A Great and Noble Scheme

[UbiSunt]

I'm about to order the new book of Yale history professor John Faragher titled A Great and Noble Scheme: The Tragic Story of the Expulsion of the French Acadians from Their American Homeland His thesis centers around the idea that the Acadian expulsion "was the first episode of state-sponsored ethnic cleansing in American history."

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/de...1/002-9493465-4874468?v=glance&s=books

Anyway, I'm glad that some interest is being paid to an important event (at least to me and my ethnicity) but I'm curious what ATP&N has to say about this. Please give me some feedback if you have read this book. And remember before anyone starts arguing about the ill-treatment of the Native Americans, remember, genocide and ethnic cleansing are two different things.

 

[CanOWorms]

What's the difference between ethnic cleansing and genocide?

 

[Schrodinger]

Originally posted by: CanOWorms
What's the difference between ethnic cleansing and genocide?

Genocide is murder?

 

[UbiSunt]

Yeah, I agree I don't see a very big difference but historians go nuts if you don't make the distinction; as fine as it may be.
Basically, ethnic cleansing is the systematic deportation of a certain ethnic group etc. (more like the Armenian genocide or the issues in Kosovo). Genocide is the organized extermination of an ethnic group (such as the Holocaust). However, the Armenian genocide, as the name implies, did involve examples of extermination, and the Holocaust did involve massive deportation. Same with the Great Expulsion of the Acadians, they removed ballast on the ships so that they could line the bottom of the ships with living, breathing people. Many of these ships sat months outside harbors like New York before they were allowed to land, some were not even allowed. Many people died within this time. So yeah, its a technicality but like walking a razor's edge.

 

[venk]

Genocide is a single meathod of achiveing ethnic cleansing.

 

[Cerb]

Originally posted by: CanOWorms
What's the difference between ethnic cleansing and genocide?

The people that write the newspapers and history books that actually get read.

 

[Kibbo]

Umm, didn't this happen before the US existed? I thought it was a British who expulsed the Acadians from the Maritime Provinces. Not that they were provinces at the time, of course.

The writeup on that site makes the event seem much more absolute than it was in real life. Although the events severely disrupted the Acadian culture, killing approximately 1/3 of them, many survived as brigands and guerilla warriors in the forests of Nova Scotia. I suppose they'd be called terrorists nowadays.

Also, many of those who survived the deportation to other British colonies eventually ended back farming the exact same land on which they were born, due to the ecological uniqueness of the region, which is part of why it was so fertile, and thus valued by the British. The siltlands on which the Acadians settled needed much different agricultural techniques to farm than the majority of the rest of British North America, or Mother England for that matter. Many Acadians were hired on as farmers and shipped back home to sow their own fields because of their specialized knowledge.

So, once things settled down, there was still a vibrant Acadian culture that survived in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick that remains strong today. Of course, their independence was shattered, and their property revoked, so the culture was never really the same. But don't think that it has disappeared. In fact, since the 70s, when New Brunswick had it's first Acadian Premier, and opened the first Acadian University, the culture has had somewhat of a rennaisence. The Acadian culture is a testament to the tenacity and endurance of human culture.

And, in my opinion, Acadian French is the most beautiful dialect of a European language that exists on this continent. They have decent tunes, too.

Edit: Just gotta say that I am ignorant of Spanish, or Mexican dialects of it. I may be wrong on the language count.

 

[UbiSunt]

Umm, didn't Jamestown happen before the US existed? Its still considered American history. The expulsion WAS pretty bad, and the majority of the people did not make it home. One group was even sent to the Falkland islands in the south Atlantic. 100% of the group that arrived in Georgia was sold into slavery. I know that I'm not citing my sources, I'm citing from memory, but really where did you hear/read that most of the Acadians made it back to Nova Scotia and New Brunswick? Plus the Cajun Renaissance was only due to cooperation with Louisiana, it did not happen in vacuum. The worst part of the Renaissance is that the major organizers were not even of Acadian-descent it was a political move to boost tourism. I don't think it was a bad thing, a lot of good came from CODIFIL, but its origins had little to do with Acadian culture.