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Mauritius is the
most accessible island in the Indian Ocean, boasting as much tropical paradise
as Maui or Martinique and, better still, offering it at a bargain price.
Though nestled up alongside Africa, it's actually more influenced by its
British and French ties and predominantly Indian workforce.
The first people to set foot
on the island of Mauritius were Arab sailors and merchants. Arabs merchant
ships have been sailing the Indian Ocean for centuries. Important trading
routes linked the east coast of Africa and Madagascar with the Arabian
peninsula, India and Indonesia.
The Mascarenes Islands were
a long way off the usual trading routes of Arab or Indian sailors. Perhaps
the islands were discovered when a cyclone (hurricane) caught an Arab dhow
unaware and pushed it towards Mauritius. Evidence that points to the discovery
of the Mascarenes Archipelago by Arab seamen comes from copies of Portuguese
maps of the early 16th century that depict a group of three small islands
south east of Madagascar that bear Arabic names. |
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In 1498, the Portuguese
explorer Vasco Da Gama succeeded in rounding the cape of Good Hope and
called at various Arab-Swahili cities along the East African coast on his
way northwards. It was at one of those city ports that an Arab or Indian
pilot showed him the way to Goa, India. Within the next ten years, numerous
Portuguese expeditions explored the Indian Ocean, visiting Madagascar,
the Seychelles and the Comoros Islands. |
Around 1507, the Portuguese
seaman Fernandez Pereira sighted Mauritius and named it Cerne. The group
of islands consisting of Mauritius, Reunion and Rodrigues were given the
names of Mascarenes after the Portuguese captain, Pero Mascarenhas.
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The Portuguese never attempted
to settle on any of the Mascarene islands. They were more interested in
protecting their trade routes with India and therefore established settlements
along the coast of Mozambique instead.
Therefore the first Europeans
to have visited Mauritius were the Portuguese at the beginning of the sixteenth
century (most probably in 1510). However, the Dutch who settled in the
island in 1598 named it Mauritius after Prince Maurice of Nassau. Among
other things, the Dutch introduced sugar cane and the Java deer before
leaving in 1710.
During French colonial rule,
from 1767 to 1810, the capital and main port, Port Louis, became an important
centre for trade, privateering, and naval operations against the British.
In addition, French planters established sugarcane estates and built up
their fortunes at the expense of the labour of slaves brought from Africa.
The French patois, or colloquial language, which evolved among these slaves
and their freed descendants, referred to as Creole, has become the everyday
language shared by most of the island's inhabitants. French is used in
the media and literature, and the Franco-Mauritian descendants of the French
settlers continue to dominate the sugar industry and economic life of modern
Mauritius |
The British captured the island
in 1810 and gave up sovereignty when Mauritius became independent in 1968.
During this period, the French plantation aristocracy maintained its economic,
and, to a certain degree, its political prominence. The British abolished
slavery but provided for cheap labour on the sugar estates by bringing
nearly 500,000 indentured workers from the Indian subcontinent. The political
history of Mauritius in the twentieth century revolves around the gradual
economic and political empowerment of the island's Indian majority. |
