Resident priests were something of a rarity. Fifth, Acadia had an economy that was integrative and imaginative. In the meantime Acadia had to deal with its vulnerability issues. The first of these stations came into use early and thereafter often as the growing British and French naval presences in the region increasingly were in conflict.
Eighteenth century conflict is considered more fully in Chapter 6. The fisheries and whaling grounds around the island of Newfoundland attracted fleets from the British West Country ports, from French harbours like St. Malo, from Portugal, and from the Basque villages on the north coast of Spain. Settlements were slow to emerge, not least because England, for example, wanted to control its fleets and sailors; England and the other European nations involved in the fisheries and in whaling regarded the Grand Banks and the Strait of Belle Isle as training grounds for voluntary and involuntary navy recruits.
Establishing onshore settlements would work against these priorities. See Chapter 6 for more on this topic. Eventually and perhaps inevitably, Europeans particularly those with a less reliable supply of salt began landing their catch on the beaches of Newfoundland and drying the fish there before heading home. This was predictably the response first of those fishing fleets, among them the English, that lacked access to salt. It was this process that drew French sailors to Plaisance, or Placentia, where the rocky beaches were perfect for drying fish.
In the French made it the administrative capital for the half of the island that they controlled and began the process of fortifying the harbour and town in Figure 6. Prince Edward Island in the s was a significant piece of the Acadian farming and seagoing frontier. Historians think of Acadia as a society as much as a place. After , the French possessions in the region were both reduced and augmented.
Those were now under the nominal control of the British. The two islands held a rump population of Acadians but, soon after Utrecht, the French erected the largest of their colonial outposts on Royale: Fortress Louisbourg. Built in , Louisbourg soon became the busiest of the French ports in North America and rivalled most of the British ports to the south in terms of volume of trade.
Clearly it had both military and commercial functions. It also served as the administrative headquarters for the two colonies in the Gulf of St. Louisbourg played a role, too, in sustaining the Acadian communities then behind enemy lines in Nova Scotia. The soil around Louisbourg, however, was too miserly so the Acadians opted to stay put. The British were certain that Louisbourg was a disruptive factor in the internal affairs of Nova Scotia; the Acadians were exasperated by years of war and oscillations between British and French overlords, on the one hand, and enemy pirates and raiders on the other.
The French, for their part, wanted some time to rebuild their position without being drawn too far into the affairs of the Acadians and the Wabanaki Confederacy. Repeated efforts were made on the part of the British to secure an oath of loyalty from the Acadians. France, of course, did not want this but, more importantly, neither did the Wabanaki Confederacy.
Pro-British Acadians, the Wabanaki concluded, would be by definition hostile to the Confederacy. The termination -acadie, which is common in Micmac place-names, has been discussed by W. Ganong in the Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada, vol. The author claims that the name is derived from Arcadia.
On Gastaldi's map of it is named Larcadie, and perhaps not without reason. When Cartier first encountered the ugly barren shore of Labrador he thought it must have been the land that God gave to Cain. Proceeding on his voyage, he became enchanted with the country, its vegetation, and its climate, more temperate than that of Spain.
Champlain refers to the place as Arcadie in In Monts' commission we find La Cadie, and from that time the name is usually spelled Acadie. The relations between Greenland and the Vatican, centuries before the discoveries of Columbus, point to a very early knowledge of Canada by the inhabitants of Greenland and Iceland. In early Norwegian maps Greenland is shown as a part of the mainland. Cabot probably touched the Acadian coast in Juan Alvarez appears to have reached the mainland in , and Verrazano sailed along the coast in ; but the first satisfactory record is that of Jacques Cartier in The patent of Monts in marked the beginning of settlement in Acadia.
Under it Champlain and Monts chose a site in Passamaquoddy bay which proved unsatisfactory. In the little colony moved to the present Annapolis valley, which was named Port Royal. Among the members was Marc Lescarbot, a young lawyer of France, who wrote a metrical drama, The Theatre of Neptune, which was performed before the fort in ; thus winning for Canada the distinction of staging the first theatrical performance in North America.
The little colony was not allowed to develop in peace. In the Virginians swept down upon the coast, destroying the dwellings, and dispersing the habitants. A few of them under the leadership of Biencourt are said to have escaped to the woods and established themselves in the south-eastern part of the peninsula.
With them was Charles de la Tour who on the death of Biencourt laid claim to the territory and continued the struggle on the part of France.
In a serious attempt at colonization was made by the British. Acadia, now christened Nova Scotia, was granted to Sir William Alexander who after two unsuccessful efforts to gain a foothold induced the King to create an order of Baronets of Nova Scotia hoping thereby to put new heart into his enterprise and retrieve his heavy losses.
Members of the order were expected to contribute liberally to the work of settlement. The rivalry between England and France, however, precluded success, and the scheme to unite the two interests by enrolling Charles de la Tour as a baronet of Nova Scotia failed when the French claimant refused to be bought.
The sturdy band settled at Scots Fort fared badly, and Alexander's project suffered a final blow when by the Treaty of St. Saint Croix Island Hornsby Cartographers: Michael J. Biggar ed. Toronto: Champlain Society, Cole Harris, plate Toronto: University of Toronto Press, Tel:
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