I wish people would stop interpreting the "grand dérangement" of the Acadiens as "genocide." It was a mass deportation conducted for political and military reasons during the run-up to the Seven Years' War in Nova Scotia, a British colony that occupied about half the territory formerly known as Acadie. It wasn't nice, but it wasn't genocide either. The closest historical equivalent was the 1942 deportation of Japanese Canadians from British Columbia.

Acadia was a French colony until 1713, when it was became British during the series of wars along the Atlantic coast of North America now counted as part of Queen Anne's Wars. It is worth noting that France handed Acadia over with hardly a backward glance.

The Acadiens were not at that time required to swear allegiance to their new overlords, nor were they prevented from maintaining contact with New France and with French outposts in the area, especially Louisbourg. This failure of British colonial administration is best attributed to laissez-faire attitudes arising from lack of manpower.

The Acadiens lived quite comfortably as British subjects in name only until the 1740s, when the worsening security situation across the Atlantic made the colonial government wake up to some stern realities. Military operations dealt with Louisbourg and the other French fortresses in the Atlantic region, but the Acadiens themselves were a threat because they remained a population of ex-enemies in regular contact with the potential enemy next door in New France. Consequently, a decree went out from Halifax that all Acadians who had not taken the oath of allegiance had to do so or lose the right to live in the territory ... and the rest is history.

It made political and military sense in those harsh times, but seems barbaric in today's post-Romantic view.

That Longfellow guy has a lot to answer for.