Book Review

Miles of barely legible, laconic sixteenth- and seventeenth-century notarial registers slumber in the archives of the major cities of northern France, their very bulk discouraging all but the hardiest researchers. Among the few who have dared to explore them in recent decades have been Canadian archivists seeking acts relating to the early shipping ventures to the North Atlantic fishing grounds and neighboring North American coastal regions that form the prologue to Canada's national history. Bernard Allaire has used the results of this trawling and supplemented it with substantial archival investigation of his own both into the international trade in animal pelts and into the world of Parisian hatters and furriers in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. The result is a remarkable reconstruction of a previously neglected chapter of France's economic and social history that at the same time clarifies the context out of which the early French settlement of Canada was born.

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