Description
“Altogether very good; a worthy memorial to the sufferers of 2 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 best of neutrality; to are living in peace from the imperial wars waged between France and England; had been probably the most founding values of Acadia; its settlers traded and intermarried freely with native Mikmaq Indians and English Protestants alike. However the Acadians’ refusal to swear unconditional allegiance to the British Crown within 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 huge scale. John Mack Faragher draws on original analysis to weave 150 years of history into a gripping narrative of both the civilization of Acadia and the British plot to destroy it. 40 illustrations, 6 maps