Keywords

Acadians -- History, Cajuns -- History, Louisiana -- History -- To 1803

Abstract

This study examines the social, cultural, and political discontinuities found among Acadians who settled in Louisiana after their deportation from Atlantic Canada in 1755. Historians studying the Acadians’ early years of arrival and resettlement in Louisiana have drawn readers’ attention to the preservation of Acadian cultural and social attributes. These works tell how in spite of their need to adapt to life in a southern borderland region, the Acadians who arrived in Louisiana retained important qualities of their pre-dispersal identity. Such studies have served well in deconstructing the “Evangeline” myth created through Henry Longfellow’s epic poem, yet at the same time they have inadvertently mythologized the preservation of the Acadians’ pre-dispersal identity. In contrast, this text examines ways that the Acadian identity changed through their experiences in exile and resettlement in the South. The Acadians’ interactions with the government, with Native and African Americans, and among themselves in Louisiana provide evidence that the very foundation of their former identity underwent severe fractures. In studying their new relationships with colonizers as well as other colonized, evidence of the Acadians’ willing participation in the colonial military, their fears of Native American tribes, their involvement in slaveholding, and their increased dependence on the government indicate that they experienced critical social, cultural, and political changes as a result of the Grand Dérangement. Through their dispersal and their resettlement in the South, the Acadians’ quest for survival resulted in a new definition of what it meant to be “Acadian.”

Notes

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Graduation Date

2011

Semester

Summer

Advisor

Sacher, John

Degree

Master of Arts (M.A.)

College

College of Arts and Humanities

Department

History

Format

application/pdf

Identifier

CFE0003965

URL

http://purl.fcla.edu/fcla/etd/CFE0003965

Language

English

Length of Campus-only Access

None

Access Status

Masters Thesis (Open Access)

Subjects

Arts and Humanities -- Dissertations, Academic, Dissertations, Academic -- Arts and Humanities;

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History Commons

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