Transporting us beyond Seas: Le Grand Dérangement
"In 1774, the Colonial response to Crown deportation policies went beyond mere opposition to inconvenient regulations. " For George II, the problem was those damned Acadians. They had outright defied him. They refused to pick up arms against France or Indigenous allies like the Mi’kmaq. Their colony, now in British-controlled Canada, had a policy of neutrality, referring him to the Treaty of Utrecht, but bands of Acadians and their allies were killing his soldiers. The Crown was not amused. Soldiers surrounded Acadian churches during Mass, imprisoning men and herding families with bayonets. The Acadians had been ingenious farmers on coastal plains with the same climate as Reykjavik or Bergen, building dikes to elevate farms above snowmelt and breeding fruit to mature in their moderately warm maritime summers. Now their homes and crops were leveled, their dams destroyed, their fertile farmlands flooded. The King callously burned century-old towns. Children were ...
