num_pages: 592
description: "Altogether superb: an accessible, fluent account that advances scholarship while building 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 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. 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. 40 illustrations, 6 maps
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: France, History, 18th Century, Canada, American History, British Literature, Historical, World History, American, Nonfiction
ratings_count: 350
publisher: W. W. Norton & Company