The Acadian Diaspora

Late in 1755, an army of British regulars and Massachusetts volunteers completed one of the cruelest, most successful military campaigns in North American history, capturing and deporting seven thousand French-speaking Catholic Acadians from the province of Nova Scotia, and chasing an equal number into the wilderness of eastern Canada. Thousands of Acadians endured three decades of forced migrations and failed settlements that shuttled them to the coasts of South America, the plantations of the Caribbean, the frigid islands of the South Atlantic, the swamps of Louisiana, and the countryside of central France. The Acadian Diaspora tells their extraordinary story in full for the first time, illuminating a long-forgotten world of imperial desperation, experimental colonies, and naked brutality. Using documents culled from archives in France, Great Britain, Canada, and the United States, Christopher Hodson reconstructs the lives of Acadian exiles as they traversed oceans and continents, pushed along by empires eager to populate new frontiers with inexpensive, pliable white farmers. Hodson's compelling narrative situates the Acadian diaspora within the dramatic geopolitical changes triggered by the Seven Years' War. Faced with redrawn boundaries and staggering national debts, imperial architects across Europe used the Acadians to realize radical plans: tropical settlements without slaves, expeditions to the unknown southern continent, and, perhaps strangest of all, agricultural colonies within old regime France itself. In response, Acadians embraced their status as human commodities, using intimidation and even violence to tailor their communities to the superheated Atlantic market for cheap, mobile labor. Through vivid, intimate stories of Acadian exiles and the diverse, transnational cast of characters that surrounded them, The Acadian Diaspora presents the eighteenth-century Atlantic world from a new angle, challenging old assumptions about uprooted peoples and the very nature of early modern empire.

The Acadian Diaspora tells the extraordinary story of thousands of Acadians expelled from Nova Scotia and scattered throughout the Atlantic world beginning in 1755. Following them to the Caribbean, the South Atlantic, and western Europe, historian Christopher Hodson illuminates a long-forgotten world of imperial experimentation and human brutality.

Heroes of the Acadian Resistance tells the unique story of 2 young men who became leaders of guerrilla fighters by resisting the British authorities in Nova Scotia. Fighting to prevent the destruction of Acadian homes, farms, & the forcible deportation of thousands. This book tells the tragic well-known story of the 1755 Expulsion of the Acadians.

"Altogether superb; a worthy memorial to the victims of two and a half centuries past."--Kirkus Reviews, starred review In 1755, New England troops embarked on a "great and noble scheme" to expel 18,000 French-speaking Acadians ("the neutral French") from Nova Scotia, killing thousands, separating innumerable families, and driving many into forests where they waged a desperate guerrilla resistance. The right of neutrality; to live in peace from the imperial wars waged between France and England; had been one of the founding values of Acadia; its settlers traded and intermarried freely with native Mikmaq Indians and English Protestants alike. But the Acadians' refusal to swear unconditional allegiance to the British Crown in the mid-eighteenth century gave New Englanders, who had long coveted Nova Scotia's fertile farmland, pretense enough to launch a campaign of ethnic cleansing on a massive scale. John Mack Faragher draws on original research to weave 150 years of history into a gripping narrative of both the civilization of Acadia and the British plot to destroy it.

In 1600 there were no such people as the Acadians; by 1700 the Acadians, who numbered almost 2,000, lived in an area now covered by northern Maine, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and the southern Gaspé region of Quebec. While most of their ancestors had come to live there from France, a number had arrived from Scotland and England. Their relations with the original inhabitants of the region, the Micmac and Malecite peoples, were generally peaceful. In 1713 the Treaty of Utrecht recognized the Acadian community and gave their territory -- on the frontier between New England and New France -- to Great Britain. During the next forty years the Acadians continued to prosper and to develop their political life and distinctive culture. The deportation of 1755, however, exiled the majority of Acadians to other British colonies in North America. Some went on from their original destination to England, France, or Santo Domingo; many of those who arrived in France continued on to Louisiana; some Acadians eventually returned to Nova Scotia, but not to the lands they once held. The deportation, however, did not destroy the Acadian community. In spite of a horrific death toll, nine years of proscription, and the forfeiture of property and political rights, the Acadians continued to be part of Nova Scotia. The communal existence they were able to sustain, Griffiths shows, formed the basis for the recovery of Acadian society when, in 1764, they were again permitted to own land in the colony. Instead of destroying the Acadian community, the deportation proved to be a source of power for the formation of Acadian identity in the nineteenth century. By placing Acadian history in the context of North American and European realities, Griffiths removes it from the realms of folklore and partisan political interpretation. She brings into play the current historiographical concerns about the development of the trans-Atlantic world of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, considerably sharpening our focus on this period of North American history.

The Acadians had a long and arduous journey from their paradise in Nova Scotia (Nouvelle-Écosse) with their expulsion and diaspora by the British. Tossed to the winds like seeds of grass they finally took root settling and finding peace and prosperity in the rich alluvial lands of South Louisiana. Étienne Guédry, who was content in Cobiquid, Nova Scotia, but who was subjected to threat, flight with his wife and two small children to Île Saint-Jean, in 1758 was captured by the British when the last remaining French stronghold at Fortresse de Louisbourg fell. Exiled with them to St. Malo, France were his friends from Cobiquid, Jean-Baptiste Hébert, Pierre Saulnier and family, and Gabriel Melanson with his wife Ysabelle and his teenage sister, Anne. Étienne mourned the deaths of his wife and children in France. He eventually remarried and his final voyage to la Louisiane (Louisiana) with his second family was by the benevolence of Spain after twenty-seven years of living in abject poverty. In Louisiana his line flourished and prospered. They reclaimed paradise in Nouvelle Acadie. (New Acadia) Like many others he settled his family on Bayou Lafourche, receiving the customary land grant from Spain of about one acre wide and in depth to the marshlands. He was given provisions: seeds, tools, a few livestock, and all needed to begin this new life. He was successful in his"strip farm" and in succeeding generations his descendants became prosperous as their holdings grew with the planting of sugar cane, rice, cattle ranching, and in the twentieth century, the oil industry. They were now called Cadiens. (Cajuns) This is a story of how the people known as Cajuns became a living monument to human fortitude and the will for survival. From their ancestors through the centuries echoes the cry, "N´oubliez pas!"....We don´t forget! -A.K. Keller

The first work devoted exclusively to Acadians in Nova Scotia, this book presents a thorough study of Acadian history from the earliest days of French settlement to present-day Acadian communities. Authors Sally Ross and Alphonse Deveau draw on original seventeenth-century texts, as well as up-to-date sources. They examine the history of the Expulsion--the Grand Dérangement--that began in 1755, and trace the return of the Acadians and their resettlement in seven areas of the province. The authors highlight the distinct features that have developed within these different regions of Nova Scotia and discuss the choices and challenges faced by Acadians today: the linguistic assimilation and preservation of a distinct culture against pressures from the mainstream culture. Acadians of Nova Scotia won the 1993 Dartmouth Book Award for non-fiction and the 1993 Evelyn Richardson Memorial Literary Prize for non-fiction.