Dictionary:
A·ca·di·a (ə-kā'dē-ə)  |
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A region and former French colony of eastern Canada, chiefly in Nova Scotia but also including New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, Cape Breton Island, and the coastal area from the St. Lawrence River south into Maine. During the French and Indian War (1755-1763) many Acadians migrated or were deported by the British to southern territories, including Louisiana, where their descendants came to be known as Cajuns.
| Britannica Concise Encyclopedia: Acadia |
For more information on Acadia, visit Britannica.com.
| French Literature Companion: Acadia |
Acadia is not a place. It is certain way of being Canadian, the name given to the French-language culture of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island. The French first settled in Canada in the Bay of Fundy in 1603 and this settlement developed in isolation from the colony in the St Lawrence Valley [see Quebec]. Antonine Maillet has shown that the oral culture of Acadia is preclassical, retaining much of the myth and popular wisdom found in Rabelais. The British, masters in Acadia from 1713, judged this French population a threat to their success in the Seven Years War and scattered them heartlessly through eastern North America. Some settled in the Mississippi delta [see Louisiana] and others made their way back to the forests of New Brunswick, where they lived in hiding until timidly asserting themselves in the 1880s.
Antonine Maillet in her novels and plays, demythologizing Longfellow, has chronicled this exciting history of pilgrims, fishermen, and bootleggers, forging her own oral style to give a voice and identity to a silent, forgotten people. As in Quebec, CBC/Radio Canada has provided a training and a livelihood for young writers—Laurier Melanson and Herménégilde Chiasson are good examples; Chiasson is a modest, versatile, and talented graphic artist, broadcaster, theatrical producer, dramatist, and poet. The 1960s and 1970s produced a brief flowering of poetry of vituperation and lament (Chiasson, Mourir à Scoudouc, 1974, Raymond LeBlanc, Cri de Terre, 1973). Pierre Perrault's film L'Acadie, l'Acadie documents uncannily the suppressed anger and faltering protest of this generation.
Acadia does not have a sufficiently large reading public to support even a daily paper—L'Évangéline closed in 1977. The Éditions d'Acadie have given a splendid service thanks to subsidies and valiant voluntary effort. Antonine Maillet and the brilliant novelist Jacques Savoie (Raconte-moi Massabielle, Les Portes tournantes) publish in Quebec. Édith Butler has made an international reputation as a singerpoet, but Acadia is kept alive not only by its stars but by the dedication of teachers, broadcasters, writers, genealogists, entrepreneurs, and volunteers in local-history and cultural associations.
[Cedric May]
| US History Encyclopedia: Acadia |
The history of Acadia, long an exposed borderland where New France and New England over-lapped, is indissociable from the deportation of much of its French-speaking population from 1755 to 1763. This tragedy overshadows another, the later marginalization of the region's aboriginal inhabitants.
There have been several Acadias. To begin with, in 1524 explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano baptized as Arcadia a lush, probably Virginian coastal landscape. He named it in honor of the ancient Greeks' earthly paradise. On later sixteenth-century maps, the name reappeared near the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Both the new location and the ensuing loss of the letter "r" suggest that cartographers had learned of Native Micmac place-names containing, in European renderings, the suffix acadie. French negotiators were apt to label Acadia the entire swath of territory extending from the Gaspé Peninsula to the Kennebec River. Indeed, northern Maine, Abenaki territory that would long remain a disputed fur-trading frontier, was the scene of the first French settlement in the region over the winter of 1604–1605 on St. Croix Island. But increasingly during the seventeenth century, the toponym "Acadia" would refer to peninsular Nova Scotia and the Chignecto Isthmus, where the Micmacs already accepted the presence of French traders and missionaries.
It was here, and more precisely at Port Royal (later Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia)—initially founded by the survivors of that first Maine winter and briefly (1629–1632) inhabited by Scots (hence Nova Scotia)—that French settlement began in earnest in the late 1630s. Numbering fourteen hundred by 1701, the Acadians, as the French settlers were soon known, spread northwest-ward from Port Royal, converting the marshlands of the Bay of Fundy into dike-protected grain fields. Before 1755, a minority would scatter along other coastlines of the Maritime Provinces. Periods of English rule (1654–1667 and 1690–1697) and regular visits from New England merchants had made the Nova Scotia Acadians familiar with the costs and benefits of their borderland existence well before the 1710 British conquest, confirmed by the 1713 treaty ending Queen Anne's War, of peninsular Nova Scotia.
Over the next four decades, they understandably resisted pressure from the missionaries acting for their former king to give up their farmsteads and move to French territory and from the British to swear an oath of allegiance to George II. Upon the outbreak of the French and Indian War in 1754, British authorities feared invasion by the French with Micmac support. They regarded the Acadians as hostile, even though most of the latter were neutral and themselves feared Micmac attacks. In 1755, Nova Scotia governor Charles Lawrence ordered their dispersal. From then until 1763, upwards of ten thousand Acadians were deported or fled; many of those who did not perish ended up in France, Canada, and Louisiana, where they came to be called Cajuns. Some refugees eventually returned to join those who had remained in the region as fugitives to found a new Acadia under British rule. Most of these survivors settled in eastern or northern New Brunswick and a few elsewhere in the Maritimes, but not on the ancestral marshlands now occupied by New Englanders. Relegated for the most part to marginal land, many turned to fishing or lumbering. The second half of the nineteenth century saw both socioeconomic and institutional diversification as a middle class emerged and towns grew. Five-sixths of the 300,000 Maritimers whose mother tongue is French live in New Brunswick, an officially bilingual province since 1969 and the center of Acadia.
Bibliography
Griffiths, N. E. S. The Contexts of Acadian History, 1686–1784. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1992.
Harris, R. Cole, ed. Historical Atlas of Canada. Vol. 1, From the Beginning to 1800. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1987.
Chiasson, Anselme, and Nicolas Landry. "Acadia, Contemporary." Canadian Encyclopedia. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1999.
Reid, John G. Acadia, Maine, and New Scotland: Marginal Colonies in the Seventeenth Century. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1981.
———. "An International Region of the Northeast: Rise and Decline, 1635–1762." In The Northeastern Borderlands: Four Centuries of Interaction. Edited by Stephen J. Hornsby, Victor A. Conrad, and James J. Herlan. Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada: Acadiensis Press, 1989.
—Thomas Wien
| Columbia Encyclopedia: Acadia |
Bibliography
See A. H. Clark, Acadia: The Geography of Early Nova Scotia to 1760 (1968); J. M. Faragher, A Great and Noble Scheme: The Tragic Story of the Expulsion of the French Acadians from Their American Homeland (2005).
| Wikipedia: Acadia |
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Acadia (in the French language Acadie) was the name given to lands in a portion of the French colonial empire in northeastern North America that included parts of eastern Quebec, the Maritime provinces, and modern-day New England, stretching as far south as Philadelphia. People living in Acadia, and sometimes former residents and their descendants, are called Acadians.
The actual specification by the French government for the territory refers to lands bordering the Atlantic coast, roughly between the 40th and 46th parallels. Later, the territory was divided into the British colonies which became Canadian provinces and American states.
Today, Acadia is used to refer to regions of North America that are historically associated with the lands, descendants, and/or culture of the former French region. It particularly refers to regions of Atlantic Canada with French roots, language, and culture, primarily in New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island, as well as in the American state of Maine.[1] It can also be used to refer to the Acadian diaspora in southern Louisiana, a region also referred to as Acadiana. In the abstract, Acadia refers to the existence of a French culture in any of these regions.
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The origin of the designation Acadia is credited to the explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano, who on his sixteenth century map applied the ancient Greek name "Arcadia" to the entire Atlantic coast north of Virginia (note the inclusion of the 'r' of the original Greek name). "Arcadia" derives from the Arcadia district in Greece which since Classical antiquity had the extended meanings of "refuge" or "idyllic place". The Dictionary of Canadian Biography says: "Arcadia, the name Verrazzano gave to Maryland or Virginia 'on account of the beauty of the trees,' made its first cartographical appearance in the 1548 Gastaldo map and is the only name on that map to survive in Canadian usage. . . . In the 17th century Champlain fixed its present orthography, with the 'r' omitted, and Ganong has shown its gradual progress northwards, in a succession of maps, to its resting place in the Atlantic Provinces."
Early European colonists, who would later become known as Acadians, were French subjects primarily from the Pleumartin to Poitiers in the Vienne département of west-central France. The first French settlement was established by Pierre Dugua, Sieur de Mons, Governor of Acadia, under the authority of King Henry IV, on Saint Croix Island in 1604. The following year, the settlement was moved across the Bay of Fundy to Port Royal after a difficult winter on the island and deaths from scurvy. In 1607 the colony received bad news: King Henry had revoked Sieur de Monts' royal fur monopoly, citing that the income was insufficient to justify supplying the colony further. Thus recalled, the last of the Acadians left Port Royal in August of 1607. Their allies, the native Mi'kmaq nation, kept careful watch over their possessions, though. When the former Lieutenant Governor, Jean de Biencourt de Poutrincourt et de Saint-Just, returned in 1610, he found Port Royal just as it was left. [2]
The French took control of the Abenaki First Nations territory. In 1654, King Louis XIV of France appointed aristocrat Nicolas Denys as governor of large portions of Acadia and granted him the confiscated lands and the right to all its minerals.
The Netherlands asserted sovereignty over Acadia in 1674 after privateer Jurriaen Aernoutsz captured the forts at Pentagoet and Jemseg. Control over the region reverted to France when Aernoutsz's appointed administrator, John Rhoades, was captured by New England within a few months. The Dutch West India Company continued to assert a paper claim over Acadia until 1678, appointing Cornelius Van Steenwyk as its governor, although they never successfully recaptured actual control of the territory.
British colonists captured Acadia in the course of King William's War (1690–1697), but Britain returned it to France at the peace settlement. It was recaptured in the course of Queen Anne's War (1702–1713), and its conquest was confirmed in the Treaty of Utrecht (1713).
On June 23, 1713, the French residents of Acadia were given one year to declare allegiance to Britain or leave the region.[citation needed] In the meantime, the French signalled their preparedness for future hostilities by beginning the construction of Fortress Louisbourg on Isle Royale, now Cape Breton Island. The British grew increasingly alarmed by the prospect of disloyalty in wartime of the Acadians now under their rule.
In the summer of 1755, the British attacked Fort Beauséjour and burned Acadian homes at the outbreak of the French and Indian War between Britain and France (the North American theatre of the Seven Years' War), accusing Acadians of disloyalty (for not having taken the oath) and guerrilla action. Those who still refused to swear loyalty to the British crown then suffered what is referred to as the Great Upheaval or Le Grand Dérangement when, over the next three years, some 6,000–7,000 Acadians were expelled from Nova Scotia to France[3] or the lower British American colonies[4] Others fled deeper into the Atlantic Canadian wilderness or into French-controlled Canada. The Quebec town of L'Acadie (now a sector of Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu) was founded by expelled Acadians.[5]
After 1764, many exiled Acadians finally settled in Louisiana, which had been transferred by France to Spain before the end of the French and Indian War. The name Acadian was corrupted to Cajun, which was first used as a pejorative term until its later mainstream acceptance. Britain allowed some Acadians to return to Nova Scotia, but these were forced to settle in small groups and were permitted to reside in their former settlements such as Grand-Pré, Port Royal, and Beaubassin.
Acadia was located in territory disputed between France and Great Britain. England controlled the area from 1654 until 1670 and control was permanently regained by its successor state, the Kingdom of Great Britain, in 1713. Although France controlled the territory in the remaining periods, French monarchs consistently neglected Acadia, failing to contribute much, if at all, to its defence, development, colonization, or administration, leaving the colonists to rely on themselves.[6] The government of New France was located in Quebec, but it had only nominal authority over the Acadians.[7] Landlords owned wide swaths of the land, and while they sometimes collected dues from the settlers, they exercised no other legal powers.[8]
With no strong royal authority, the Acadians implemented village self-rule.[9] Even after Canada had given up its elected spokesmen, the Acadians continued to demand a say in their own government, as late as 1706 petitioning the monarchy to allow them to elect spokesmen each year by a plurality of voices. In a sign of his indifference to the colony, Louis XV agreed to their demand.[8] Male elders of the community settled internal disputes and spoke to the government on behalf of their neighbours, sometimes with the help of the priests.[10]
Most of the immigrants to Acadia were French peasants whose oppression by the noble landholders had left them with a deep suspicion of those in authority. This suspicion was transplanted to those in authority in Acadia as well, be they French or English.[11] Acadians regularly protested the actions of local administrators and clergymen to higher authorities in Quebec and France. If their appeals failed, which they usually did, the Acadians would procrastinate or resort to passive resistance techniques, including subterfuge, to continue defying the authorities.[6] Administrators complained of constant in-fighting among the population, which filed many petty civil suits with colonial magistrates. Most of these were over boundary lines, as the Acadians were very quick to protect their new lands.[12]
Most Acadian households were self-sufficient[13], with families engaged in subsistence farming supplemented by means of fishing and hunting.[14] In the early days of the colony, Acadia was an "economic backwater", with few trade goods and little money to attract merchants. Acadia was not near the sea lanes which brought ships to Quebec and Boston, and transportation within the peninsula was difficult.[13] Farms tended to remain small plots of land worked by individual families rather than slave labor.[15] Farmers grew wheat, peas, cabbage, turnips, and apples, and raised maize as a secondary crop. Barley, oats, and potatoes were also planted as feed for the livestock, including cattle, pigs, and poultry. These animals provided a steady supply of meat to the Acadians, which they supplemented with fish.[16]
After 1630, the Acadians began to build dikes and drain the sea marsh above Port Royal. The high salinity of the reclaimed coastal marshland meant that the land would need to sit for three years after it was drained before it could be cultivated.[17] The land reclamation techniques that were used closely resembled the enclosures near La Rochelle that helped make solar salt.[6]
As time progressed, the Acadian agriculture improved, and Acadians traded with the British colonies in New England to gain ironware, fine cloth, rum, and salt. During the French administration of Acadia, this trade was illegal, but it did not stop some English traders from establishing small stores in Port Royal.[18] Under English rule, the Acadians often smuggled their excess food to Boston merchants at Baie Verte and to the French at Louisbourg on Cape Breton Island.[19]
Many adult sons who did not inherit land from their parents settled on adjacent vacant lands to remain close to their families.[20] As the best land was taken, some moved further north of Port Royal, into the Upper Bay of Fundy settlements, including Mines, Pisiquid, and Beaubassin. Many of the pioneers into that area persuaded some of their relatives to accompany them, and most of the frontier settlements contained only five to ten interrelated family units.[21]
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Wikisource has the text of the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica article Acadie. |
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 | Dictionary. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2007, 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2007. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. Read more |
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| Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. All rights reserved. Read more |
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| French Literature Companion. The New Oxford Companion to Literature in French. Copyright © 1995, 2005 by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. Read more |
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| US History Encyclopedia. © 2006 through a partnership of Answers Corporation. All rights reserved. Read more |
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| Columbia Encyclopedia. The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition Copyright © 2003, Columbia University Press. Licensed from Columbia University Press. All rights reserved. www.cc.columbia.edu/cu/cup/. Read more |
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