Prince Edward Island Acadians in the 1760s and Beyond, and Their Ambivalence in Taking the Oath of Allegiance
Bibliographic record
Abstract
OATHS OF ALLEGIANCE DATE BACK TO FEUDAL TIMES in Europe. 1 Oaths, or pledges, were an essential part of the contracts between land-holding nobles and lower class persons benefitting from the use of land.In the 17th century it became common for the monarchs of European countries to require subjects to pledge loyalty through an oath of allegiance in return for certain protections and rights.This was particularly important to monarchs in times of political turmoil, rebellion, and civil war, when royal authority could be challenged and sovereigns overthrown.During the Jacobite uprising of 1745 and 1746, for example, it was very important for the Protestant George II and his government officials to know whom among the populace supported them and who did not.Kings and queens relied on oaths of allegiance as a means of obtaining or demanding loyalty; those who refused could be banished or face other penalties.Concerns relating to loyalty to the British Crown spilled over into the colonies, including Nova Scotia, particularly in the early 1750s, as this was a time when tensions between Great Britain and France were significantly increasing.The Roman Catholic Acadians greatly outnumbered British settlers in Nova Scotia, and they were suspected by colonial officials to be still yearning for a restoration of Acadia to France. 2 The oath of allegiance of the 17th century, both in England and France, was infused with religious overtones, and taking the oath was not something to be done lightly.As pointed out by Yves Durand, a 17th-century French dictionary compiler by the name of Furetière wrote: "The oath is therefore not a simple contract one can easily renounce; it is an engagement before God." 3 More modern versions of 1 The author is grateful to the anonymous reviewers of earlier versions of this research note for their many helpful comments and suggestions.2 In Canada today immigrants who gain Canadian citizenship are required to take an Oath of Citizenship, which includes a declaration of fealty to the Canadian monarch.An oath of allegiance, along with an oath of office, is also required of new occupants of various federal and provincial government positions, Canadian Armed Forces personnel, police forces, justice system positions, etc.The Canadian Oath of Allegiance Act, R.S.C., 1985, O-1, is reproduced at https://www.canlii.org/en/ca/laws/stat/rsc-1985-c-o-1/latest/rsc-1985-c-o-1.html.For more about oaths of allegiance, including the Acadian context, see Desmond H. Brown, "Foundations of British Policy in the Acadian Expulsion: A Discussion of Land Tenure and the Oath of Allegiance," Dalhousie Review 57, no. 4 (Winter 1977-78): 709-25; N.E.S.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.008 | 0.006 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.004 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.008 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".