This work was originally published in 1937 as The Commercial Empire of the St Lawrence, 1760 - 1850 and re-issued in its present form in 1956. It became an essential text in Canadian history courses and helped establish Creighton as the foremost English Canadian historian of his generation. In it, he examines the trading system that developed along the St Lawrence River and argues that the exploitation of key staple products by colonial merchants along the St Lawrence River system was key to Canada’s economic and national development. Creightontells the story of the St Lawrence empire largely from the perspective of these Canadian merchants, who, above all others, struggled to win the territorial empire of the St Lawrence and to establish the Canadian commercial state.