| A Great and Noble Scheme: The Tragic Story of the Expulsion of the French Acadians from Their American Homeland |  | Author: John Mack Faragher
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Category: Book
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Rating:  15 reviews
Sales Rank: 198,323
Media: Paperback
Pages: 592
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 8.2 x 5.2 x 1.2
ISBN: 0393328279
Dewey Decimal Number: 971
EAN: 9780393328271
ASIN: 0393328279
Publication Date: February 17, 2006
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"Altogether superb; 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 Mìkmaq 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
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 15
 Scholarly, Yet Reads Like Swashbuckling Novel January 10, 2007
Shane K. Bernard (New Iberia, LA USA)
7 out of 7 found this review helpful
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.
An amazingly readable, well-documented history -- couldn't put it down! July 23, 2005
Maureen (Hendersonville, New Caledonia)
9 out of 10 found this review helpful
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.
Tragedy reflected in current events April 13, 2006
Arthur P. Smith (Selden, New York USA)
9 out of 10 found this review helpful
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 of time, lies were told to them about what was happening, then all were boarded on ships and dispersed in small groups to other English colonies, some of which were clearly surprised by the new refugees. Huge fractions of those thus deported died in the process, or not long after arrival; Faragher estimates a total of 10,000 lost. The treatment was truly horrific.
The treatment was also greatly reminiscent of the so recent dispersal of victims of Hurricane Katrina. New Orleans was not the original destination of any of the Acadians, but via France and the other colonies, many arrived in Louisiana in the years that followed the expulsion, settling new lands on the Mississippi and gulf coast and developing a new culture from the old Acadian one: the Cajuns. The connection in place and culture over time is haunting; Faragher's book of course predates the 2005 hurricane season.
Many of the Acadians settled much closer to home - among the much more numerous French population of Quebec, or in the interior of what are now New Brunswick and Maine. Some returned to Nova Scotia, but were treated as little better than slaves there for a very long time. Faragher covers all this aftermath, both positive and negative, in as thorough a fashion as the early history.
While this book has clear villains and victims, as the truth surely does, Faragher spends much time considering the motivations and thinking behind those who caused this to happen; in some ways he makes it all too easy to understand. We prefer to keep what is clearly evil more remote from us, but this is not the story of the Holocaust, communist purges, or other familiar injustice; seeing how such tragedy can happen in a situation unfamiliar yet so close to home would force any reader of this book to come away questioning prejudices, and perhaps a better person for it.
Acadian perspective July 5, 2007
J. Robert Dugas (Lynn, MA USA)
5 out of 5 found this review helpful
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.
Great book July 8, 2007
Pin Caouenne
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
This is a real 5-star book. I was amazed at the level of research, and the abundance of primary sources quoted. A very thorough explanation of the Acadian tale. I wish all popular history books were this good.
For those interested in Louisiana Acadians, I would recommend reading this in conjunction with Carl Brasseaux's books; they pick up the story where Faragher's leaves off. I hope to find a similar book about the northern Acadians. If any other reviewers know of one, please add it to your review.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 15
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