A Great and Noble Scheme: The Tragic Story of the Expulsion of the French Acadians from Their American Homeland

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W. W. Norton & Company, 2005 - History - 562 pages
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 Mìkmaq 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.
 

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Contents

L Ordre de BonTemps The French Arrival in lAcadie 16041616
1
Seigneurs et Rouriers The Birth of the Acadian People 16141688
35
Cunning Is Better than Force Life in the Borderland 16711696
71
Nos Amis les Ennemis The English Conquest 16961710
99
The Meadows of LAcadie Imperial Designs and Acadian Desires 17101718
125
To Gett Them Over by Degrees Controversy Over the Oath 17181730
151
The French Neutrals Years of Acadian Prosperity 17301739
179
Placd Between Two Fires Paul Mascarene and Imperial War 17391747
209
Driven Out of the Country The Decision to Remove the Acadians JuneJuly 1755
313
Gone All Gone The Expulsion AugustDecember 1755
335
Removed to a Strange Land The Exiles 17551758
365
Chasse à Mort The Refugees 17561760
393
The Rays of the Morning End of the Removal Era 17601785
417
Le Grand Dérangement Memory and History
443
Notes
481
Permissions
539

Discord and Desolation The British Buildup 17481753
245
By Fire and Sword The Siege of Beausejour December 1753July 1755
279

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About the author (2005)

John Mack Faragher is the Howard R. Lamar Professor Emeritus of History and American Studies at Yale. He is the author of many books on American history, including a biography of Daniel Boone that received a Los Angeles Times Book Prize.

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