Great Upheaval

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The Great Upheaval (le Grand Dérangement), also known as the Great Expulsion, The Deportation or the Acadian Expulsion, was the forced population transfer or ethnic cleansing of the Acadian population from Nova Scotia between 1755 and 1763, ordered by British governor Charles Lawrence and the Nova Scotia Council.

Though the French initially colonised the area, various treaties traded possession of the region between the British and French through the 1600s and beyond. The Treaty of Utrecht in 1713 saw the territory of Acadia definitively ceded to the British. The Acadians were forced to swear an oath in 1730 giving their allegiance to the British crown but with a caveat that they would not be required to bear arms against the French or First Nations. In 1754, with hostilities growing in the lead-up to the Seven Years' War (known as the French and Indian War in the U.S.), the Acadians were ordered to renew their oath — but this time, without including any reservation against fighting the French or their Mi'kmaq neighbours. The majority of Acadians refused.

The British responded by forcing thousands of the French-speaking inhabitants to board ships and sending them south, with most being distributed among the British American colonies, sent back to France, or shipped to British prisons. Some were shipped as far as the Falkland Islands. The largest single group returned to France where they were poorly treated and ostracized by French society.

A large number of Acadians fled overland, aided by their Mi'kmaq allies, and resettled in the colonies of New France, present-day Quebec. There was also a small guerilla resistance led by Joseph Broussard dit "Beausoleil".

Over the next several decades, many Acadians moved to Louisiana, then controlled by Spain. Spanish authorities welcomed the Catholic Acadians as settlers, first in areas along the Mississippi River, then later in the Atchafalaya Basin and in the prairie lands to the west, a region later renamed Acadiana. During the 19th century, as Acadians established their culture and intermarried with other groups, they evolved into the Cajuns.

The homes and farms around the Bay of Fundy were burned or given to English-speaking Protestant colonists. For example, on 4 June 1760 New England planters arrived to claim land in Nova Scotia taken from the Acadians.

The following table lists the destinations to which Acadians were deported, together with estimates of how many arrived at each port:

A statue of Evangeline, the fictional heroine of the Acadian deportation, in St. Martinville, Louisiana

Area	Population
Connecticut	666
New York	249
Maryland	810
Pennsylvania	383
North Carolina	280
Georgia	185
Massachusetts	1043
St. John River	86
Île Saint-Jean	300
Baie des Chaleurs	700
Nova Scotia	1249
Quebec	2000
England	866
France	3500
Louisiana	300
TOTAL	12 617

Table source: R.A. LEBLANC. Les migrations acadiennes, in Cahiers de géographie du Québec, vol. 23, no 58, april 1979, p. 99-124.

The Great Upheaval was commemorated in 1847 by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in his poem Evangeline.

In December 2003, Governor General Adrienne Clarkson, representing Canada's head of state, declared the Crown's acknowledgement (but without an apology) of the event and designated July 28 as "A Day of Commemoration of the Great Upheaval." This closed one of the longest open cases in the history of the British courts since the Acadian representatives first presented their grievances of forced disposession of land, property and livestock in 1760.