Colony of Nova Scotia

Nova Scotia became a British colony in 1713, when France ceded Acadia under the Peace of Utrecht. The peninsula had been contested for a century, and the British renamed the Acadian capital Port Royal as Annapolis Royal. Halifax was founded in 1749 as a naval base and soon replaced Annapolis Royal as the capital. The colony's government faced repeated wars with the Mi'kmaq and the French, and in the 1750s the British deported thousands of French-speaking Acadians. During the American Revolution, thousands of Loyalists settled in Nova Scotia, and the colony's population and institutions grew. In 1848 Nova Scotia became the first British colony in North America to win responsible government. It joined Confederation with New Brunswick and the Province of Canada in July 1867, becoming one of the four founding provinces of Canada. The colonial period shaped the province's English-speaking majority, its fisheries and shipbuilding economy, and its relationship with the Mi'kmaq.