Evangeline - Influence

Influence

Prior to the influence of Longfellow's poem, historians generally focused on the British founding of Halifax (1749) as the beginning of Nova Scotia. Longfellow's poem shed light on the 150 years of Acadian settlement that preceded the establishment of Halifax.

The Expulsion was planned and executed by New Englanders and British. Longfellow omitted from the poem New England's responsibility for the event. Through his poem, Longfellow defines the British as responsible for the expulsion and America is cast as a place of refuge. This omission may explain in part why Americans were able to celebrate a poem that was based on a traumatic historic event for which they were significantly responsible. Longfellow's account was later challenged by Francis Parkman in his book Montcalm and Wolfe (1884). Rather than blaming the British, Parkman defined the real problem in expulsion as the French influence on Acadians, particularly by Abbe Jean-Louis Le Loutre. American historian John Brebner eventually wrote New England's Outpost (1927), which identified how instrumental New Englanders were in the expulsion of the Acadians.

The poem had a powerful impact in both defining Acadian history and identity in the nineteenth and twentieth century. More recent scholarship has revealed the historical errors in the poem and the complexity of the Expulsion and those involved, which the poem obscures. For example, Longfellow's poem renders Acadia a utopia and the Acadians as simply a homogeneous, passive, peaceful, innocent people. This account obscured the resistance that many Acadians demonstrated — both politically and militarily — against the British occupation of Acadia.

The poem also led generations of Protestant anglophones to sympathize with the plight of a people whom they often demonized and persecuted for being Catholic. The poem also provided a safe symbolic space for Acadians to develop arguments for more recognition and respect.