Well it isn't as bad as British behavior in India or Kenya seems a though many of the Acadians could have stayed if they were willing to swear and oath that was an anaethema to their religion.
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An Acadian delegation arrived in Halifax in 1755 with a petition to present to the lieutenant-governor of Nova Scotia, Colonel Charles Lawrence. Lawrence demanded that they take the oath of allegiance; the petitioners refused and Lawrence had them imprisoned. Under pressure from the Province of Massachusetts Bay and the British admiral in Halifax, Lawrence ordered the mass deportation of the Acadians despite earlier cautions from British authorities against drastic action.
In what is known as the Great Expulsion (Grand D?rangement), more than 12,000 Acadians (three-fourths of the Acadian population in Nova Scotia) were expelled from the colony between 1755 and 1764. The British destroyed around 6,000 Acadian houses and dispersed the Acadians among the 13 colonies from Massachusetts to Georgia. Although there were no purposeful attempts to separate families, this did occur in the chaos of the eviction. Popular historian Tim Frink writes on the contrary that "the separation of the men from their families" indeed was purposefully planned and undertaken from the beginning of the upheaval. He adds "no effort was made to keep families together" (Frink, 1999). Members of the same family and community were sent to different colonies to impose assimilation.
The largest group of Acadians, 3,500, were sent to Poitou, France. Other groups were forcibly settled throughout North America: Qu?bec (2,000), Nova Scotia (1,249), Massachusetts (1,043), South Carolina (942), Maryland (810), Baie des Chaleurs (700), Connecticut (666), Pennsylvania (383), Ile Saint-Jean (300), Louisiana (300), North Carolina (280), New York (249), Georgia (185), and along the St. John River (86). Another 866 were sent to England.
Some Acadians escaped into the woods and lived with the Mi'kmaq; some bands of partisans fought the British, including a group led by Joseph Broussard, known as Beausoleil, along the Peticodiac River of New Brunswick. Some followed the coast northward, facing famine and disease. Some were recaptured, facing deportation or imprisonment at Fort Beausejour (renamed Fort Cumberland) until 1763.
The Acadians who were deported to what is now the United States were met by British colonists who treated them much like African slaves. Some Acadians became indentured servants. Massachusetts passed a law in November 1755 placing the Acadians under the custody of "justices of the peace and overseers of the poor"; Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Connecticut adopted similar laws. The Province of Virginia under Robert Dinwiddie initially agreed to resettle about one thousand Acadians who arrived in the colony but later ordered most deported to England, writing that the "French people" were "intestine enemies" that were "mudr'd and scalp'd our frontier settlers."
Other Acadians were deported to France, where many had to live in the slums of Nantes or on Belle-Isle off Brittany. The French islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon near Newfoundland became a safe harbor for many Acadian families until they were once again deported by the British in 1778 and 1793.
After the end of the Seven Years War in 1763, Acadians were allowed to return to Nova Scotia as long as they did not settle in any one area in large numbers; they were not permitted to resettle in the areas of Port Royal or Grand-Pr?. Some Acadians resettled along the Nova Scotia coast and remain scattered across Nova Scotia to this day.
Many dispersed Acadians looked for other homes. Beginning in 1764, groups of Acadians began to arrive in Louisiana (which had been passed to Spanish control in 1762). They eventually became known as Cajuns.
See also:
Seven Years' War
Battle of the Plains of Abraham
Treaty of Paris 1763
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Acadians
