Brian G. Comeaux
2005-03-07 03:13:14 UTC
Lafayette, Louisiana DAILY ADVERTISER
http://www.theadvertiser.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050306/LIFESTYLE/50306002/1024
'A great and noble scheme'
Judy Stanford Bastien
***@theadvertiser.com
Yale professor presents Acadian expulsion as ethnic cleansing
Until recent decades, the Acadian expulsion has been one of history's
best-kept secrets. Excluded from Louisiana history textbooks, the event has
been explored by Acadian scholars in Louisiana and Canada, but this story of
a people torn apart, husbands and wives, parents and children separated by
an invading foreign government has been largely ignored by the larger
academic community.
That all may be changing with the release of Yale history professor John
Mack Faragher's book on the subject, which casts new light on the
deportation and puts it in the context of more recent world events.
"In the mid-1990s, Yugoslavia was on the front page, ethnic cleansing was on
the front page. We had never heard that term before. I looked at the
Acadians, and thought, 'This looks similar,'" said Faragher in a telephone
interview from his office in New Haven, Conn. "If you think of the expulsion
of the Acadians as ethnic cleansing, it would help you understand it."
The release by publisher W.W. Norton & Company of "A Great and Noble Scheme:
The Tragic Story of the Expulsion of the French Acadians from Their American
Homeland" is a significant event in historical circles, said University of
Louisiana history professor Carl Brasseaux, head of the Center for Louisiana
Studies. It comes at a fortuitous time, Brasseaux said, during the year that
marks the 250th anniversary of what is known in French as Le Grand
Dérangement.
"For 200 years now, the Acadian expulsion has been a bone of contention
between historians who come out on the side of either one or the other
opposing camps, either Anglo Canadian or French Canadian or Louisiana
Acadian.
"Naomi Griffith did it to a much more limited degree in the 1970s - she's a
Canadian scholar - but even her works are largely bound up in that split.
This is really the first time a major study has been done by a neutral third
party who didn't have an ax to grind."
The release of the book may also strike a chord on a personal level with
people of Acadian descent.
"I guess the way I think about it," said Lafayette businesswoman Debra
Broussard Taghehchian, "is finally, there's recognition. The truth will
eventually present itself. That's the feeling I get."
Taghehchian said drawing a parallel between the expulsion of her ancestors
and modern events might make Acadian history more relevant to non-Acadians.
"People will understand it a little better.
Reading a story is one thing, but connecting it to something today, that is
something much deeper."
Brasseaux believes the book will draw more than pockets of attention in
Acadian areas of Louisiana and Canada. "Because it's being published by a
major national press, it's more likely to get national and international
attention."
The Acadian project began for Faragher in 1995 while visiting his daughter,
then a graduate student at the University of Southwestern Louisiana, now the
University of Louisiana.
"On a beautiful Sunday afternoon, we drove to Longfellow Evangeline State
Park," Faragher recalled. "At the time, they had displays on the
'dérangement' and had this poster that's produced by Parks Canada about the
deportation. It had a good visual display of how wide the dispersion was
that totally intrigued me. I picked up a copy of Carl Brasseaux's pamphlet,
"Scattered to the Wind." By the time I went to bed, it was something I had
to know more about."
Uncovering the mechanics and implications of what some British termed "the
great and noble scheme," meant years of poring over official documents of
the British empire and the Canadian colonies, often with the help of a
translator, as many of the documents were in French.
"The irony of it is that I went to Nova Scotia, I went to Ottawa, and when I
finished my research, all the information was dumped onto the Web."
Faragher also traced the footsteps of the exiles to the various colonies to
which they were deported.
"Massachusetts records include petitions from Acadian exiles who were
petitioning for relief from horrendous circumstances," he said.
The voice of the Acadians themselves was a rare find, Faragher said, because
they were largely illiterate and depended on a small group of educated
leaders and priests for any written expressions.
The plight of the Acadians is an important detail in the history of the
American people, said Faragher, who views the deportation as the first
organized, state-sponsored example of ethnic cleansing in North America.
"We think it's an Old-World thing, it's a European thing, not an American
thing, but it's very much an American thing.
"It's important to me as an American, because it was the New Englanders who
did this. It was the settlers from Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode
Island who resettled the Acadians' lands. This is true about every episode
of ethnic cleansing. And it becomes the precedent for what later becomes the
treatment of the Indians."
Faragher said the story of the Acadians has meaning for all Americans, not
just the descendants of the Acadians.
"It's a story that demonstrates the way American history echoes the larger
history of colonialism. It's important to me to draw the conclusion that
American history is not an exception. We participated in the larger patterns
of history. We don't stand outside of it, as we sometimes think."
Originally published March 6, 2005
Acadiana Diary: Acadians thought neutrality was safety
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Lafayette, Louisiana DAILY ADVERTISER
http://www.theadvertiser.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050306/COLUMNISTS01/503060321/1002/NEWS01
Jim Bradshaw
When Charles Lawrence became governor of Nova Scotia in 1754, he was not
only politically ambitious, he was greedy - and the lands held by the
Acadians were high on the list of the things he wanted.
The population of New England was beginning to grow and it was getting
crowded. The New Englanders were looking around for a place to grow into.
Unfortunately for the Acadians, they were not English and their lands were
the lushest around.
That and the Acadians' reluctance to take an oath of allegiance to the
British crown were all that was needed to ensure their fate 250 years ago
this year, when they were exiled from their homeland.
England and France fought each other regularly during these times as they
tried to establish dominance in Europe and in North America. There was a
pause in the battle in the early 1750s, but Lawrence knew that it was only a
matter of time before war broke out again.
The governor and his advisors thought the Acadians' refusal to take an
unconditional oath of allegiance meant that they would fight with the French
and Canadians against the English when war broke out again.
The Acadians had their own fears. They thought that their promise of
neutrality in any war would be their only protection when the fighting
started. They had lived in Acadie for more than a century by 1755 and
considered themselves Acadians and North Americans. They didn't care who
ruled Europe. It made little difference in their day-to-day lives. The
French government all but ignored the Acadians and the Acadians all but
ignored the French government.
They had no intention of fighting for or against the British. They just
wanted to be left alone to tend their farms, whoever was in power.
That's what they told Lawrence in a letter, and that's what stirred things
up.
He called the letter "treason," and said that he would thereafter consider
the Acadians as citizens and agents of France.
That gave him the excuse he needed to go on with the plan he'd been
hatching.
"What if," he asked his advisors, "we take their lands and move them away,
but we scatter them in our British colonies up and down the Atlantic
seaboard?" That would open the lands to New Englanders, remove the threat of
Acadians fighting with the French, and keep them from reuniting with other
Frenchmen because they would be scattered to the winds.
His advisors thought that it was a grand idea.
(Jim Bradshaw is a columnist for The Advertiser. He can be reached at
289-6315 by fax at 289-6443, or by e-mail at jbradshaw@ theadvertiser.com.)
Originally published March 6, 2005
http://www.theadvertiser.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050306/LIFESTYLE/50306002/1024
'A great and noble scheme'
Judy Stanford Bastien
***@theadvertiser.com
Yale professor presents Acadian expulsion as ethnic cleansing
Until recent decades, the Acadian expulsion has been one of history's
best-kept secrets. Excluded from Louisiana history textbooks, the event has
been explored by Acadian scholars in Louisiana and Canada, but this story of
a people torn apart, husbands and wives, parents and children separated by
an invading foreign government has been largely ignored by the larger
academic community.
That all may be changing with the release of Yale history professor John
Mack Faragher's book on the subject, which casts new light on the
deportation and puts it in the context of more recent world events.
"In the mid-1990s, Yugoslavia was on the front page, ethnic cleansing was on
the front page. We had never heard that term before. I looked at the
Acadians, and thought, 'This looks similar,'" said Faragher in a telephone
interview from his office in New Haven, Conn. "If you think of the expulsion
of the Acadians as ethnic cleansing, it would help you understand it."
The release by publisher W.W. Norton & Company of "A Great and Noble Scheme:
The Tragic Story of the Expulsion of the French Acadians from Their American
Homeland" is a significant event in historical circles, said University of
Louisiana history professor Carl Brasseaux, head of the Center for Louisiana
Studies. It comes at a fortuitous time, Brasseaux said, during the year that
marks the 250th anniversary of what is known in French as Le Grand
Dérangement.
"For 200 years now, the Acadian expulsion has been a bone of contention
between historians who come out on the side of either one or the other
opposing camps, either Anglo Canadian or French Canadian or Louisiana
Acadian.
"Naomi Griffith did it to a much more limited degree in the 1970s - she's a
Canadian scholar - but even her works are largely bound up in that split.
This is really the first time a major study has been done by a neutral third
party who didn't have an ax to grind."
The release of the book may also strike a chord on a personal level with
people of Acadian descent.
"I guess the way I think about it," said Lafayette businesswoman Debra
Broussard Taghehchian, "is finally, there's recognition. The truth will
eventually present itself. That's the feeling I get."
Taghehchian said drawing a parallel between the expulsion of her ancestors
and modern events might make Acadian history more relevant to non-Acadians.
"People will understand it a little better.
Reading a story is one thing, but connecting it to something today, that is
something much deeper."
Brasseaux believes the book will draw more than pockets of attention in
Acadian areas of Louisiana and Canada. "Because it's being published by a
major national press, it's more likely to get national and international
attention."
The Acadian project began for Faragher in 1995 while visiting his daughter,
then a graduate student at the University of Southwestern Louisiana, now the
University of Louisiana.
"On a beautiful Sunday afternoon, we drove to Longfellow Evangeline State
Park," Faragher recalled. "At the time, they had displays on the
'dérangement' and had this poster that's produced by Parks Canada about the
deportation. It had a good visual display of how wide the dispersion was
that totally intrigued me. I picked up a copy of Carl Brasseaux's pamphlet,
"Scattered to the Wind." By the time I went to bed, it was something I had
to know more about."
Uncovering the mechanics and implications of what some British termed "the
great and noble scheme," meant years of poring over official documents of
the British empire and the Canadian colonies, often with the help of a
translator, as many of the documents were in French.
"The irony of it is that I went to Nova Scotia, I went to Ottawa, and when I
finished my research, all the information was dumped onto the Web."
Faragher also traced the footsteps of the exiles to the various colonies to
which they were deported.
"Massachusetts records include petitions from Acadian exiles who were
petitioning for relief from horrendous circumstances," he said.
The voice of the Acadians themselves was a rare find, Faragher said, because
they were largely illiterate and depended on a small group of educated
leaders and priests for any written expressions.
The plight of the Acadians is an important detail in the history of the
American people, said Faragher, who views the deportation as the first
organized, state-sponsored example of ethnic cleansing in North America.
"We think it's an Old-World thing, it's a European thing, not an American
thing, but it's very much an American thing.
"It's important to me as an American, because it was the New Englanders who
did this. It was the settlers from Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode
Island who resettled the Acadians' lands. This is true about every episode
of ethnic cleansing. And it becomes the precedent for what later becomes the
treatment of the Indians."
Faragher said the story of the Acadians has meaning for all Americans, not
just the descendants of the Acadians.
"It's a story that demonstrates the way American history echoes the larger
history of colonialism. It's important to me to draw the conclusion that
American history is not an exception. We participated in the larger patterns
of history. We don't stand outside of it, as we sometimes think."
Originally published March 6, 2005
Acadiana Diary: Acadians thought neutrality was safety
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Lafayette, Louisiana DAILY ADVERTISER
http://www.theadvertiser.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050306/COLUMNISTS01/503060321/1002/NEWS01
Jim Bradshaw
When Charles Lawrence became governor of Nova Scotia in 1754, he was not
only politically ambitious, he was greedy - and the lands held by the
Acadians were high on the list of the things he wanted.
The population of New England was beginning to grow and it was getting
crowded. The New Englanders were looking around for a place to grow into.
Unfortunately for the Acadians, they were not English and their lands were
the lushest around.
That and the Acadians' reluctance to take an oath of allegiance to the
British crown were all that was needed to ensure their fate 250 years ago
this year, when they were exiled from their homeland.
England and France fought each other regularly during these times as they
tried to establish dominance in Europe and in North America. There was a
pause in the battle in the early 1750s, but Lawrence knew that it was only a
matter of time before war broke out again.
The governor and his advisors thought the Acadians' refusal to take an
unconditional oath of allegiance meant that they would fight with the French
and Canadians against the English when war broke out again.
The Acadians had their own fears. They thought that their promise of
neutrality in any war would be their only protection when the fighting
started. They had lived in Acadie for more than a century by 1755 and
considered themselves Acadians and North Americans. They didn't care who
ruled Europe. It made little difference in their day-to-day lives. The
French government all but ignored the Acadians and the Acadians all but
ignored the French government.
They had no intention of fighting for or against the British. They just
wanted to be left alone to tend their farms, whoever was in power.
That's what they told Lawrence in a letter, and that's what stirred things
up.
He called the letter "treason," and said that he would thereafter consider
the Acadians as citizens and agents of France.
That gave him the excuse he needed to go on with the plan he'd been
hatching.
"What if," he asked his advisors, "we take their lands and move them away,
but we scatter them in our British colonies up and down the Atlantic
seaboard?" That would open the lands to New Englanders, remove the threat of
Acadians fighting with the French, and keep them from reuniting with other
Frenchmen because they would be scattered to the winds.
His advisors thought that it was a grand idea.
(Jim Bradshaw is a columnist for The Advertiser. He can be reached at
289-6315 by fax at 289-6443, or by e-mail at jbradshaw@ theadvertiser.com.)
Originally published March 6, 2005