SOURCE: "The Content and Context of the Work of H. A. Innis," in The Journal of Economic History, Vol. XXVI, No. 4, December, 1966, pp. 589-90.

In the following essay, Neill offers a short analysis of Innis's theories and the cultural environment in which he developed them.

The eccentric Innis was too complex a personality and too prolific and varied in his writings to be treated with justice in a short space. He ranks with James Mavor and Stephen Leacock as a great character in Canadian intellectual history. In the present sketch only the main lines of his contribution to economics can be drawn.

The context was an economy experiencing long-run growth with the aid of foreign investment. A period of severe short-run contraction had set in. Surpluses of fixed capital appeared, and structural stresses that had gone unnoticed during prosperity exposed themselves in the form of political demands for...