Acadia

Acadia (French, Acadie), original name of the parts of Canada now divided between the Maritime provinces of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island. The region was first colonized by the French in 1604, but the English claimed it by right of the explorations of the English navigator John Cabot in 1497 and 1498. James I of England granted Acadia to the Scottish poet and statesman Sir William Alexander in 1621, but control of it changed hands several times during the subsequent Anglo-French struggle for supremacy in North America. The British obtained permanent possession of mainland Acadia by the Peace of Utrecht (1713), which ended the War of the Spanish Succession. The Acadians, who attempted to remain neutral in the Anglo-French conflicts, suffered greatly.

In 1755, because of renewed war with France (the American part of the Seven Years' War), and doubts about the loyalty of the Acadians, the British colonial authorities removed the Acadians from their lands, dispossessed them of their property, and dispersed them among the other British colonies in America. The ordeal of the Acadian exiles was recounted in the poem Evangeline (1847) by the American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.