The Conquest Of Acadia 1710

The conquest of Port-Royal by British forces in 1710 is an intensely revealing episode in the history of northeastern North America. Bringing together multi-layered perspectives, including the conquest's effects on aboriginal inhabitants, Acadians, and New Englanders, and using a variety of methodologies to contextualise the incident in local, regional, and imperial terms, six prominent scholars form new conclusions regarding the events of 1710. The authors show that the processes by which European states sought to legitimate their claims, and the terms on which mutual toleration would be granted or withheld by different peoples living side by side are especially visible in the Nova Scotia that emerged following the conquest. Important on both a local and global scale, The 'Conquest' of Acadia will be a significant contribution to Acadian history, native studies, native rights histories, and the socio-political history of the eighteenth century.

The former French colony of Acadia—permanently renamed Nova Scotia by the British when they began an ambitious occupation of the territory in 1710—witnessed one of the bitterest struggles in the British empire. Whereas in its other North American colonies Britain assumed it could garner the sympathies of fellow Europeans against the native peoples, in Nova Scotia nothing was further from the truth. The Mi'kmaq, the native local population, and the Acadians, descendants of the original French settlers, had coexisted for more than a hundred years prior to the British conquest, and their friendships, family ties, common Catholic religion, and commercial relationships proved resistant to British-enforced change. Unable to seize satisfactory political control over the region, despite numerous efforts at separating the Acadians and Mi'kmaq, the authorities took drastic steps in the 1750s, forcibly deporting the Acadians to other British colonies and systematically decimating the remaining native population. The story of the removal of the Acadians, some of whose descendants are the Cajuns of Louisiana, and the subsequent oppression of the Mi'kmaq has never been completely told. In this first comprehensive history of the events leading up to the ultimate break-up of Nova Scotian society, Geoffrey Plank skillfully unravels the complex relationships of all of the groups involved, establishing the strong bonds between the Mi'kmaq and Acadians as well as the frustration of the British administrators that led to the Acadian removal, culminating in one of the most infamous events in North American history.

"Altogether superb: an accessible, fluent account that advances scholarship while building 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.

The Far Reaches of Empire chronicles the half century of Anglo-American efforts to establish dominion in Nova Scotia, an important French foothold in the New World. John Grenier examines the conflict of cultures and peoples in the colonial Northeast through the lens of military history as he tells how Britons and Yankees waged a tremendously efficient counterinsurgency that ultimately crushed every remnant of Acadian, Indian, and French resistance in Nova Scotia. The author demonstrates the importance of warfare in the Anglo-French competition for North America, showing especially how Anglo-Americans used brutal but effective measures to wrest control of Nova Scotia from French and Indian enemies who were no less ruthless. He explores the influence of Abenakis, Maliseets, and Mi’kmaq in shaping the region’s history, revealing them to be more than the supposed pawns of outsiders; and he describes the machinations of French officials, military officers, and Catholic priests in stirring up resistance. Arguing that the Acadians were not merely helpless victims of ethnic cleansing, Grenier shows that individual actions and larger forces of history influenced the decision to remove them. The Far Reaches of Empire illuminates the primacy of war in establishing British supremacy in northeastern North America.