This book tells the extraordinary story of thousands of Acadians expelled from Nova Scotia and scattered throughout the Atlantic world beginning in 1755. Following them to the Caribbean, the South Atlantic, and western Europe, historian Christopher Hodson illuminates a long-forgotten world of imperial experimentation and human brutality. Hodson skillfully synthesizes the imperial and personal experience of the Acadian diaspora through an emphasis on two lines of analysis: the grand designs of imperial visionaries that would be made possible by Acadian labor and the personal experience of imperialism through the lives of individual Acadians involved in such imperial designs on the ground. In doing so, The Acadian Diaspora contributes to our historical understanding of the nature of imperialism as well as the role of the individual in the eighteenth-century Atlantic world ... An insightful and personal analysis of migration, The Acadian Diaspora deepens our understanding of global history by portraying the eighteenth century as an imperial world in flux that created opportunities for some while closing the door to prosperity for many.