A Great and Noble Scheme – The Tragic Story of the Expulsions of the French Acadians from their American Homeland: The Tragic Story of the Expulsion ... French Acadians from their American Homeland - Hardcover

Faragher, John Mack

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0393051358 ISBN 13: 9780393051353

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 2005

Synopsis

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.

About this title

Review:

"Delves deeply and with rueful wisdom into a terrible crime perpetrated by European imperialists and American colonists."

Synopsis:

On 25 August 1755, the New York Gazette printed a dispatch from Nova Scotia: "We are now upon a great and noble Scheme of sending the neutral French out of this Province, who have always been our secret Enemies..." John Mack Faragher tells the story of the expulsion of 18,000 Acadians in gripping prose. Following specific families through the anguish of their removal, he brings to light a tragic chapter in the settlement of America.

About this edition

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0393051358
• ISBN 13: 9780393051353
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 544