Pax Britannica or Pax Indigena ? Planter Nova Scotia (1760-1782) and Competing Strategies of Pacification

Abstract

With regard to Planter Nova Scotia (1760­82), historians have frequently been content to assume that, following the defeat of the French at Louisbourg in 1758, Aboriginal relations had little further significance for the non-Native settlement history of that part of northeastern North America. This essay argues that such a view is mistaken and offers a reexamination of certain key elements of the evidence on the Aboriginal role vis-à-vis New England and the British imperial authorities in Nova Scotia. Far from accomplishing a pacification of Nova Scotia under British rule, the events of the 1750s and early 1760s ­ the expulsion of the Acadians, the British military victories of 1758–60, and the treaties of 1760–61 ­ set the stage for a ten-year era during which Aboriginal and British pacification strategies competed, followed by a partial reconciliation, which was finally swept away by the Loyalist migration. These developments highlight the importance of recognizing eighteenth-century Nova Scotia as contested territory, with Aboriginal history retaining crucial importance far beyond the chronological point at which the region has been conventionally seen as a colonial entity and Aboriginal inhabitants as peripheral figures. More generally, this study contributes to the breakdown of the long-established consensus that the eighteenth century in northeastern North America represented the latter part of a 'colonial period,' and that the American Revolution then established a new and dramatic demarcation between British North America and the United States. Rather, a more complex series of patterns can be identified, in which the history of colonial settlement is just one part of a historiographical triumvirate along with imperial history and Aboriginal history.

Historical Roots of Social Assistance: An Inadequate Response to the Colonial Destruction of Mi’kmaw Livelihood in Nova Scotia

“…The effects were wide ranging, transforming Mi'kmaq diets, clothing, settlement patterns, belief systems, and divisions of labour (Hornborg, 2016). 4 Thus, while the fur trade offered some opportunities for the Mi'kmaq, allowing them to maintain much independence (Reid, 2004), it also posed significant problems as it undermined Mi'kmaq self-sufficiency. Its decline, however, was catastrophic.…”