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

John Mack Faragher

$30.99 - $38.74
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UPC:
9780393328271
Maximum Purchase:
2 units
Binding:
Paperback
Publication Date:
2006-02-17
Author:
John Mack Faragher
Language:
english
Edition:
Reprint
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Altogether superb; a worthy memorial to the victims of two 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 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. John Mack Faragher draws on original research 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