Isle Saint-Jean

Isle Saint-Jean, today Prince Edward Island, was a French colony from 1713 to 1763 and part of the wider Acadian world. After the Treaty of Utrecht left the island to France, officials hoped to settle it with Acadians and soldiers, but growth was slow: only about 300 people lived there in 1728. The seat of government was established at Port-la-Joye on the island's south shore, facing Louisbourg on Cape Breton, and the colony depended on that fortress for defence and trade. During the 1740s and 1750s hundreds of Acadians fled British Nova Scotia for the island, and the population reached roughly 4,000 to 4,600. When Louisbourg fell in July 1758, British forces ordered the deportation of the island's Acadians. Some 3,100 were shipped to France that summer; several transports sank, including the Duke William, and more than half of those deported died of drowning or disease. France formally ceded the island to Britain in the Treaty of Paris of 1763, and it was soon reorganised as the British colony of St. John's Island.