Expulsion of the Acadians

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Order for the deportation of Acadians, read by Winslow in Grand-Pré church.[1]

The Expulsion of the Acadians, also known as the Great Upheaval, the Great Expulsion, The Deportation, the Acadian Expulsion, and called by the deportees, Le Grand Dérangement (the Big Disturbance), was the forced population transfer of the French Acadian population from Nova Scotia and New Brunswick (an area known as Acadia to the French) to other British controlled colonies between 1755 and 1763. It was ordered by British governor Charles Lawrence and the Nova Scotia Council, and led to the deaths of thousands of Acadians. The policy was extremely controversial, both in Canada and England, where opponents of the British government strongly criticized it.

Contents

[edit] History

See also: History of the Acadians
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The Acadian removal occurred at the culmination of tensions between the French and the English that had existed in Acadia since the territory was ceded to the British by the Treaty of Utrecht of 1713. It was also related to increasing tensions in the 1750s between the two nations in Europe and North America. The British, nervous about the loyalties of French-speaking inhabitants of the newly created colony of Nova Scotia, demanded that the Acadians swear an oath of loyalty to the British. The Acadians offered to swear their neutrality. In 1730, the British agreed and the Acadians became the "neutral French."[2] In 1749, Governor Cornwallis again asked the Acadians to take the oath. Although unsuccessful, he took no drastic action. The following governor, Peregrine Hopson, continued the conciliatory policy for the Acadians.[3]

When Charles Lawrence took over the post following Hopson’s return to England, he took a stronger stance. When fighting between the French and the English broke out in the Ohio River valley in 1754, signalling the beginning of the French and Indian War (and Seven Years' War in Europe), Lawrence concluded he needed the Acadians to accept the oath on British terms. Following the discovery of 300 Acadians at the French Fort Beauséjour when the English captured it in 1755, Lawrence made one last attempt to convince the Acadians to accept the oath.[4] They again refused to accept Lawrence’s terms. The Lieutenant Governor decided to deport the Acadians to various locations throughout the thirteen British North American colonies, France, Louisiana, and Britain.

Their Mi'kmaq hosts, who never agreed to cede any of their land, were not so lucky as to be deported (except for some of mixed French descent, who were deported to Massachusetts as indentured servants). Instead, to dispossess them of their homeland, successive British governors issued proclamations offering bounties to colonial rangers for hunting, killing, and scalping Mi'kmaqs. Such proclamations were issued by Governors Paul Mascarene (and William Shirley of Massachusetts Bay) in 1744, by Edward Cornwallis in 1749, and by Charles Lawrence in 1756. By the time a lasting peace was concluded between the Mi'kmaq and British in 1761, the Mi'kmaq had been greatly reduced in numbers, and most of their territory had been seized by the wave of British immigration that began in 1749. Those Mi'kmaq who managed to elude the British provided crucial support to many refugee Acadians who were relatives. Soon after the British began to claim Acadians and Mi'kmaqs as their subjects in 1713, the colonial authorities passed laws forbidding the groups to speak or intermarry, but they were not successful in keeping the populations separated.[5]

[edit] Deportation

Approximately 7,000 Acadians were deported during 1755. The deportees were held on prison ships for several weeks before being moved to their destinations, leading to the deaths of hundreds. An estimated 2,700 deportees died before reaching their destination. An additional 10,000 are estimated to have died from displacement during the winter of 1755–1756. There were approximately 23,000 Acadians before the deportation according to provincial records, but based on British records, only an estimated 10,000 survived. Approximately 5,000 to 6,000 Acadians escaped to Quebec, hid among the Mi'kmaq, or were able to hide in the countryside and avoid deportation until the situation settled down.[6]

[edit] After the expulsion

Joseph "Beausoleil" Broussard. Artist Herb Roe
Destinations for deported Acadians[7]
Area Population
Connecticut 667
New York 249
Maryland 810
Pennsylvania 383
North Carolina 280
Georgia 185
Massachusetts 1,043
St. John River (Maine & New Brunswick) 86
Île Saint-Jean (Prince Edward Island) 300
Baie des Chaleurs (Québec & New Brunswick) 700
Nova Scotia 1,249
Québec 2,000
Louisiana 300
England 866
France 3,500
TOTAL 12,618

Not all Acadians were deported by the British. A large number of Acadians fled overland, aided by their Mi'kmaq allies, and resettled in the colonies of New France, present-day Québec and New Brunswick. There was also a small guerrilla resistance led by Joseph Broussard, known as "Beausoleil". Others returned and settled in the region of Fort Sainte-Anne, now Fredericton, and were displaced again by the arrival of Loyalists during and after the American Revolution. In 1785 they created the first colony in the Upper Saint John River valley, near what is now Edmundston.

Many of the deportees succumbed to disease after their removal from Nova Scotia and southeastern New Brunswick. When the vessels carrying the Acadians to Philadelphia reached Delaware in November 1755, it was discovered that smallpox had broken out among them. Many subsequently perished, despite efforts of local Quakers to assist.[8] An outbreak of smallpox also claimed some of those who found refuge at Quebec, then still under French rule. Those who went to the West Indies, in particular, suffered from the change in climate and endemic infectious disease, and many died of fever.[9]. Four hundred died when the transport ship Violet sank in 1758 en route from Île St.-Jean to France. Another three hundred went down with the Prince William, another British transport ship that had unsuccessfully tried to rescue the Violet.[10]

The British burned the homes and farms around the Bay of Fundy or gave them to English-speaking Protestant colonists. For example, on 4 June 1760, New England planters arrived to claim land in Nova Scotia taken from the Acadians. The most significant repopulation in Nova Scotia came from the Highland Scots'[citation needed] emigrating as a result of the Highland Clearances beginning in the late 18th century. In time some of the Acadian population returned. Today there are islands of largely French-speaking towns, such as Chéticamp, intermingled with those of the Scots descendants.

Over the next several decades, many Acadians moved down the North American east coast, landing temporarily in New England, the Carolinas and other ports, with a large number eventually settling in Louisiana, then controlled by Spain. Spanish authorities welcomed the Catholic Acadians as settlers, first in areas along the Mississippi River, then later in the Atchafalaya Basin and in the prairie lands to the west, a region later renamed Acadiana. During the 19th century, as Acadians reestablished their culture, "Acadian" was elided locally into "Cajun."

[edit] In popular culture

 This "In popular culture" section may contain too many minor or trivial references. Please reorganize this content to explain the subject's impact on popular culture rather than simply listing appearances, and remove trivia references. (October 2009)

American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow published a long, narrative poem about the plight of the Acadians called Evangeline in 1847.[11] The Evangeline Oak is a tourist attraction in Louisiana.

The song "Acadian Driftwood", recorded in 1975 by The Band, portrays the Great Upheaval and the displacement of the Acadian people.

The author Antonine Maillet wrote a novel about the aftermath of the Great Upheaval, Pélagie-la-Charrette. The novel was awarded the Prix Goncourt in 1979.

[edit] Legacy

Grand-Pré Park, situated in present-day Grand-Pré, Nova Scotia is now a National Historic Site of Canada. It has been preserved as a living monument to the Expulsion, complete with a memorial church and a statue of Evangeline, the subject and title of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's stirring poem on the experience.

In December 2003, Governor General Adrienne Clarkson, representing Canada's Monarch, Queen Elizabeth II, declared the Crown's acknowledgement of (but did not apologise for) the Expulsion. She designated July 28 as "A Day of Commemoration of the Great Upheaval." This proclamation, often referred to as the Royal Proclamation of 2003, closed one of the longest open cases in the history of the British courts, initiated when the Acadian representatives first presented their grievances of forced dispossession of land, property and livestock in 1760.

[edit] See also

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ The Acadian Exiles, Arthur G. Doughty.
  2. ^ R. Douglas Francis, Richard Jones, and Donald B. Smith, Origins: Canadian History to Confederation, 6th ed. (Toronto: Nelson Education, 2009), 117
  3. ^ John Brebber, New England’s Outpost: Acadia before the Conquest of Canada, (Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1965), 190.
  4. ^ James Hannay, "The Fall of Beausejour", in The Acadian Deportation: Deliberate Perfidy or Cruel Necessity?, edited by Naomi Griffiths, (Toronto: Copp Clark Publishing, 1969), 96.
  5. ^ Daniel N. Paul We Were Not the Savages, (2000) chapters 4-7
  6. ^ Faragher, p. 423–424
  7. ^ R.A. LEBLANC. "Les migrations acadiennes", in Cahiers de géographie du Québec, vol. 23, no 58, April 1979, p. 99-124.
  8. ^ The Acadian Exiles, Arthur G. Doughty
  9. ^ Ibid.
  10. ^ Ibid.
  11. ^ Calhoun, Charles C. Longfellow: A Rediscovered Life. Boston: Beacon Press, 2004: 189. ISBN 0807070262.

[edit] References

English
French
  • LeBlanc, Ronnie-Gilles, ed. (2005). Du Grand dérangement à la Déportation : nouvelles perspectives historiques, Moncton: Chaire d'études acadiennes, Université de Moncton, 465 p.
  • Arsenault, Bona and Pascal Alain (2004). Histoire des Acadiens, Saint-Laurent, Québec: Éditions Fides, 502 p.
  • Sauvageau, Robert (1987). Acadie : La guerre de Cent Ans des français d'Amérique aux Maritimes et en Louisiane 1670-1769 Paris: Berger-Levrault
  • Gaudet, Placide (1922). Le Grand Dérangement : sur qui retombe la responsabilité de l'expulsion des Acadiens, Ottawa: Impr. de l'Ottawa Printing Co.
  • d'Arles, Henri (1918). La déportation des Acadiens, Québec: Imprimerie de l'Action sociale

[edit] External links


Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expulsion_of_the_Acadians"