It is unlikely that buyers of the Hudson’s Bay Company’s “iconic multistripe” point blanket these days reflect on the historically exploitative relationship between the company and Indigenous producers. This critical re-evaluation of the company’s first planned settlement at Red River uncovers that history. As a settler-colonialist project par excellence, the Red River Colony was designed to undercut Indigenous peoples’ troublesome” autonomy and better control their labour. Susan Dianne Brophy upends standard historical portrayals by foregrounding Indigenous peoples’ autonomy as a driving force of change.

A Legacy of Exploitation offers a comprehensive account of legal, economic, and geopolitical relations to show how autonomy can become distorted as complicity in processes of dispossession. Ultimately, this book challenges enduring yet misleading national fantasies about Canada as a nation of bold adventurers.

Susan Dianne Brophy's profile page

• Winner, Clio Prize (The Prairies), Canadian Historical Association

Susan Dianne Brophy is an associate professor and chair of the Department of Sociology and Legal Studies at St. Jerome’s University (federated with the University of Waterloo). She has published in journals including Constellations, European Journal of Political Theory, Labour/Le travail, Law and Critique, and Settler Colonial Studies.

In providing this “fundamental rethink” of Marxist analysis, the author has cleared a path that other scholars will surely follow. This is an important book.

The Western Historical Quarterly