Gateways to Empire is a comparative study of French and Dutch imperial expansion into North America in the early modern period. Based on Weeks’ doctoral dissertation, its main focus is the development of Quebec and New Amsterdam from fur trading towns into ‘gateways’ of European settlement colonies. This monograph consists of an introduction, nine chapters, a conclusion, a bibliography, and an index. In the introduction, the author sets the following question (2): “Why, if both colonies were set up, at least initially, for the purpose of pursuing profit through the fur trade, did the colony that prospered least in that trade outpace its competitor in terms of population growth and overall economic development?”
To answer this question, the author adopts a theoretical model developed by Stephen J. Hornsby in British Atlantic, American Frontier: Spaces of Power in Early Modern British America (2005). As Weeks explains, Hornsby's model distinguishes between an...