Controversy over political refugees is nothing new in history….and particularly in the history of South Carolina. One of the lesser known controversies will be the subject of our October 15 DIHS meeting.
Basically (although nothing like this is ever simple) the British forcibly evicted a French ethnic group known as Acadians from the Maritime provinces of Canada and well as from Quebec and what is now Maine.
Citadel history professor Victoria Musheff will speak on
Colonial Carolina in the midst of a humanitarian crisis between 1755-65, which was complicated by tensions around the French and Indian War.
This forced expulsion was also known as the Great Upheaval, the Great Expulsion, the Great Deportation and Le Grand Dérangement . The American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow memorialized the historic event in his poem about the plight of the fictional character Evangeline, which was popular and made the expulsion well known.
Learn more about the Acadians on this fascinating timeline by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.