John Mack Faragher
A Great and Noble Scheme
The Tragic Story of the Expulsion of the French Acadians from
Their American Homeland
"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
Mėkmaq 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.
""Unfolds with epic scope and vivid, novelistic
detail."—Christopher Benfey
JOHN MACK FARAGHER is professor of
American history and director of the
Howard R. Lamar Center for the Study of
Frontiers and Borders at Yale University.
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