John Mack Faragher

A Great and Noble Scheme

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

On August 25, 1755, the New York Gazette printed a dispatch from the maritime province of 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....If we Effect their Expulsion, it will be one of the greatest things that ever the English did in America..."

At the time these words were written, New England troops were rounding up some 18,000 French-speaking Acadian residents ("the neutral French") at gunpoint and loading them onto transports, separating parents from children and husbands from wives. They were scattered throughout the British Empire. Thousands died. Their lands were expropriated by Yankee settlers from New England.

Drawing on original primary research, John Mack Faragher tells the full story of this expulsion in vivid, gripping prose. Following specific Acadian families through the anguish of their removal, he brings to light a tragic chapter in the settlement of America. 40 illustrations and 6 maps.

"Faragher's meticulous scholarship recovers the history of a people deliberately targeted for extinction in the British-American conquest of North America. He gives us in vivid detail both the calculated cruelty of the conquerors and the enduring humanity of the people who survived this American exercise in ethnic cleansing. This is a major work." —Edmund Morgan

"A Great and Noble Scheme is one of those landmark books that everyone interested in American history will want to read and keep in his library for children and grandchildren to peruse. It delves deeply and with rueful wisdom into a terrible crime perpetrated by European imperialists and American colonists before they became a nation. John Mack Faragher has replaced the story of Evangeline with a narrative that makes all of us confront our flawed humanity." —Thomas Fleming, author of Liberty!: The American Revolution

"Faragher's impressive account of the Acadian tragedy is notable for its narrative drive, drama, clarity, and comprehensive research. As an early American instance of ethnic cleansing, it brings the remote past into the present without being present-minded. Above all, in exposing numerous myths and romanticizations, the account is balanced because it is told from the perspective of all sides, including the British rationale for 'cruel necessity' and oppressive collaboration between British policy-makers and the maritime colonists." —Michael Kammen, Professor of American History and Culture, Cornell University

"From Acadia to zydeco, John Mack Faragher's extraordinary narrative of 'New France' unfolds with epic scope and vivid, novelistic detail. The 'removal' of the French Catholic Acadians from Nova Scotia to Louisiana and elsewhere has unnerving parallels to our own unsettled historical moment. Under Faragher's probing eye, 'American' history turns out to be a complex tangle of 'intercultural conversations,' something richer and stranger—and sadder—than the traditional (and wishful) melting pot. Hawthorne wrote, 'Methinks, if I were an American poet, I would choose Acadia for the subject of my song.' Everyone knows bits and pieces of the story. Now, thanks to Faragher, we have the whole living thing. We've come a long way since Evangeline!" —Christopher Benfey, author of Degas in New Orleans and The Great Wave

"John Faragher has had the wit and skill to tell the story of 'le grand dérangement'—the expulsion of the Acadians from their homes and homeland—as the culmination of a particular tension between family and empire. In the catalog of North American horrors, the destruction of Acadia can seem slight alongside the dispossession of Indian peoples and the enslavement of Africans, but it resonates deeply in our world of ethnic cleansings. By concentrating not just on the destruction, but also on the accomplishments, of a small parochial culture that briefly and surprisingly bridged the lines of race and empire that we so often assume were unpassable, he has written a moving and humane book." —Richard White, Margaret Byrne Professor of American History, Stanford University

"This is the story of the making and unmaking of a Catholic people of French descent who tried to mind their own business on the edges of empires, something too anomalous to be tolerated by eighteenth century British imperial officials and nearby New Englanders, who on the eve of the American Revolution successfully extirpated the Acadians. By extending the history of the colonies north to Nova Scotia, Faragher has recovered this dark and long forgotten episode. We are indebted to him for his lively yet thorough and morally compelling account of it." —Thomas Bender, University Professor of the Humanities and Professor of History, New York University