Darryl Mott @Abstruse@chirp.enworld.org

BTW, it took until 2003 for the English government to even acknowledge the Great Upheaval (Le Grand Dérangement) actually happened and very specifically did NOT apologize for it.

Anyway, despite being Cajun and living the majority of my life in Southeast Texas on the Louisiana border with a large Cajun population, I had to learn this at the age of 43 from a year-old issue of Archaeology Magazine.

Peyroux didn't do this out of the goodness of his heart. He may have been trying to get in good with Spain to hedge his bets (he was accused of being a spy for Spain) and at the very least was financially exploiting the people he helped relocate.

Oh, and the English didn't send them to Louisiana. Louisiana was a Spanish colony at the time, so the Acadians figured out on their own to head there. With the help of French politician Henri Peyroux de la Coudrenière who worked out a deal with Spain to allow them to resettle there.

The English military officer showed up, seized all their lands and livestock, and ordered them moved into other English colonies or back to Europe. They also split up families and placed thousands in indentured servitude.

Almost half of those displaced - 5000 of the 11,500 - died in the process from disease, starvation, or shipwreck.

By 1755, the English fully claimed Canada and took one look at the group of Catholics who were hanging out and intermarrying with the local native peoples and said "Peaceful co-existence? We can't be having that!" and English military commander for the region Lieutenant-Colonel John Winslow forcibly relocated everyone.

In fact, cross-culture exposure combined with the removal of the strict French social structure meant the Acadians moved to a more collectivist, classless society who just wanted to be left alone. To try to maintain neutrality during the conflicts between colonial powers, they'd swap out French and English flags on buildings and forts depending on which gunboat showed up to check on them.

So the Acadians were chill. They used levies to reclaim the majority of the farmland they used so didn't come into conflict with the local indigenous population (specifically the Mi'kmaq) as other European colonists did fighting over resources - the land they claimed was reclaimed land so they didn't steal it from the indigenous population.

Version I was taught: The English took over Canada and many of the residents of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Quebec didn't want to convert to Church of England, so they migrated to Louisiana to remain Catholic.

Yeah, that skips a couple of steps...