Acadia and Fort Louisburg 1740–55

The French established Acadia (Nova Scotia), along the shores of the St Lawrence River, in the 1600s, and it played an important role in the French and British fur trade. After 1713, the British took full control of Acadia and tension between the French and English settlers within the community heightened, with the English feeling uneasy about the French-speaking majority. Between 1740–55, the French fortress of Louisburg, which had remained in French hands as part of the Isle Royale colony, was besieged and taken by a New England military force, supported by the navy. The French won it back in 1750. Meanwhile, the British American colonisers, anxious about the conflicting loyalties of the French Acadian population, expelled them in 1755 because of their refusal to sign an oath to the British. Many of the French colonists migrated to Isle Royale, Isle St John and Louisiana.