New France
New France () was the area colonized by France in North America during a period beginning with the exploration of the Gulf of Saint Lawrence by Jacques Cartier in 1534 and ending with the cession of New France to Great Britain and Spain in 1763 under the Treaty of Paris (1763).
Fort Beauséjour
During the 1600s and 1700s, European monarchies were almost permanently at war with each other. The threat of Anglo-American invasion of New France was constant, and Acadia was particularly vulnerable. Its capital, Port Royal, was founded in 1605, destroyed by the British in 1613, moved upstream in 1632, besieged in 1707, and finally taken in the Siege of Port Royal (1710). Under the terms of the 1713 Treaty of Utrecht, the Kingdom of France had ceded to the Kingdom of Great Britain the territory known today as mainland Nova Scotia. The treaty stated that France retained control of Île-Royale, now Prince Edward Island and Cape Breton. France's colony Canada extended from what is now Quebec to the Gaspé Peninsula. The treaty of Utrecht left it unclear who had sovereignty over the land between Gaspesie and Nova Scotia, now New Brunswick, and where the western border of Nova Scotia stood. The de facto border became the Isthmus of Chignecto at the Missiguash River, site of the prosperous Acadian settlement Beaubassin.