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On June 18, 1948, the trustees of the Rockefeller Foundation approved an appropriation of $25,000 for use by the officers for the Social Sciences in the development of opportunities in the general area of Moral Issues in the Economic Order. This funding was to enable the officers to invite memoranda from thoughtful students and men of affairs who, it is believed, may have significant ideas to contribute to the Foundation as to directions in which work in this area may be most profitably prosecuted. One of the thoughtful students who was evidently invited to submit a memorandum was Harold Adams Innis, professor of political economy at the University of Toronto, he had established himself as the Rockefeller Foundation's most trusted advisor on matters pertaining to the social sciences in Canada. Innis duly submitted a letter to his friend Joseph Willits, in which he requested support for a small discussion group which has been set up in response to a suggestion from Pendleton Herring, president of the American Social Science Research Council of an interest in the problem of value.

While Harold Innis' address at le Collége de France in 1951 has recently begun to draw some attention, the circumstances surrounding Innis' brief appearance in France remain obscure, and the meaning and significance of the address have yet to be explored in any detail. This article seeks to provide context to Innis' talk by examining his long-standing "French inflection." It also examines the address itself, not only in terms of its themes and concerns, but also as a performative bid to find common ground with others (including the Annales School) who were challenging emergent monopolies of knowledge about the history of civilization. The presentation provides a point of entry into a final phase of Innis' intellectual life that has been overlooked, namely, his efforts to generate a community of like-minded interlocutors who were opposed to particular currents of thought that had become ascendant in the post-war period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]