Welcome to Digital Disruptions of the Colonial Archive: Settler Colonialism in Acadie/Mi’kma’ki. Digital Disruptions is a five-module asynchronous, online course, delivered in 10 weekly lessons, which uses archival case studies related to Acadian and Mi’kmaw history to teach digital historical methods. Planned as a mid-size, second- or third-year university course, Digital Disruptions offers a deep examination of 18th-century settler colonialism while also providing students with extensive training in critical digital methods, as well as access to a repository of rare primary sources.
The history of 17th and 18th century Mi’kma’ki/Acadie/Nova Scotia – a space with variable Indigenous, colonial, and imperial meanings – provides a unique opportunity to teach colonial history. By taking as our subject a space that simultaneously meant different things to different people, as Mi’kmaw homeland, French colony, or British conquest, Digital Disruptions reveals to students both the distinctive nature of the past and encourages them to ask questions about how to understand the histories of colonialism and imperialism.
The name of this course – Digital Disruptions – applies in two distinct ways.
First, from a historical perspective, the 18th century was a period of profound disruption in Mi’kma’ki/Acadie/Nova Scotia. At the beginning of the century, the region was primarily defined by the Mi’kmaw, Wolastoqiyik, Peskotomuhati, Penobscot, and Kennebec nations, who had lived there from time immemorial. The population of French settlers known as Acadians grew rapidly, however, while the French and British empires fought a series of wars laying claim to the space within a eurocentric international legal regime. By mid-century, the time of the British founding of Halifax, the region had become a war zone, leading to the deportation of over 15,000 Acadians to destinations across the British and French Atlantic Worlds. In the aftermath of this grand dérangement, Britain built up the region anew, shaping the place we know as Nova Scotia today.
Second, this course responds to a profound shift that has taken place in the study of history. The dawn of the internet age brought with it unprecedented access to historical records that help us interpret and understand the past. Not only has this transition made archives much more accessible than they once were, but with this transition have come new tools that allow us to explore these records in new and innovative ways. Over the course of the five modules in Digital Disruptions, we will introduce you to the software and methods necessary to begin studying this material at a deeper level than you could by merely reading an assigned text or document. By the time you have completed the course, you will have a basic proficiency in these techniques and can begin applying them throughout your historical research.
Upon completion of this course you will have developed a nuanced understanding of settler colonialism, one that positions settlement within broader European imperial and colonial practices. More specifically, you will be able to knowledgeably discuss the histories of treaties and diplomacy; enslavement, expulsion and migration; gender; class; and other forms of colonial social relationships that remain salient to current understandings of this time and place. At the same time, you will leave the course equipped with introductory training in archival research, distant and close reading, Historical Geographic Information Systems [HGIS], historical demography, material culture, and social network analysis.
A unique component of this course is its attached digital repository. Each course module makes use of a curated digital archival repository in which major English- and French-language texts have been transcribed, translated, and made digitally accessible, offering a completely new and unique experience for you to develop skills and understanding in ways that are currently unavailable on other platforms.
Finally, Digital Disruptions is designed to be simple both to reuse and to adapt for more specialized purposes. The modules fit together as a coherent exploration of colonial-era Acadie/Mi’kma’ki, but individual modules are flexible enough to be used in a wide range of more specialized themes. (Examples include demography, historical geography, critical cartography, social/domestic relations, settler-Indigenous relations, or public history.) Most modules also include digital applications such as HGIS, database construction, hypothes.is, or text mining, which can be used in courses on methodology or digital history.
Note on terms used
You will find that some of the words which appear in the primary documents used in this course are considered offensive, and express racist ideas. We have left them as they are, because they are part of the original texts and their historical contexts.
For example, we have left the word “sauvage” untranslated from the French. The English translation generally used for this word, “savage,” is misleading, as it implies a dimension of violence and cruelty that does not exist in the original French.
The word “sauvage” comes from the Latin silva, which means forest. In the early modern world, it referred to wild plants as opposed to cultivated plants – and from there, extended to people who lived in the forest. Over time, it took on the meaning of ‘uncivilized.’ It is a pejorative and homogenizing term that has generally been used to describe Indigenous people without referring to their nations or their names.
While “sauvage” and “savage” have different implications, both terms have contributed to the dehumanization of Indigenous peoples.
Acknowledgements:
Sharon Janzen (Brock University, Map, Data & GIS Library) was responsible for developing ArcGIS content and lesson guides.
Kyle Mackie (https://www.kylemackie.ca/) was our Education Technologies consultant.
Benjamin Harris, Shannon Gosse and Paige Groot were student RAs.
Giulia Forsyth and Matt Clare (Co-Directors, Brock University, Centre for Pedagogical Innovation) helped greatly with early design and the eCampusOntario application process.
We are most grateful to eCampusOntario for funding the work.
