Acadia
2 of the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Acadia. Both are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
a former French colony in North America, now known as New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. To be exact, Acadia was that part of the continent lying east of a line drawn north from the mouth of the Penobscot to the St. Lawrence. At one time it comprised a part of Maine. The word is Micmac, signifying plenty. During Queen Anne's War, the province was annexed by England. The name was changed to Nova Scotia. In a narrower sense, the word has been associated with a region lying immediately on the Bay of Fundy. In 1755, during King George's War, word was sent to the Acadian French in this settlement that they must take the oath of allegiance to England. Very possibly the French priests, on whom the simple peasantry depended for information and guidance, withheld the order. At any rate, the Acadians did not comply. The British authorities feared that the Acadians might prove a source of strength to the French. It was believed also that the Acadians encouraged the Micmac Indians to side with the French against the British. At all events, the region was placed under martial law. The innocent and happy Acadians were driven on board English vessels, and were scattered up and down the Atlantic coast among the various colonies. Families were broken up and never reunited. Those who escaped to the woods were starved into surrender by the utter destruction of their homes, crops, and cattle. A considerable number of the unhappy refugees found their way to Louisiana, where their descendants still reside. It is here that the story of Evangeline and the sufferings of the Acadians, so well told by Longfellow, are current traditions. See Evangeline ; Nova Scotia
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
a former French colony in ing; founded in 1768 by George III., with North America, including Nova Scotia Sir Joshua Reynolds as president. It is and nearly all of New Brunswick, settled composed of a president (P. R. A.), 40 in 1604. When, by the peace of Utrecht academicians (R. A.), and 30 associates (1713), it was given to the English, the (A. R. A.), which include professors of inhabitants, having refused to take the painting, architecture, anatomy, and peroath of allegiance, were ordered to leave their homes. The story of their sorrow is touchingly introduced into Longfellow's
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Aiton's 1910 account places the expulsion in "King George's War," though that conflict ended in 1748; the deportations of 1755 belong to the French and Indian War, and historians now trace them through 1764, with thousands dying of disease and shipwreck. Where Aiton wrote that "families were broken up and never reunited," the modern story is one of survival: Acadian French is an official language of New Brunswick since 1969, National Acadian Day is marked on 15 August, and the Congrès mondial acadien has gathered the diaspora since 1994. In December 2003 a royal proclamation issued in the Queen's name formally acknowledged the wrongs of the deportation, and in 2012 the Grand-Pré landscape in Nova Scotia — the setting of Longfellow's "Evangeline" — was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage site. Scholars have also grown wary of the "innocent and happy" peasants of Longfellow's poem, treating Acadians as political actors rather than pastoral victims.
Written for this edition, 2026.