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

by John Mack Faragher

Book Overview

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...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0393051358
• ISBN13: 9780393051353
• Release Date: February 2005
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Length: 562 Pages
• Weight: 2.25 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.7" x 6.6" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

Acadian perspective

A Great and Noble Scheme is a scholarly and incisive disertation. It is an extremely detailed history of the trials of our Acadian forefathers. I have studied the Acadian history for many years and read countless readings. Nothing I have read approaches all the information in this excellent text. It is an excellent source of information to get a thorough understanding of a little known tragedy about our American-Canadian history. I urge anybody seriously researching Acadian history to read this fine work.

Scholarly, Yet Reads Like Swashbuckling Novel

John Mack Faragher examines the colonization of Nova Scotia by French peasants in the seventeenth century and how their occupation of this strategically important peninsula eventually resulted in their forced expulsion by the British military -- an event that Faragher regards as an instance of "ethnic cleansing," if not outright genocide. Faragher delves deep into colonial archives to locate obscure source material that brings to life a people who were at best semi-literate. He does so by drawing on government correspondence (between colonial administrators and government officials in London and Paris), on the personal diaries of British soldiers, on the memoirs of French missionaries, and on letters written by the few literate Acadians, among other sources. More than previous writers, Faragher stresses the intimate relationship between the Acadians and the local Micmac Indians, with whom the Acadians intermarried much more frequently than thought originally. He also emphasizes the leading role played by New England "Yankees" in carrying out the expulsion, showing that the event was hardly a purely British operation. He traces the Acadians' repeated efforts to secure their New World homeland by swearing an conditional oath of allegiance to the British crown -- allegiance in exchange for wartime neutrality. To do otherwise, Faragher repeatedly notes, would have been for the Acadians to invite attack from the French military and their Indian allies . . . as did indeed happen at the village of Beaubassin, when Indians under French command burned the village in an event that mirrors the "burn-the-village-to-save-it" mentality of the Vietnam War (my comparison, not Faragher's). The book is heavily documented, complete with detailed endnotes and bibliography; and despite the academic trappings it reads like a swashbuckling novel. As a professional historian, I highly recommend this book to scholars and laypersons alike.

Tragedy reflected in current events

While the name is relatively new, the practice of deliberate ethnic cleansing reflects thousands of years of human cruelty and inhumanity. On the North American continent, the treatment of native Americans amounted to one form of such cruel displacement from home and prosperity, that of African slaves another. But few remember the clearest case of tragic forced removal as government policy in North American history: the treatment of the tens of thousands of French-speaking Acadians living in Nova Scotia in the 1750s, the central topic of Faragher's book. The ethnic divide here was one of religion, language, and political affiliation as well as race. The Protestants of New England feared attacks from the Catholic French forces in North America, and had suffered defeats against them before. The Acadians by their language and religion seemed more naturally allied with the French crown than the English, and British officers and governors constantly suspected them of sedition and treason. The Acadians had also intermingled freely with local Indian tribes, something much rarer in the English settlements. Before the French, New Englanders had feared the natives at least as much, so the native element did not help improve relations. The other clear element in the ultimate expulsion policy was one of greed: Acadians were clearly prosperous, their farmlands producing great plenty; the prospect of free developed land was surely a strong motivating factor in the displacement. But this seems to have been lost in the event itself - in the end it was only years afterward that English settlers came to claim it, and much longer before they learned how to prosper there. Faragher does a wonderful job of describing the early history of the settlers, the first families who came in the 1600s, and additions through the years. After several exchanges of sovereignty, Nova Scotia finally fell into the hands of the British, who demanded a loyalty oath of the inhabitants. The Acadians were happy to be good subjects, but refused to swear to take up arms against their fellows, and constantly insisted they were entitled to a modified version of the standard oath, a constant source of irritation to those in the British bureaucracy not attuned to local custom and feelings. The Acadians had a natural streak of independent feeling coupled with close community ties, using local representative councils to present a unified front to their governors. The irony is that this expulsion of "traitors to the king", spurred principally by the New England colonies and Massachusetts in particular, happened only a bit over a decade before the rebellion of the thirteen colonies from that king's son. And that time, the French were on the colonies' side. Faragher's account is most enthralling in the chapters covering the preparation for and act of expulsion. The process was clearly meticulously planned by the local British leaders. Adult males were separated from their families for a space o

Clear, Informative, and Enjoyable Reading

I was surprised at the depth of information and the wide range of topics covered but that I still could comprehend what I was reading without having to reread every paragraph 3 times over like one may do with other history books. Not a stuffy history book but a delightfully reader friendly history book, and a very informative inside look at what really happened and who was involved. It seemed to me that it is a non partisan fair representation of both sides, but I am full Acadian by bloodline so that may have given me a biased edge. I can't say for sure.

An amazingly readable, well-documented history -- couldn't put it down!

The story of the expulsion of the Acadians from what we now call the Canadian Maritimes is told here with a rare combination of passion and objectivity. Faragher shows how the Yankees and the British, at both the governmental and the individual level, systematically set out to wipe the Acadians from the land -- and from the earth. Looked at with 21st century eyes, this historic episode is clearly seen as a shameful American story of ethnic cleansing. Faragher does not call for collective guilt, but for acknowledgement; yes, this is part of our nations' histories -- Canada, Britain, and the US --it happened here. This is particularly poignant in 2005, which marks the 250th anniversary of the beginning of Le Grand Derangement, where thousands of children, women and men died and thousands more were deceived, robbed, brutally treated, sent into a most painful exile and in some cases held in de facto slavery. This is not an easy subject to read -- but it is an important one, and its lessons will stay with me for a long time.