Mauritius - History

History

The island of Mauritius was unknown and uninhabited before its first recorded visit by Arab sailors during the Middle Ages who named it Dina Arobi. In 1507 Portuguese sailors visited the uninhabited island and established a visiting base. Portuguese navigator Diogo Fernandes Pereira was probably the first European to land on the island at around 1511. The island appears with a Portuguese name 'Cirne' on early Portuguese maps. The Portuguese did not stay long as they were not interested in these islands.

In 1598 a Dutch squadron under Admiral Wybrand Van Warwyck landed at Grand Port and named the island "Mauritius" after Maurice Van Nassau, the ruler of his country. The Dutch settled on the island in 1638. It was from here that Dutch navigator Abel Tasman set out to discover the western part of Australia. The first Dutch settlement lasted only twenty years. Several attempts were subsequently made, but the settlements never developed enough to produce dividends and the Dutch abandoned Mauritius in 1710. They are remembered for the introduction of sugar-cane, domestic animals and deer.

France, which already controlled neighbouring Île Bourbon (now Réunion), took control of Mauritius in 1715 and renamed it Isle de France. The 1735 arrival of French governor Bertrand-François Mahé de La Bourdonnais coincided with development of a prosperous economy based on sugar production. Mahé de La Bourdonnais established Port Louis as a naval base and a shipbuilding centre. Under his governorship, numerous buildings were erected, a number of which are still standing today - part of Government House, the Château de Mon Plaisir and the Line Barracks, the headquarters of the police force. The island was under the administration of the French East India Company which maintained its presence until 1767.

From 1767 to 1810, except for a brief period during the French Revolution when the inhabitants set up a government virtually independent of France, the island was controlled by officials appointed by the French Government. Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre visited the island and wrote Paul et Virginie, a successful novel situated on the island. In particular Charles Mathieu Isidore Decaen, a successful General in the French Revolutionary Wars and in some ways, a rival of Napoléon I, ruled as Governor General of Mauritius and Réunion from 1803 to 1810. British naval cartographer and explorer Matthew Flinders was arrested and detained by the General Decaen on the island, in contravention of an order from Napoléon. During the Napoleonic Wars, Mauritius became a base from which French corsairs organised successful raids on British commercial ships. The raids continued until 1810, when a Royal Navy expedition led by Commodore Josias Rowley, R.N., an Anglo-Irish aristocrat, was sent to capture the island. Despite winning the Battle of Grand Port, the only French naval victory over the British during these wars, the French surrendered to a British invasion at Cap Malheureux three months later. They formally surrendered on 3 December 1810, on terms allowing settlers to keep their land and property and to use the French language and law of France in criminal and civil matters. Under British rule, the island's name reverted to Mauritius.

The British administration, which began with Sir Robert Farquhar as Governor, was followed by rapid social and economic changes. Slavery was abolished in 1835. The planters received two million pounds sterling in compensation for the loss of their slaves who had been imported from Africa and Madagascar during the French occupation. The abolition of slavery had important repercussions on the socio-economic and demographic fields. The planters brought large number of indentured labourers from India to work in the sugar cane fields. Between 1834 and 1921, around half a million indentured labourers were present on the island. They worked on sugar estates, factories, in transport and construction sites. Additionally, the British brought 8,740 Indian soldiers to the islands.

When WW2 broke out in 1939, many Mauritians went to serve (under the British flag) in Africa and the Near East, fighting against German and Italian armies. Others went to South Africa and England to serve as pilots, wireless operators and ground staff in the RAF. Some were even parachuted over France and one Mauritian, Raymond Rault, participated in the liberation of Copenhagen at the head of a British regiment.

Over the years, the Indian population became numerically dominant; the voting franchise was extended, and in the general elections held in August 1948, political power shifted from the old Franco-Mauritian élite and their Creole allies, to the Indo-Mauritians. Eleven Indo-Mauritians were elected as opposed to seven Creoles and one Franco-Mauritian.

Cultivation of sugar cane flourished, it was mainly exported to the Great Britain. Economic progress saw improvement of the means of communication and a gradual upgrading of infrastructure.

Following constitutional conferences held in London in 1955 and 1957, the ministerial system was introduced and a General Election was held on 9 March 1959. Voting took place for the first time on the basis of universal adult suffrage and the number of electors rose to 208,684. A Constitutional Review Conference was held in London in 1961 and a programme of further constitutional advance was established. In 1965, the Chagos Archipelago was split from the territory of Mauritius to form British Indian Ocean Territory. The last constitutional conference, held in 1965, paved the way for the independence of Mauritius. After a General Election in August 1967, where the Mauritius Labour Party and its allies obtained the majority of seats, Mauritius adopted a new constitution and independence was proclaimed on 12 March 1968. Mauritius became independent as a Commonwealth realm, and there was subsequently a mass exodus of the Creole intelligentsia. This was mainly because the Parti Mauricien (which opposed independance) had put forward the view that the island would be 'indianised' after independance, and that Western culture might suffer. This turned out to be unfounded. A French minister, Regis Debre, came to Mauritius in 1969 and did much to reconcile the leader of the Labour Party and that of the Parti Mauricien. A coalition government was formed soon afterwards.

Mauritius became a Republic within the Commonwealth twenty four years later on 12 March 1992.