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Reunion Island

English occupation

In 1810, the English invaded the archipelago of the Mascareignes. Having taken over the island of Rodrigues and the island of France (Mauritius) in the previous year, they arrived on Bonaparte Island (Reunion Island) on 7th July 1810, in Saint Denis.

The new Commander, Sir Farquhar, who, like all the English at the time, disliked Napeleon, rapidly de-baptised the island and gave it the name of Bourbon Island once again. The Island of France was also given its old name of Mauritius.

The English occupation of Bourbon Island lasted for five years and was, overall, negative for the Reunion locals.

During the occupation, the slaves rose up and a number of whites were killed. After the defeat of Waterloo, the French diplomats succeeded in including, in the clauses of the second treaty of Paris (20th November 1815), not only the handing over of the island of Saint Pierre and Miquelon to the French, but also that of Bourbon Island.

The Island of France (Mauritius) and Rodrigues remained English.

Overall, the English occupation of the Mascareignes was at the origin of the separation of the three island into two distinct political entities: the Island of France (Mauritius) and Rodrigues were English, where as Bonaparte Island – which had taken back the name of Bourbon – became French once again. It was the only territory under French administration in this part of the Indian Ocean, as the archipelago of the Seychelles had been handed over to the English.

However, nearer to Africa, the archipelago of the Comores and the island of Madagascar remained under French sovereignty.

The abolition of slavery

The abolition of the trading of slaves was declared by the United States of America in 1807 and by Great Britain in 1808. In France, although Louis XVIII had reinstituted the Constitution of 1763 as well as slavery, he had to settle for its abolition on 8 January 1817. In 1818, there were 16400 whites on the island, 3496 freed slaves and… 70000 slaves.
The importation of slaves more or less came to an end after 1817, although the practice of slavery continued.
Faced by the need for work forces, the important landowners of the island started to recruit ‘hired’ workers; free workers that were brought over from India and later from China, for a determined length of time and that were paid.
When the abolition of slavery became effective in 1848, there were already 3000 Indian and Chinese workers.
Another problem came about at this time: the pauperisation of the whites. They gradually lost their land and financially ruined, these small landowners started to form a new social class, that of “poor” whites.
The fate of these “little whites” became the principal preoccupation of the administrators during the first half of the XIX Century.
Left without any real solution, many of these “little whites” moved up into the mountains in order to live in complete freedom, as they wished, a little like some of the slaves and the “wood runners” in Canada, under the French regime. The abolition of slavery became definitive when the under-secretary of the Marines, in charge of the colonies, Victor Schoelcher (1804-1898), originally from Alsace, installed the decree concerning the abolition of slavery of 27th April 1848.
Being a (provisional) member of the government, Victor Schoelcher chose the Financial Receiver-General, Joseph-Napoleon Sarda-Garriga (1808-1877) to occupy the role of General Commissioner of the Republic in Bourbon Island. Following his arrival on the island on 13 October 1848, Sarda-Garriga was put in charge of preparing the final abolition of slavery; the Colonial Assembly asked him to put off the application of the decree until the end of the sugar campaign.
Sarda-Garriga refused. He announced the decree on 19th October, but fixed the date for the emancipation of the slaves as 20th December.
With the official proclamation of slavery, 60318 inhabitants out of 108829 (55% of the population) were given their freedom.
In the meantime, the island had taken back its old name of Reunion Island, on 6th September 1848. Having become renowned in all the French colonies, Victor Schoelcher called for the application of common rights everywhere and even for the departmentalisation for Martinique, Guadeloupe, French Guyana and Reunion Island. However he was not successful on this point, as we know that the four colonies only became departments in 1946.
Of course, during these unhappy times, the colony of Reunion Island had become populated by blacks for the majority of its inhabitants and everybody’s maternal language had become Reunionese Creole. However, unlike the Creole of Martinique of Guadeloupe, Reunionese Creole came largely from Malagasy languages. This is why it is so different from the Creole dialects of the West Indies (Guadeloupe, Martinique, Dominique) in terms of basic vocabulary.
It was only towards the 1940’s that the blacks were christened by the Catholic Church. Before this time, they were obviously baptised, but they were left to themselves following their baptisms. A number of priests owned slaves.
1848 opened the door to miscegenation. Numerous marriages between white people and slaves became legalised between 1850 and 1860. It is from this time onwards, that inter-racial marriages came to be seen as normal.
Among potential wives, there were the Malagasies and the Indians, as well as half Indians half Portuguese that had come from the trading posts set up in Goa (under Portuguese administration). There was no more real divide between blacks, whites and those of mixed race. Nevertheless, France imposed the ‘Code of the Indignant’ on all its colonies (including Reunion Island), which today corresponds to a disguised form of slavery concerning the indigenous populations by depriving them of their identities.
Thanks to the discriminatory practices imposed by the ‘Code of the Indignant’ (in effect from 1887 to 1946), the white population continued to enjoy considerable privileges.
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