Lunenburg Rebellion

The Lunenburg Rebellion, sometimes called the Hoffman Insurrection, took place in March 1753. It was a revolt by new settlers in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, who were frustrated by harsh living conditions and exhausted from being moved repeatedly by the British. The uprising was led by army captain John Hoffman and happened before the settlement’s founding, during the wider conflict of Father Le Loutre's War (1749–1755) between Britain and France.

The British had established Halifax as their first publicly funded colony between 1749 and 1764, aiming to create a loyal population to compete with Acadians for land and resources. Early problems in Halifax led the British government to recruit "Foreign Protestants"—Swiss, French Huguenots, and Germans—through agent John Dick. Dick promised them land, a year’s supplies, tools, and weapons, though passage was not free, and some settlers worked off their debt to the government. Dick was criticized for gathering "old miserable wretches," misleading recruits about conditions in the New World, exploiting their labor, and overcrowding ships. He transported over 2,700 people, many of them German-speaking Foreign Protestants.

Though the British planned to settle these Foreign Protestants in agricultural areas like the Bay of Fundy, most stayed in Halifax due to uncertainty over Acadian land claims. The settlers disliked the makeshift shantytown and complained about not getting land or building materials, while facing high rents and prices. Their unmet promises and hardships built resentment, and the British stopped recruiting Foreign Protestants in 1752.

In spring 1753, it became known that the British intended to establish Lunenburg without negotiating with the Mi'kmaq people, violating an earlier treaty and undermining Chief Jean-Baptiste Cope's 1752 Peace Treaty. Governor Peregrine Hopson received warnings from Fort Edward that up to 300 natives were ready to oppose the settlement and planned to attack when settlers arrived. This move was part of a British campaign to plant Protestants in Nova Scotia to counter Catholic Acadian power.

In June 1753, 1,400 German and French Protestant settlers, supervised by British officer Charles Lawrence and protected by British Navy ships, regular soldiers under Major Patrick Sutherland, and rangers under Joseph Gorham, founded Lunenburg.