num_pages: 562
description: 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. 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 Mikmaq 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.
language: English
title: A Great and Noble Scheme: The Tragic Story of the Expulsion of the French Acadians from Their American Homeland
titlecomplete: A Great and Noble Scheme: The Tragic Story of the Expulsion of the French Acadians from Their American Homeland
genres: Historical, France, American, British Literature, Canada, Nonfiction, 18th Century, American History, World History, History
ratings_count: 350
publisher: W. W. Norton & Company