Ricardolindo
Banned
From what I've read in this forum, it was definitely plausible for the Acadians not to have been expelled. What would the Canada of this timeline look like if they hadn't been expelled?
Also consider the impact on Louisiana. It keeps the French Creole population there down to a small minority. It seriously changes the bayou settlements west of the Mississippi.
Most "Cajuns" are just white Creoles that took on the insulting name post WWII.
My father was a Cajun and most of his ancestors did migrate through Acadia. However, when Ancestry dot com issues DNA results, France, Germany and the Low Countries are grouped into the single category "Western European." So my profile shows 24% Western European, 10% Spanish, 10% Italian, 6% Irish and 1% Native American. It is a good reflection of French as an admixture of Visigothic, Italic, Iberian, and Celtic. When my family tree gets back to France, it lands all over the country: north, south, east, west. Acadia and Louisiana were in fact melting pots for French immigrants from all parts of the country. In my case, I am the first generation to "mix" out of all French ancestry back to the 1700's. Some branches go back before 1500. [My mother was from Eastern Europe.]Hey!!! I resemble that remark!
Most Cajuns of the past two or three generations are mixed with other groups. We have been mixing since the 1700's. My parents have French, from the metropole through Montreal and Mobile, Acadian, Canary Islander, Spanish and possibly others.
Also consider the impact on Louisiana. It keeps the French Creole population there down to a small minority. It seriously changes the bayou settlements west of the Mississippi.
The example of the Canadiens is noteworthy, but it is noteworthy that the Acadians had a much longer history of conflict with the British Empire, and a deeper history of integration, too. I'm not saying that a modus vivendi akin to that in Québec might not be possible, but the level of violence and distrust in this multiethnic region cannot be easily ended.
Didn't the Acadians try to be neutral in several wars due to their geographic position? Also, a question, are you the same as https://www.quora.com/profile/Randy-McDonald?
That is me.
The Acadians did try to be neutral, yes, but there were frequent wars and conflicts in the area. The War of the Austrian Succession even saw a French bid to reconquer the Acadian heartland, while many Acadians in the decade before the deportation had fled to new settlements in French Acadia
I do think that the deportation of the Acadians was avoidable. I just think that a situation of strained loyalties and low level violence was at high risk of producing a scenario in which genocide was possible, in which one player would decide it would he a good idea indeed to make opponents go away.
Also consider the impact on Louisiana. It keeps the French Creole population there down to a small minority. It seriously changes the bayou settlements west of the Mississippi.
For the most part Acadians never made up more that a third of the francophone community down there.
Most "Cajuns" are just white Creoles that took on the insulting name post WWII.
To be fair - most Gallic-descended people in the region are concentrated in the southern half of Louisiana, and no Cajun migration means "just" Creoles would be around, concentrated in the NOLA metro area's parishes? And the southwestern Louisiana that got settled by Cajuns just looks and acts like east Texas and northern Louisiana populated primarily by Dixiemen, and New Orleans retains its OTL unique culture from the Creole-Dixie mixturing. Ultimately the regional history doesn't feel like it'll change much if at all barring southwestern Louisiana's ethnic makeup.
A majority Gallic-descended Acadia/*Maritimes is what fascinates me. Most of Canada's eastern shore, heck east-in-general is undeniably Gallic now barring Newfoundland, and assuming the American Revolution plays out as on schedule.... how will it be for the Loyalists and Britain for an Anglo-Canada of Ontario west having to deal with a Gallic east? Especially once any form of Quebec's Quiet Revolution happens?
Creoles even white Creoles were spread throughout Louisiana. The wealthiest families were in NOLA and other cities but overall there were many rural white Creoles.
Even Beyonce who's the world's most famous Louisiana Creole of any color descends from Joseph Broussard whose children quickly mixed with Creoles of all colors legally.
The Spanish are still going to want some source of settlers for Louisiana where they invited in the Acadians OTL. Maybe more Catholic Germans? There was a lot of emigration from Germany in the mid-18th Century.
Not a bad suggestion, there was plenty of German surplus population, which the Spanish could tap into. At the time the main German emigration groups was Catholic Swabians (to Hungary), Hessians (to Russia), Protestant Rhinelanders and Swabians (to British America). The Catholic Rhinelanders was a largely untapped source of migrants, and the German Coast settlers was Rhinelanders in OTL. There’s in general a domino effect where a increase in emigration from one place result in increased likelihood more emigrate to the same place, so we may see a continuous flow of Rhineland setters I’d recruit a larger initial group of settlers, it was was what we saw with the Hessians in Russia.
According to https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/no-acadian-deportation.58572/ https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...dians-werent-expelled-from-nova-scotia.92831/, Charles Lawrence who ordered the deportation was overstepping his instructions. His superiors had told him not to do anything drastic.
To be fair - most Gallic-descended people in the region are concentrated in the southern half of Louisiana, and no Cajun migration means "just" Creoles would be around, concentrated in the NOLA metro area's parishes? And the southwestern Louisiana that got settled by Cajuns just looks and acts like east Texas and northern Louisiana populated primarily by Dixiemen, and New Orleans retains its OTL unique culture from the Creole-Dixie mixturing. Ultimately the regional history doesn't feel like it'll change much if at all barring southwestern Louisiana's ethnic makeup.
A majority Gallic-descended Acadia/*Maritimes is what fascinates me. Most of Canada's eastern shore, heck east-in-general is undeniably Gallic now barring Newfoundland, and assuming the American Revolution plays out as on schedule.... how will it be for the Loyalists and Britain for an Anglo-Canada of Ontario west having to deal with a Gallic east? Especially once any form of Quebec's Quiet Revolution happens?
That is true. It is also true that the deportation was not a single event--the British government did not intervene once the ethnic cleansing of the Acadians from the Annapolis valley had occurred. Rather, the persecution was a policy that was sustained over multiple years, with deportations of Acadians from not just Nova Scotia but other parts of Acadia (including French Acadia) occurring years after 1755. If Britain was opposed to the Acadian deportation it certainly did nothing to stop it from expanding and continuing.
Given the pre-existing hostility between the English and French nations and their colonists in North America, the British state's tradition of repressing and mistreating its domestic Catholic populations, and the long history of tension up to and including armed clashes between the rival North American empires, my sense is that some act of ethnic cleansing might have been difficult to avoid. It reminds me of situations elsewhere in the world, where ethnic minorities in a time of war and living in a background of complicated tensions--especially ethnic minorities on the wrong side of a frontier--are open to terrible risks.
I think it can be avoided with a different personality at the top. It's just a very risky time.