Origins

Acadians are a people formed and moulded by North America. By 1700 there was a small community of about 3,000 people, mostly in present-day Nova Scotia, who identified themselves as Acadian rather than as French or English. Nearly three hundred years later, in the 1990s, people of Acadian ancestry in North America number approximately 3 million and are scattered from the Maritime provinces and Quebec to Ontario, the western provinces, the northeastern United States, and Louisiana. All of those who claim an Acadian identity, however, have some connection with the emigrants who settled on the Atlantic coast of Canada in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, and that region remains the heartland of the Acadian people today. Indeed, though Acadians everywhere are now making efforts to preserve their heritage, the Maritimes are the only area where a true Acadian community, as opposed to just individuals who identify as Acadians, can be said to exist.

The etymology of the word Acadia has been much debated, with some seeing a link with the Greek “Arcadia” and others – whose theory is increasingly accepted – detecting an Amerindian origin. Geographically, the issue is less complicated. The word “Acadie” is found on many European maps of the sixteenth century, attached to the region that currently includes part of northeastern Maine, southeastern Quebec, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, and Nova Scotia. Spelled in many different ways – la cadie, Lacadie, La Cadie, Lacadye, Acadie, and lacadye – the name is printed consistently south of the St Lawrence River but no means always in one location. Most often it appears written across lands south of the Gaspé, including Nova Scotia. The name Acadie is applied specifically to Nova Scotia on a map published in 1586 and another map of 1601 has the regional name Coste de Cadie in association with, but to the left of, Nouvelle France.

The use of the word to designate a political reality began in 1603, when King Henry IV of France issued a commission to a Protestant nobleman, Pierre Du Gua, Sieur de Monts, for the “colonisation of the lands of La Cadie, Canada, and other places in New France.” Made viceroy and captain-general, de Monts was to have responsibility over “the seas as well as the land of la Cadie, Canada, and other territories of New France.” His commission is a lengthy document, spelling out in great detail the need for some formal recognition of French authority “in and about the said country of La Cadie,” a region that French “ships-captains, pilots, merchants, and others have for many years visited, frequented, and trafficked.”

De Monts’s commission is as much the starting point for the Acadian people as the voyage of the Mayflower is for Americans. Even so, between 1604 and 1632 the colony barely survived. Its progress was not helped by Scottish counter-claims to almost precisely the same territory. In 1621 King James VI of Scotland (and James I of England), granted Sir William Alexander colonization rights over the area, which the charter in question called “Nova Scotia” and located between the Gaspé and the Sainte-Croix River. While a determined effort was made to establish Scottish settlers there between 1629 and 1631, the provisions of the Treaty of Saint-Germainen-Laye, signed on 8 March 1632, restored the colony to the undisputed control of France. In this treaty, and in future international documents relating to the area until 1763, the territory was referred to as “Acadia or Nova Scotia,” “l’Acadie ou la Nouvelle-Ecosse.” The dual name was more than just a matter of words: it both signified the interest of two European powers in the territory and underlined its situation as a border between empires, New England to the south and New France to the north. This political geography had a profound effect on the development of Acadian identity, which came to be marked by the same political ambivalence seen in other peoples whose lands are similarly positioned between two much more powerful entities.

For most of the seventeenth century, Acadia was ruled by France but from 1654 to 1668 it was again under English control, with Massachusetts exerting the most political influence. Though the colony was restored to France by the Treaty of Breda in 1667, another four years elapsed before the English withdrew. The seventeen years of English rule halted the development of seigneurial land tenure in the colony and led to the development of strong commercial relations between major Acadian settlements and Boston. Despite a number of raids out of New England, France maintained its authority over the area from 1671 until 1710, when it was once more conquered by New England forces. In 1713 “Acadia or Nova Scotia” was ceded to Britain by the Treaty of Utrecht, the last change of imperial authority for the colony.

The Acadians of 1713 were the nucleus of those who claim Acadian heritage today. By that date it was a community that was both demographically self-generating and economically self-sustaining. Over the next four decades, while newcomers still arrived in the colony, the growth of the Acadian population was above all due to high fertility levels, which in turn were the result of the material prosperity stemming from a mixed economy of fishing, farming, and trade. Further, the Acadians had woven together a particular mix of social conventions, political traditions, and religious convictions that developed over the next forty years into a strong sense of identity, one capable of being sustained when the majority of the community was exiled in 1755.

Those who came to the colony during the seventeenth century brought with them customs and usages from several different regions of France as well as from Scotland and Ireland. This rich heritage, melded together by common experiences in new circumstances and altered subtly with the infusion of Micmac influence, built a community whose language was French and whose faith was Catholic. Yet Acadian society was no mere carbon copy of any European model. Instead, like other French and English colonies in North America at that time, it had a distinctive character of its own.

Between 1713 and 1755 the Acadian community expanded considerably and its main features became more firmly entrenched. Kinship ties, linking families within villages and new settlements with the older communities, were extremely important and mitigated social divisions. The building of dykes – a task that demanded much cooperation among the inhabitants – also worked to produce closely knit communities. Trade, both with Boston and with the emerging stronghold of Louisbourg on Île Royale (Cape Breton Island), expanded Acadian knowledge of the world in which they lived, bringing first-hand acquaintance with these centres of French and English power. Political leadership, generated by the election of delegates in each village who were charged with representing the people’s interests to the governing authorities in Annapolis Royal (known as Port Royal in the French regime), became much more sophisticated. In their spiritual life, self-reliance and a wide latitude in religious practice resulted from the scarcity of priests. Finally, cultural activity became both greater and more complex, with songs and dances, poetry and music, folk-tales and material goods being produced with unique Acadian features. The language of the community was French but it was a French that was fashioned from the rich heritage of a number of regions of France and had developed a particular vocabulary to refer to the new conditions of life. Further, there were almost always people in the villages who knew enough English to respond to directives from Annapolis Royal or to bargain with Boston merchants, so that the Acadian community as a whole was functionally bilingual even if most individuals spoke only French.

The years from 1713 to 1748 have been called the “Golden Age of Acadian Life.” It was a period when the majority of Acadian settlements knew neither warfare nor epidemics, neither famine nor persecution. It was also the period when the birthrate rose dramatically and life expectancy continually increased. The experience of these decades has echoed down the years since, providing the Acadians with an enduring vision of a peaceful and fruitful era. Yet it was also a time of political tension, one in which the Acadians refined their policy of neutrality as the struggle between England and France for North America grew more bitter.

The English demand for an oath of allegiance by the Acadians followed swiftly on the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713. It was in no way an unusual demand in eighteenth-century European politics. What was unusual, however, was the Acadian response, which was neither acceptance nor rejection but something in between. From 1713 until 1730 the Acadians refused an unconditional promise of allegiance to the English authorities, offering instead an oath promising neutrality in the event of Anglo-French hostilities. English officials in Nova Scotia finally accepted the Acadian version of allegiance in 1730 and from then on, in London and Paris, in Boston and in Quebec, the Acadians became known “les Français neutres” or the “neutral French.” This policy of independence, tempered with political accommodation to the more powerful, served the Acadians well for the next twenty-five years.

Like so many border people, however, when their more powerful neighbours declared war on each other, the Acadians found their neutrality questioned. Acadian lands possessed great strategic importance in the eyes of both French and English military authorities, and the Acadians themselves were seen by both sides as a potential fighting force in alliance with France. War between England and France came about in 1742 and although a peace treaty, the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, was brokered in 1748, few were under the illusion that it would be permanent. Both the French authorities in Louisbourg and the British authorities in Annapolis Royal were by then convinced that the Acadians would play a role when hostilities recommenced, though the Acadians had unquestionably retained their neutrality between 1742 and 1748.

Between 1748 and 1755 the English attempted to fortify their situation in Nova Scotia, first by strengthening their presence with the founding of Halifax and then by persuading the Acadians to swear an unequivocal oath of allegiance. Failing, in spite of considerable efforts, to persuade the Acadians that such an oath was warranted, the English resorted to the drastic action of deportation. Between 1755 and 1763 more than three-quarters of the Acadian population, some 10,000 in number, were deported to other British colonies in North America. This momentous event, central to the history of the Acadian people, was driven partly by Britain’s fears for the security of Nova Scotia, partly by a desire to replace the Acadians with other settlers whose loyalty was unquestioned, and partly by the belief that deportation would lead to the Acadians’ assimilation in the Protestant, English-speaking societies that received them. Contrary to British expectations, however, by 1755 the Acadian identity was too strong to be eradicated. When the Treaty of Paris ending the Seven Years’ War was signed in 1763, the Acadian people, though widely dispersed and with their roots in Nova Scotia almost obliterated, still existed. More astonishing still, from 1764 onwards the Acadians made their way back to Nova Scotia in such numbers that their population there soon reached pre-deportation levels.