Following on the tradition of viewing his writings as a mode of class consciousness, "The Founding of Canada" was written very much as a popular Marxist introduction to Canadian History. This book offered very little new material and was instead more of a shifting in emphasis for Ryerson. This shift in emphasis stemmed primarily from Ryerson's interest in prehistory and Soviet anthropology; this shift in emphasis is best illustrated by the six chapters on pre-European-contact Canada. This work was not a complete shift of emphasis; Ryerson still dealt with the issue of exploitation and freedom. He believed "weight of 'official' historiography has hitherto been heavily on the side of efforts to smother the facts of exploitation," and because of this "[the idyllic patriarchal picture of these times that has become traditional, is a piece of flagrant deception."