Innis's interest in the relationship between empires and colonies was developed in his classic study, The Fur Trade in Canada: An Introduction to Canadian Economic History (1930). The book chronicles the trade in beaver fur from the early 16th century to the 1920s. Instead of focusing on the "heroic" European adventurers who explored the Canadian wilderness as conventional histories had done, Innis documents how the interplay of geography, technology and economic forces shaped both the fur trade and Canada's political and economic destiny. He argues that the fur trade largely determined Canada's boundaries, coming to the conclusion that the country "emerged not in spite of geography but because of it".  In line with this observation, Innis notably proposes that European settlement of the Saint Laurence river valley followed the economic and social patterns of indigenous peoples, making for a Canadian historical and cultural continuity that pre-dates and post-dates European settlement. Unlike many historians who see Canadian history as beginning with the arrival of Europeans, Innis emphasizes the cultural and economic contributions of First Nations peoples. "We have not yet realized," he writes, "that the Indian and his culture was fundamental to the growth of Canadian institutions." This Innisian perspective on the development of Canadian political, economic and social institutions was an early form of neo-institutionalism which become a accepted part of the Canadian political science traditional well before American and European counterparts. The Fur Trade in Canada concludes by arguing that Canadian economic history can best be understood by examining how one staple product gave way to another--furs to timber, for example, and the later importance of wheat and minerals. Reliance on staples made Canada economically dependent on more industrially advanced countries and the "cyclonic" shifts from one staple to another caused frequent disruptions in the country's economic life.  The Fur Trade in Canada also describes the cultural interactions among three groups of people: the Europeans in fashionable metropolitan centres who regarded beaver hats as luxury items; the European colonial settlers who saw beaver fur as a staple that could be exported to pay for essential manufactured goods from the home country, and First Nations peoples who traded furs for industrial goods such as metal pots, knives, guns and liquor. Innis describes the central role First Nations peoples played in the development of the fur trade. Without their skilled hunting techniques, knowledge of the territory and advanced tools such as snowshoes, toboggans and birch-bark canoes, the fur trade would not have existed. However, dependence on European technologies disrupted First Nations societies. "The new technology with its radical innovations", Innis writes, "brought about such a rapid shift in the prevailing Indian culture as to lead to wholesale destruction of the peoples concerned by warfare and disease." Historian Carl Berger argues that by placing First Nations culture at the centre of his analysis of the fur trade, Innis "was the first to explain adequately the disintegration of native society under the thrust of European capitalism." CANNOTANSWER

Question: What is significant about the fur trade in Canada?
Answer: Harold Innis's interest in the relationship between empires and colonies was developed in his classic study, The Fur Trade in Canada: