Before Canada

Northern North America in a Connected World

Allan Greer

• Publisher: McGill-Queen's University Press
• Year: 2024
• Print ISBN: 9780228019213
• eBook ISBN: 9780228023524
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Historical Geography
• Index: History

Long before Confederation created a nation-state in northern North America, Indigenous people were establishing vast networks and trade routes. Volcanic eruptions pushed the ancestors of the Dene to undertake a trek from the present-day Northwest Territories to Arizona. Inuit migrated across the Arctic from Siberia, reaching Southern Labrador, where they met Basque fishers from northern Spain.

As early as the fifteenth century, fishing ships from western Europe were coming to Newfoundland for cod, creating the greatest transatlantic maritime link in the early modern world. Later, fur traders would take capitalism across the continent, using cheap rum to lubricate their transactions. The contributors to Before Canada reveal the latest findings of archaeological and historical research on this fascinating period. Along the way, they reframe the story of the Canadian past, extending its limits across time and space and challenging us to reconsider our assumptions about this supposedly young country.

Innovative and multidisciplinary, Before Canada inspires interest in the deep history of northern North America.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Figures
• Preface and Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Canada before Canada
• 1 After Beringia: The Archaeology of Indigenous Social Networks
• 2 Ways of Becoming: The Apachean Departure from the Canadian Subarctic
• 3 The Newfoundland Fisheries in an Early Atlantic World, 1400–1550
• 4 Sea Change: Indigenous Navigation and Relations with Basques around the Gulf of Saint Lawrence, ca. 1500–1700
• 5 In the Round and on the Page: Canada in the English Geographical Imaginary, circa 1600
• 6 Labrador Inuit at the Crossroads of Cultural Interaction
• 7 Corridors of Jurisdiction: The Role of Aquatic Spaces in Sovereign Claims-Making in New France (1600s–1620s)
• 8 Saved from the Waters: The Drowning World of Paul Lejeune
• 9 Debt, Liquor, and Violence in the Fur Trade
• 10 Maple, Beaver, and New Roots for a Global Early Canada
• Bibliography
• Contributors
• Index