History of Mauritius
The history of Mauritius begins with its possible, though undocumented and controversial, discovery by Arabs, as documented on Portuguese maps, followed by Portuguese and its appearance on European maps in the early 16th century. Mauritius was successively colonized by the Netherlands, France and Great Britain, and became independent on 12 March 1968.
Discovery
Mauritius was first officially discovered by the Portuguese, as corroborated by Portuguese maps. This is evident in the earliest existing historical evidence of the island on the Cantino Planisphere, which shows three islands that represent the Mascarenes and calls them Dina Margabin, Dina Arobi, and Dina Moraze. It also shows the Cargados Carajos shoals as baixos. The medieval Arab world called the Indian Ocean island region Waqwaq.File:Cantino planisphere.jpg|450px|center|Cantino planisphere, Biblioteca Estense, Modena, Italy
Portuguese discoveries (1507–1513)
Mauritius was later rediscovered and visited by the Portuguese between 1507 and 1513. Mauritius and surrounding islands were known as the Mascarene Islands after Pedro Mascarenhas.An official world map by Diogo Ribeiro described "from west to east, the first island, 'Mascarenhas', the second, 'Santa Apolonia' and the third, 'Domingo Froiz.' " The three islands were encountered some years earlier by chance during an exploratory expedition of the coast of the Bay of Bengal led by Tristão da Cunha. The expedition ran into a cyclone and was forced to change course. Thus, the ship Cirne of the captain Diogo Fernandes Pereira, came into view of Réunion island on 9 February 1507. They called the island "Santa Apolonia" in honor of that day's saint. Mauritius was encountered during the same expedition and received the name of "Cirne" and Rodrigues that of "Diogo Rodrigues". Five years later, the islands were visited by Pedro Mascarenhas. who left the name "Mascarene" for the whole region. The Portuguese took no interest in these isolated islands. They were already established in Asia in Goa, on the coast of Malabar, on the island of Ceylon and on the coast of what is presently known as Malaysia.
Their main African base was in Mozambique, therefore the Portuguese navigators preferred to use the Mozambique Channel to go to India. The Comoros to the north proved to be a more practical port of call. Thus no permanent colony was established on the island by the Portuguese.
Dutch East India Company era (1598–1710)
In 1598, the second Dutch Expedition to Indonesia consisting of eight ships, under the orders of admirals Jacques Cornelius van Neck and Wybrandt van Warwyck, set sail from Texel, Netherlands, towards the Indian subcontinent. The eight ships ran into foul weather after passing the Cape of Good Hope and were separated. Three found their way to the northeast of Madagascar, while the remaining five regrouped and sailed in a southeasterly direction. On 17 September, the five ships under the orders of Admiral van Warwyck came into view of Mauritius. On 20 September, they entered a sheltered bay which they named "Port de Warwick". They landed and decided to name the island "Prins Mauritz van Nassaueiland," after the son of William the Silent, Prince Maurits of the House of Nassau, the stadtholder of most of the Dutch Republic, and after the main vessel of the fleet, the "Mauritius". From that time, only the name Mauritius has remained. On 2 October, the ships again took to the sea towards Bantam.From then on, the island's Port de Warwick was used by Dutch ships as a stopover after long months at sea. In 1606, two expeditions came for the first time to what would later become Port-Louis in the northwest part of the island. The expedition, consisting of eleven ships and 1,357 men under the orders of Admiral Corneille, came into the bay, which they named "Rade des Tortues" because of the great number of terrestrial tortoises they found there. From that date, Dutch sailors shifted their choice to Rade des Tortues as a harbour.
In 1615, the shipwreck and death of governor Pieter Both, who was coming back from India with four richly laden ships in the bay, led Dutch sailors to consider the route cursed, and they tried to avoid it as much as possible. In the meantime, the British and the Danes were beginning to make incursions into the Indian Ocean. Those who landed on the island freely cut and took with them the precious heartwood of the ebony trees, then found in profusion all over the island.
Dutch colonization started in 1638 and ended in 1710, with a brief interruption between 1658 and 1666. Numerous governors were appointed, but continuous hardships such as cyclones, droughts, pest infestations, lack of food, and illnesses in the end took their toll, and the island was definitively abandoned in 1710.
The island was not permanently inhabited for the first forty years after its "discovery" by the Dutch, but in 1638 Cornelius Gooyer established the first permanent Dutch settlement in Mauritius with a garrison of twenty-five. He thus became the first governor of the island. In 1639, thirty more men came to reinforce the Dutch colony. Gooyer was instructed to develop the commercial potential of the island, but he did nothing of the sort, so he was recalled. His successor was Adriaan van der Stel, who began the development in earnest, developing the export of ebony wood. For that purpose, van der Stel brought 105 Malagasy slaves to the island. Within the first week, about sixty were able to escape into the forests; about twenty of them were recaptured.
In 1644, the islanders were faced with many months of hardships, due to delayed shipment of supplies, bad harvests, and cyclones. During those months, the colonists could only rely on their own ability to feed themselves by fishing and hunting. Nonetheless, van der Stel secured the shipment of 95 more servants from Madagascar, before being transferred to Ceylon. His replacement was Jacob van der Meersh. In 1645, the latter brought in 108 more Malagasy servants. Van der Meersh left Mauritius in September 1648 and was replaced by Reinier Por.
In 1652, more hardships befell the inhabitants, colonists and servants alike. The population was then about a hundred people. The continuing hardships affected the commercial potential of the island and a pullout was ordered in 1657. On 16 July 1658, all the inhabitants left the island apart from a ship's 'boy' and two servants who had taken shelter in the forests. Thus the first attempt at Dutch colonization ended badly.
In 1664, a second attempt also ended badly, as the men chosen for the job abandoned their sick commander, van Niewland, without proper treatment, and he died.
From 1666 to 1669, Dirk Jansz Smient administered the new colony at Port de Warwick, with the cutting down and export of ebony trees as the main activity. When Dirk Jansz Smient left, he was replaced by George Frederik Wreeden, who died in 1672, drowned with five other colonists during a reconnaissance expedition. His replacement would be Hubert Hugo. Hugo was a man of vision and wanted to make the island into an agricultural colony. His vision was not shared by his superiors, and he eventually had to abandon the attempt.
Issac Johannes Lamotius became the new governor when Hugo left in 1677. Lamotius governed until 1692, when he was deported to Batavia for judgment for persecuting a colonist whose wife had refused his courtship. A new governor, Roelof Diodati, was then appointed in 1692. Diodati faced many problems in his attempts to develop the island, such as cyclones, pest infestations, cattle illnesses, and droughts.
On 7 January 1702, the pirate John Bowen foundered his ship called the 'speaker' onto a 'Swarte Klip' beach on the East of Mauritius. A hundred and seventy pirates armed to the teeth against a poorly armed and frail Dutch population of fifty meant the 'crafty' Diodati had no choice but to sell them a small sloop for them to enlarge so as to leave Mauritius.
Eventually discouraged, Diodati gave up and his replacement was Abraham Momber van de Velde. The latter fared no better but remained the last Dutch governor of the island until it was abandoned in 1710, again.
Slaves were not particularly well treated by the colonists, and revolts or the act of organizing one were severely repressed and punished. Some punishments consisted of amputation of various parts of the body and exposure in the open air for a day as example to others, eventually culminating in condemned slaves’ execution at sunset.
The legacy of the Dutch in Mauritius includes:
- Providing the name for the country and for many regions over the whole island. Some examples include "Pieter Both" mountain and the "Vandermeersh" region near Rose-Hill, as well as many other names.
- Introduction of sugar cane plants from Java.
- Decimating the local dodo and giant tortoise populations for food and by introducing competing species and pests, sometimes involuntarily.
- Clearing of large swathes of ancient forests for ebony wood exploitation in Europe.
French rule (1715–1810)
Mahé de La Bourdonnais established Port Louis as a naval base and a shipbuilding centre. Under his governorship, numerous buildings were built, a number of which still stand today: part of Government House, the Château de Mon Plaisir at Pamplemousses and the Line Barracks. In early 1729 Indians from Pondicherry arrived in Mauritius aboard the vessel La Sirène. Work contracts for these craftsmen were signed in 1734 at the time when they acquired their freedom. The island was under the administration of the French East India Company which maintained its presence until 1767. In 1796 the French settlers broke away from French control when the government in Paris attempted to abolish slavery, and the local colonists expelled government envoys Baco and Burnel. During the French rule slaves were brought from parts of Africa such as Mozambique, Madagascar and Zanzibar. As a result, the island's population rose dramatically from 15,000 to 49,000 within 30 years. During the late 18th century African slaves accounted for around 80 percent of the island's population, and by the early 19th century there were 60,000 slaves on the island.
In 1806, the Governor General, Charles Mathieu Isidore Decaen, created the city of Mahébourg, named in honour of Mahé de La Bourdonnais. It was originally known as Bourg Mahé. From that year until 1810, the island was in charge of officials appointed by the French government, except for a brief period during the French Revolution, when the inhabitants set up a government virtually independent of France.
During the Napoleonic Wars, the "Isle de France" became a base from which French corsairs organised successful raids on British commercial ships. The raids continued until 1810 when a strong British expedition was sent to capture the island. A preliminary attack was foiled at Grand Port in August 1810, but the main attack launched in December of the same year from Rodrigues, which had been captured during the same year, was successful. Rodrigues had previously been visited only for fresh water and food by the British in 1809. In late November 1810 the British landed in large numbers in the north of the island near Cap Malheureux and rapidly overpowered the French, who capitulated on 3 December 1810. By the Treaty of Paris in 1814, the "Isle de France", which was renamed "Mauritius" was ceded to Great Britain, together with Rodrigues and the Seychelles. In the act of capitulation, the British guaranteed that they would respect the languages, the customs, the laws and the traditions of the inhabitants.