Britain deports the Acadians
The Grand Derangement scatters thousands of French-speaking settlers across the Atlantic world
Quick facts
- Deportation order
- 28 July 1755
- Acadians deported
- 6,000 to 7,000, 1755 to 1762
- Deaths in transit (1758 group)
- 1,649 of c. 3,100 (53%)
- Ordering official
- Lieutenant-Governor Charles Lawrence
What happened
On 28 July 1755, the Nova Scotia Council in Halifax, led by Lieutenant-Governor Charles Lawrence, ordered the deportation of Acadians who refused to swear an unqualified oath of allegiance to the British Crown. The first round-ups began in August at Fort Beausejour, renamed Fort Cumberland after its capture that June, a month before similar operations at Grand-Pre and Pisiquid. On 5 September 1755, Colonel John Winslow ordered all Acadian men and boys aged 10 and older in the Grand-Pre area to gather in the parish church, where they were told of the deportation and detained. Soldiers burned homes and crops and broke dykes the Acadians had built to farm the Bay of Fundy marshes. Between 1755 and 1762, between 6,000 and 7,000 Acadians were forced onto ships bound for the Thirteen Colonies, England, and France; of roughly 3,100 deported after the fall of Louisbourg in 1758, an estimated 1,649 died of drowning or disease, a fatality rate of 53 percent.
Why it matters
Acadians came to call the expulsion 'le grand derangement,' the great upheaval, and it remains one of the largest forced population removals in North American colonial history. Survivors and their descendants who eventually settled in Louisiana became the Cajun people, while others returned to the Maritimes generations later to rebuild Acadian communities that persist in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia today.
How we know
Colonial correspondence, including Lawrence's own orders and Winslow's journal describing the Grand-Pre round-up, along with Nova Scotia Archives records and Parks Canada's history of Fort Beausejour, document the timeline, numbers, and death toll during transport.
Sources
- The Canadian Encyclopedia. Acadian Expulsion (the Great Upheaval) · Reputable sourcethecanadianencyclopedia.ca · The domain "thecanadianencyclopedia.ca" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
- Parks Canada, Fort Beausejour – Fort Cumberland National Historic Site. The deportation of the Acadians · Primary source (author-declared)parks.canada.ca · Cited as a "primary" source (no stronger domain match). · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
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