Acadian History

Neutrality in wartime carries with it the implication of aloofness, and thus it has been viewed historically as an exclusively reactive policy, rooted in isolationism or weakness, and lacking in imagination or initiative.  The Iroquois and Acadians alike crafted policies of neutrality during the first half of the eighteenth century, allowing each group to prosper during the three decades of peace between 1713 Treaty of Utrecht and the renewal of open military conflict in 1744.  King George’s War (1744-1748) and the Seven Years’ War (1754-63) severely tested the viability of remaining neutral in the borderlands regions of Iroquoia and Acadia.  But rather than simply reacting to the pressures of intensifying imperial conflict after 1744, both the Iroquois and the Acadians creatively advanced their status as neutral entities to preserve what they each regarded as their own best interests.  While neither British nor French imperial authorities accepted unqualifiedly the notion of non-aligned peoples and nations excusing themselves from King George's War and the Seven Years' War, comparative analysis of the ways in which the Iroquois Confederacy and the Acadian settler population structured their respective approaches to neutrality sheds new light on the ability of these groups—traditionally viewed as outside the colonial and imperial systems of power—to maintain internal group cohesion, to influence the course of events, and to determine their own fates.

This article examines how hurricanes shaped the English settlement in South Carolina. Similar to other settlements in the Anglo-Atlantic, colonists encountered many risks and dangers. However, settlers residing in colonies where hurricanes routinely happened faced even greater risks and volatility because the storms occurred with little warning and were capable of causing widespread economic destruction, social chaos, and loss of life. This article argues that in the wake of the hurricanes that struck South Carolina in 1752, colonial authorities were afforded an opportunity to recast Charleston’s urban landscape. The destruction the storms caused to the colony was dramatic and horrifying. The most troubling issue for colonial officials was the damage hurricanes caused to Charleston’s fortifications. The defensive works throughout the town and colony were a fundamental component that shaped the colony’s development and English imperialism in the circum-Caribbean. It further argues that as colonial authorities began to rebuild the defensive walls and fortifications in Charleston, the unexpected arrival of a thousand Acadian refugees provided a valuable labor resource that both taxed charitable coffers and aided in the transformation of the urban landscape. The rebuilding of Charleston’s fortifications illustrates how colonists responded to the destructive forces of hurricanes while further demonstrating the uncertainty of living in the Anglo- Atlantic, where hundreds of war-torn refugees could arrive as suddenly as hurricanes.

This study was completed in partial fulfillment of coursework in Civil Law Reasoning within the University of Ottawa, Faculty of Civil Law, Licentiate in Law, National Program. Obligations are also due to the paper sponsorship by the Cape Breton Island Foundation (CBIF) Incorporated, which is an independent, non-partisan public policy think tank focused on governance impacts on Cape Breton Island. In exploring Civil Law's origin and evolution within New France, leading up to the creation of Quebec and the preservation of French Civil Law, this paper seeks to explore the status and operation of civil law in the rest of Canada's New France territory which we know as Atlantic Canada today, and was formerly known as Acadie. Focus will be paid to Cape Breton Island (Isle Cap Breton), also formerly known as Isle Royale and which twice was part of New France with French Colonial status, and twice was defeated by British (and US) forces and annexed to Nova Scotia (a predominantly British Colony). During its annexations to Nova Scotia, it was also twice split off as its own colony with a constitution, Lieutenant Governor, Attorney General and legislature (which was never allowed to form), granted to it. The final annexation by Nova Scotia was in 1820 and it was performed under great protest by the executive administration and people of Cape Breton Island. In 1867 Nova Scotia joined Confederation, and the Provinces of Nova Scotia and New Brunswick's provincial constitutions were protected. Whereas Cape Breton Island seeks a return of its constitution and legal system, a question to frame future research that is beyond the scope of this preliminary paper, is what historical, cultural, and legal influences will prospectively influence a society ripe for a potential multi-jural legal system with French and Scottish civil law heritage and a strong traditional Aboriginal presence? The goal of an early review of French civil law in Cape Breton Island and Atlantic Canada, will be to establish a deeper understanding of the regions colonial civil law legacy and to deepen an understanding of the legal history of the region during the period 1608-1763 (intermittent French rule).

This article introduces the concept of the white settler tautology – something that seems true by the very nature of its repetition and logical irrefutability in white settler histories, stories, and laws – to analyze the naturalization of settler colonial topographies and ecologies of Mi’kma’ki (Mi’kmaq/Mi’gmag territory in Atlantic Canada). Settler tautologies such as written Biblical and visual art historical references to oxen and plough clearing lands and Acadian coastal dyke irrigation systems each advance the figure of a pacified, willing Mi’kmaq/Mi’gmag subject. This erases the histories of wilful, resistant, and complex Mi’kmaq/Mi’gmag whose ongoing presence evokes an ongoing settler violence that settlers do not want to see. We argue that white settler tautologies not only provide cyclical rationales to justify white settler nativism to claim originary European ownership of colonized Indigenous lands, but also violently declared evidence of white settler nativism in the name of white settler futurity through the re- interpretation of treaty and kin. We further suggest that the importance of understanding the violence of white settler tautologies, past and present, is that they still help to justify historical and continuous genocidal occupation in Mi’kma’ki since European invasion began in 1604. To reject such tautological logic is to make visible the unbroken presence of resilient and resistant Mi’kmaq/Mi’gmag that white settlers have dispossessed and tried to eliminate for 400 years.

With recent resurgences of Métis recognition in Canada there have been increasingly more opportunities for self-identifying Métis to gain legal recognition from the Canadian State. Although the Maritimes has not been viewed as a region with a Métis presence in the past, there are various populations present that are searching for this recognition. This study explores the historic mixed-blood that is present among the self-identifying Métis in Nova Scotia. I explore the way these Métis identities are contextualized in Canada though history, law, and Indigenous-settler relations. Particularly, I provide an analysis of Métis identification in Nova Scotia though genealogy, language, colonialism and denial. Lastly, this study shows the struggles the Métis face when positioning themselves within constitutional categories in an effort to be acknowledged as Aboriginal Peoples in Canada.

This review article explores how historians' interpretations of the grand dérangement have varied from early scholarship in the 1800s to scholarship in 2012. Using Thomas Barnes' " 'Historiography of the Acadians' Grand Dérangement, 1755 " as a starting point, this article seeks to compare and contrast literature speaking to the historic process as interpreted by regional and outside scholars. Overall, this review article seeks to assess how scholarly trends of analysis of the grand dérangement have been maintained over time, and how others have shifted.

Dans la deuxième section de l'ouvrage Paroles et regards de femmes en Acadie, consacrée à la parole sociale des femmes, Clint Bruce analyse les mémoires de la Cadienne Désirée Martin (18301877). Femme hors du commun, Martin avait voyagé à travers l’Amérique, de la Louisiane à New York, en passant par Cuba. Elle a aussi occupé les fonctions de directrice d’école; c’est d’ailleurs à cette époque, entre 1873 et 1875, qu’elle rédige ses mémoires. Élevée sous l’aile «de la vieille Man Manon», son enfance correspond à celle de beaucoup de Cadiens, qui, sans être de grands «planteurs», possédaient des esclaves noirs au début du dix-neuvième siècle. Toutefois, le récit de Martin va à l’encontre du mythe de «la cause perdue», qui déplore la disparition du système esclavagiste avec ses valeurs «patriarcales et chevaleresques». Rejetant l’image de «la Belle du Sud», vivant à l’écart des Noirs, elle rappelle que ses aïeules travaillaient «sinon comme des esclaves, certainement côte à côte avec eux ». La mémoire cadienne représente donc une tentative de réconciliation, au sein d’une société déchirée par la guerre de Sécession.

Le 29 mars 1632, la France et l’Angleterre signent deux traités qui mettent officiellement fin à la guerre qui les avait opposées de 1627 à 1629. Les historiens considèrent généralement que l’un de ces traités remettait officiellement la France en possession du Canada et de l’Acadie. Or, les Anglais ne l’entendaient pas ainsi et continueront à revendiquer la souveraineté sur l’ensemble de ce territoire, hormis les places précises cédées à la France en mars 1632 : Québec, Port-Royal et le Cap-Breton. L’affaire de la Mary Fortune, navire anglais arraisonné dans la baie de Tadoussac en 1634, expose au grand jour ces divergences d’interprétation.

Résumé : L’histoire des populations recèle des métissages anciens que la recherche par ADN parvient aujourd’hui à détecter. Cet article démontre la pertinence de cette méthode pour l’étude de l’Acadie, de son ethnogenèse et de son prolongement québécois en y exploitant spécifiquement la présence d’ADN amérindien. Un développement distinctif et exclusif au continent américain y caractérise en effet la population autochtone.

"The outmigration of Canadians prior to the Civil War was noticed by such prominent observers as Lord Durham, the Governor General of Canada, and Henry David Thoreau. It received little sustained attention however. In the 1870s, the migration of hundreds of thousands of French Canadians and Acadians to industrial centers in New England and New York elicited close scrutiny from the host society, Canadian religious leaders and public officials, and emerging Franco-American elites. Since then, analytical writing concerning Canadian emigration and Franco-American life has evolved through four distinct phases. [...]"

Este trabalho buscará apresentar o calendário judaico moderno além de caracterizá-lo. Trataremos de questões acerca do uso do calendário, do seu lugar social e da sua crítica. Explicaremos particularidades do calendário dito lunissolar além do uso de comparações baseadas numa tabela elaborada para questões didáticas. Trabalharemos com problematizações sobre linhas temporais, datações, etc., destacando duas cronologias em particular: The Jewish Time Line Encyclopedia de Mattis Kantor e a cronologia acadêmica apresentada pela coleção The Cambridge History of Judaism. Com isso, pretendemos não só lidar com o calendário judaico em si, mas também perseguir superficialmente as pretensões de Kantor ao usar como base de sua enciclopédia de linha temporal, o calendário judaico.

Robichaud selon Cormier : un ajout, mais pas une somme C'EST APRÈS QUELQUES ANNÉES de rumeurs et d'anticipation qu'est finalement parue, l'été dernier, une nouvelle biographie de Louis Robichaud signée par Michel Cormier : Louis J. Robichaud : une révolution si peu tranquille, Moncton, Les Éditions de la Francophonie, 2004 (aussi parue sous les titres Louis Robichaud : la révolution acadienne, Montréal, Leméac, 2004); et Louis J. Robichaud: A Not So Quiet Revolution, Lévis, Faye Editions, 2004. C'était, dans le milieu littéraire somme toute modeste des Maritimes, un événement d'importance. Cormier, un correspondant international pour la télévision de Radio-Canada, est après tout un journaliste acadien respecté qui a déjà l'expérience de la biographie 1 . De plus, l'objet de son présent travail n'est nul autre que Louis Robichaud, l'une des figures emblématiques de la société acadienne, celui-là même que plusieurs considèrent comme étant le père de la « Révolution tranquille » du Nouveau-Brunswick. Finalement, des versions française et anglaise sont parues simultanément, fait rarissime même dans cette province, officiellement bilingue depuis le règne de Robichaud comme on le sait. Bref, la parution de ce livre avait tout ce qui était nécessaire pour déplacer les foules de mordus de la politique. Toutefois, question de ne rien risquer, les éditeurs ont organisé des lancements aux quatre coins de la province, où l'on pouvait rencontrer non seulement l'auteur, mais aussi l'ancien premier ministre, tous deux prêts à faire des dédicaces.