In time, some Acadians returned to the Maritime provinces of Canada, mainly to New Brunswick. The British prohibited them from resettling their lands and villages in what became Nova Scotia. Before the American Revolutionary War, the Crown settled Protestant European immigrants and New England Planters in former Acadian communities and farmland. After the war, it made land grants in Nova Scotia to Loyalists (including nearly 3,000 Black Loyalists, slaves of rebels given freedom after joining British forces). British policy was to establish a majority culture of Protestant religions and to assimilate Acadians with the local populations where they resettled.