IV.

The Acadian Expulsion

In 1749 the British founded Halifax, Nova Scotia, and began to import settlers into Nova Scotia for the first time. During the 1750s, as tensions between Britain and France built toward the French and Indian War (1754-1763), most Acadians remained committed to neutrality as the French and British skirmished over their holdings in the region. The British increasingly distrusted Acadian neutrality and Acadian trade with the French in Louisbourg.

In the summer of 1755, the Nova Scotia military council ordered the deportation of all Acadians from the colony. During the initial months of the expulsion, the British shipped about 7,000 Acadians south to British colonies from Massachusetts to Georgia. After the fall of Louisbourg to the British in 1758, Britain cleared Île Royale and sent thousands more Acadians to Britain and France, as well as to North and South America. Some of those deported died en route, and others were separated from their families. Others fled to Québec. By 1762 only some 1,500 Acadians remained in the Maritime region.

Following the deportation, immigrants from New England resettled most Acadian lands. Scattered across three continents, Acadians began to establish new communities. By 1800 close to 3,000 of these exiles had made their way to Louisiana, where the former Acadians became known over time as Cajuns. Also by that time, substantial numbers returned to the Maritime region, bringing the French-speaking population there to more than 8,000. Acadians founded rural communities in scattered locations where they subsisted through small-scale farming, fishing, and working in the woods.