Acadia (in the French language Acadie) was the name given to lands in a portion of the French colonial empire in northeastern North America that included parts of eastern Quebec, the Maritime provinces, and modern-day New England, stretching as far south as Philadelphia.

The actual specification by the French government for the territory refers to lands bordering the Atlantic coast, roughly between the 40th and 46th parallels. Later, the territory was divided into the British colonies which became Canadian provinces and American states.

Today, Acadia has been used to refer to regions of Atlantic Canada with French roots, language, and culture, primarily in New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island , as well as in the American state of Maine. In the abstract, Acadia refers to the existence of a French culture on Canada's east coast.

Etymology

The origin of the designation Acadia is credited to the explorer Giovanni da Verrazzano, who on his sixteenth century map applied the ancient Greek name "Arcadia" to the entire Atlantic coast north of Virginia (note the inclusion of the 'r' of the original Greek name). "Arcadia" derives from the Arcadia district in Greece which since Classical antiquity had the extended meanings of "refuge" or "idyllic place". The Dictionary of Canadian Biography says: "Arcadia, the name Verrazzano gave to Maryland or Virginia 'on account of the beauty of the trees,' made its first cartographical appearance in the 1548 Gastaldo map and is the only name on that map to survive in Canadian usage. . . . In the 17th century Champlain fixed its present orthography, with the 'r' omitted, and Ganong has shown its gradual progress northwards, in a succession of maps, to its resting place in the Atlantic Provinces."

History

main: History of the Acadians

The French took control of the Abenaki First Nations territory. In 1654, King Louis XIV of France appointed aristocrat Nicolas Denys as governor of large portions of Acadia and granted him the confiscated lands and the right to all its minerals.

The Netherlands asserted sovereignty over Acadia in 1674 after privateer Jurriaen Aernoutsz captured the forts at Pentagoet and Jemseg. Control over the region reverted to France when Aernoutsz's appointed administrator, John Rhoades, was captured by New England within a few months. The Dutch West India Company continued to assert a paper claim over Acadia until 1678, appointing Cornelius Van Steenwyk as its governor, although they never successfully recaptured actual control of the territory.

British colonists captured Acadia in the course of King William's War (1690–1697), but Britain returned it to France at the peace settlement. It was recaptured in the course of Queen Anne's War (1702–1713), and its conquest was confirmed in the Treaty of Utrecht (1713).