Editing Acadia (section)

==Population==
[[Image:Acadie 1750.JPG|upright=1.5|thumb|Main Acadian communities before the deportation]]
Before 1654, trading companies and patent holders concerned with fishing recruited men in France to come to Acadia to work at the commercial outposts.{{sfn|Moogk|2000|p=92}} The original Acadian population was a small number of [[indentured servant]]s and soldiers brought by the fur-trading companies.

Gradually, fishermen began settling in the area as well, rather than return to France with the seasonal fishing fleet.{{sfn|Moogk|2000|p=7}} The majority of the recruiting took place at [[La Rochelle]]. Between 1653 and 1654, 104 men were recruited at La Rochelle. Of these, 31% were builders, 15% were soldiers and sailors, 8% were food preparers, 6.7% were farm workers, and an additional 6.7% worked in the clothing trades.{{sfn|Moogk|2000|p=92}} Fifty-five percent of Acadia's first families came from western and southwestern France, primarily from [[Poitou]], [[Aquitaine]], [[Angoumois]], and [[Saintonge (region)|Saintonge]]. Over 85% of these (47% of the total), were former residents of the La Chaussée area of Poitou.{{sfn|Brasseaux|1987|p=8}}

Many of the families who arrived in 1632 with [[Isaac de Razilly]] shared some blood ties; those not related by blood shared cultural ties with the others.{{sfn|Brasseaux|1987|p=8}} The number of original immigrants was very small, and only about 100 surnames existed within the Acadian community.{{sfn|Moogk|2000|p=7}}

Many of the earliest French settlers in Acadia intermarried with the local [[Mi'kmaq people|Mi'kmaq]] tribe.{{sfn|Moogk|2000|p=7}}<ref>{{cite book |last=Pritchard |first=James |title=In Search of Empire: The French in the Americas, 1670-1730 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=kK9wa98I4eEC&pg=PA36 |year=2004 |publisher=[[Cambridge University Press]] |isbn=978-0-521-82742-3 |page=36 |quote=Abbé Pierre Maillard claimed that racial intermixing had proceeded so far by 1753 that in fifty years it would be impossible to distinguish Amerindian from French in Acadia.}}</ref>

[[File:Flag of Acadia.svg|thumb|This Acadian flag was established at the second Acadian Convention in 1884 at Miscouche, Prince Edward Island.<ref>{{cite news |url=https://www.cbc.ca/acadian/feature_acadian_flag.html |title=Acadian National Flag |website=The Acadians |publisher=CBC |access-date=9 April 2020}}</ref>]]

A [[Paris]]ian lawyer, Marc Lescarbot, who spent just over a year in Acadia, arriving in May 1606, described the Micmac as having "courage, fidelity, generosity, and humanity, and their hospitality is so innate and praiseworthy that they receive among them every man who is not an enemy. They are not simpletons. ... So that if we commonly call them Savages, the word is abusive and unmerited."{{sfn|Moogk|2000|p=18}}<ref>{{cite web |first=Peter |last=Landry |title=Marc Lescarbot |work=Early Nova Scotians: 1600-1867 |publisher=Blupete |date=2015 |orig-year=1997 |url=http://www.blupete.com/Hist/BiosNS/1600-00/Lescarbot.htm}}</ref>

Most of the immigrants to Acadia were poor peasants in France, making them social equals in this new context. The colony had very limited economic support or cultural contacts with France, leaving a "social vacuum" that allowed "individual talents and industry ... [to supplant] inherited social position as the measure of a man's worth."{{sfn|Brasseaux|1987|p=3}} Acadians lived as social equals, with the elderly and priests considered slightly superior.{{sfn|Moogk|2000|p=175}}

Unlike the French colonists in Canada and the early English colonies in [[Plymouth Colony|Plymouth]] and [[Jamestown, Virginia|Jamestown]], Acadians maintained an extended kinship system,{{sfn|Brasseaux|1987|p=3}} and the large extended families assisted in building homes and barns, as well as cultivating and harvesting crops.{{sfn|Brasseaux|1987|p=11}} They also relied on interfamily cooperation to accomplish community goals, such as building dikes to reclaim tidal marshes.{{sfn|Moogk|2000|p=270}}

Marriages were generally not love matches but were arranged for economic or social reasons. Parental consent was required for anyone under 25 who wished to marry, and both the mother's and father's consent was recorded in the marriage deed.{{sfn|Moogk|2000|p=180}} Divorce was not permitted in New France, and annulments were almost impossible to get. Legal separation was offered as an option but was seldom used.{{sfn|Moogk|2000|p=229}}

The Acadians were suspicious of outsiders and on occasion did not readily cooperate with census takers. The first reliable population figures for the area came with the census of 1671, which noted fewer than 450 people. By 1714, the Acadian population had expanded to 2,528&nbsp;individuals, mostly from natural increase rather than immigration.{{sfn|Moogk|2000|p=7}} Most Acadian women in the 18th century gave birth to living children an average of eleven times. Although these numbers are identical to those in Canada, 75% of Acadian children reached adulthood, many more than in other parts of New France. The isolation of the Acadian communities meant the people were not exposed to many of the imported epidemics, allowing the children to remain healthier.{{sfn|Moogk|2000|p=219}}

In 1714, a few Acadian families emigrated to [[Île Royale (New France)|Île Royale]]. These families had little property. But for the majority of Acadians, they could not be enticed by the French government to abandon their family lands for an area which was unknown and uncultivated.<ref>{{cite book|last=Arsenault|first=Bona|title=Histoire des Acadiens|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=w9vN1chq0i0C&pg=PA114|year=2004|publisher=Les Editions Fides|isbn=978-2-7621-2613-6|page=114}}</ref>

Some Acadians migrated to nearby [[Île Saint-Jean]] (now Prince Edward Island) to take advantage of the fertile cropland. In 1732, the island had 347 settlers but within 25 years its population had expanded to 5000 Europeans.{{sfn|Moogk|2000|p=6}} Much of the population surge on Île Saint-Jean took place in the 1750s, as Acadians left during the rising tensions on peninsular Nova Scotia after the settlement of Halifax in 1749. Le Loutre played a role in these removals through acts of encouragement and threats. The exodus to Île Saint-Jean became a flood with refugees fleeing British-held territory after the initial expulsions of 1755.

In contemporary Atlantic Canada, it is estimated that there are 300,000 French-speaking Acadians.<ref>{{cite web |title=L'Acadie |url=https://anacadie.ca/lacadie/ |website=Assemblée nationale de l'Acadie (anacadie.ca) |access-date=10 January 2022}}</ref> In addition, there is a diaspora of over three million Acadian descendants in the world, primarily in the United States, in Canada outside the Atlantic region, and in France.<ref>{{cite web |title=La diaspora |url=https://anacadie.ca/lacadie/la-diaspora/ |website=Assemblée nationale de l'Acadie (anacadie.ca) |access-date=10 January 2022}}</ref>