Were Acadians better off than their rural counterparts in old regime France? Did they enjoy a Golden Age? To what degree did a distinct Acadian identity emerge before the wars and deportations of the mid-eighteenth century? In Something of a Peasant Paradise?, Gregory Kennedy compares Acadie in North America with a region of western France, the Loudunais, from which a number of the colonists originated. Kennedy considers the natural environment, the role of the state, the economy, the seigneury, and local governance in each place to show that similarities between the two societies have been...

Were Acadians better off than their rural counterparts in old regime France? Did they enjoy a Golden Age? To what degree did a distinct Acadian identity emerge before the wars and deportations of the mid-eighteenth century? In Something of a Peasant Paradise?, Gregory Kennedy compares Acadie in North America with a region of western France, the Loudunais, from which a number of the colonists originated. Kennedy considers the natural environment, the role of the state, the economy, the seigneury, and local governance in each place to show that similarities between the two societies have been...