Mauritius was discovered by the Portuguese in 1505 and remained in
their possession until 1598, when it was ceded to the Dutch, who gave
it the name by which it is now known. Aside from erecting a fort at
Grand Port, however, the Dutch did no more for the development of the
colony than the Portuguese. The Dutch finally abandoned it in 1710
when the island was taken over by the French. Under the French the
island was considerably developed, especially during the second half
of the eighteenth century, and this new step, as the majority saw it,
necessitated the introduction of slavery. During the Napoleonic Wars
Mauritius was captured by England and was formally ceded by France in
1814.
The significant history of the Negroes in Mauritius, however, dates
from the year 1723 when the East India Company of France, in order to
promote agriculture in the Island, sanctioned the introduction of
slaves, whom they sold to the inhabitants at a certain fixed price.
This price was seldom paid at the moment of purchase, and, as many
evaded payment altogether. Mahé de Labourdounais, the then Governor
of the Colony, received instructions on this point, the execution of
which made him unpopular among the inhabitants.[2]
The slave trade, at this period, was principally in the hands of those
pirates who had formed a settlement at Nossibé (Nossé Ibrahim), on the
northeast coast of Madagascar, where they had been received with
kindness and hospitality by the natives. In return they excited a war
between the tribes in the interior and those inhabiting the seacoast,
and purchased the prisoners made by both for the purpose of conveying
them for sale to Bourbon or Mauritius. If the prisoners thus obtained
proved insufficient to the demands of the slave market, a descent was
made on some part of the Island, a village was surrounded, and its
younger and more vigorous inhabitants were borne off to a state of
perpetual slavery.[3]
Harrowing as the scenes witnessed in such forays must have been, the
slave trade from Madagascar to Mauritius was not accompanied with the
same horrors as from the neighboring continent to America, if history
be credited. Its victims were spared the toiling and harassing march
from the interior and the horrors of being cribbed and confined for
successive weeks beneath the hatches till they reached their final
destination; and yet, of every five Negroes embarked at Madagascar,
not more than two were found fit for service in Mauritius. The rest
either stifled beneath the hatches, starved themselves to death, died
of putrid fever, became the food of sharks, fled to the mountains, or
fell beneath the driver's lash.
Mahé de Labourdounais was not the founder of slavery. The institution
preceded his arrival. Slavery existed in Mauritius even under the
Dutch régime. Of every eighteen slaves in the colony one died
annually, so that if the traffic had ceased for eighteen years, at the
end of that time the whole black population would have died out. From
first to last Mauritius has been the tomb of more than a million of
Africans. Their lamentable history is like the roll of the prophet,
written within and without, and the writing thereof is mourning and
lamentation.
Many became fugitives, and sometimes by daring adventure returned to
Africa. In order to check the fugitive slaves, Labourdounais employed
their countrymen against them, and formed a mounted police who
protected the colonists from their incursions.[4] To preserve the
inhabitants from famine, he introduced the cassava from the Island of
St. Jago and the Brazils, and published an ordinance by which every
planter was compelled to put under cultivation five hundred feet of
cassava for every slave that he possessed. The planters, an ignorant
and indolent race, used every measure to degenerate and discredit this
innovation, and in some cases destroyed the plantations of the cassava
by pouring boiling water on the root. The benefit conferred by this
ordinance was later felt and appreciated when their crops were
destroyed by the hurricanes or devoured by locusts. The cassava was
immune from either of these casualties and was the usual article of
food for the Negroes. Labourdounais instructed the slaves in the art
of ship building, made them sailors and soldiers and found them highly
useful in the expedition which he undertook against the English in
India. He endeavored also to mitigate their sufferings from the
enforcement of the regulations of the _Code Noir_.
After the dispersion of the pirates, the slave trade fell into the
hands of European merchants or Creole colonists, who extended it to
the adjoining coasts of Africa. The Mozambique Negroes were found more
tractable than those of Madagascar, but Negroes were obtained from
both points, according to the difficulties and exigencies of the
traffic. The price paid by the French at Madagascar for a man or a
woman from the age of thirteen to forty was two muskets, two cartridge
boxes, ten flints, and ten balls, or fifteen hundred balls or
seventeen hundred flints. In spite of the price the trade developed.
In 1766 there were about 25,000 slaves and 1200 free Negroes in the
colony. In 1799 there were 55,000 of the former class and 35,000 of
the latter. In 1832 they were estimated at 16,000 free Negroes and
63,500 slaves. It seems difficult to account for the diminution among
the free Negro population. Baron Grant de Vaux[5] states that to
prevent the increase of this class it was enacted that no slaves
should be liberated save those who had saved the lives of their
masters. A kind-hearted master, however, could always give his slave
an opportunity to save his life.
Slavery as it developed in Maritius falls in three epochs. During the
earliest period the institution gradually took the form of a system
somewhat like that of the bondage of the Hebrews, modified in the case
of Mauritius, however, according to the requirements of the temper and
habits of the natives and the situation of the planters. There was no
regard for the comfort of the slaves and they tended to degrade to the
lowest depths. Yet the slaves were not considered altogether as
chattels, convertible at the will of their masters. In the second
stage, however, the bondage of the Negro reached the darkest age of
irresponsibility to law and cruelty absolutely intolerable. A few
officials and planters protested, and travelers who saw the horror
appealed for mercy in behalf of the unfortunate.[6] A change in the
attitude of the planters toward the slaves was finally forced and
characterized the third stage of slavery in Mauritius. These cruelties
were mitigated largely by the agitation of _Les Amis des Noirs_, among
whom were some of the most distinguished actors in the grand drama of
the French Revolution. The leading reformers were the brilliant
orators Mirabeau and Madam de Poivre, the wife of the deceased
Intendant of the Isle of France. At a much earlier date, even under
Labourdounais, under whose economic development of Mauritius slavery
flourished, much was said about improving the condition of the
slaves.[7] Yet it was not until the rule of De Caen that we observe
actual efforts to provide for the slaves, such as better nourishment,
religious instruction and legal marriage.[8]
The first attempt to emancipate the slaves was made by the leaders of
the French Revolution, who, while they professed to discard
Christianity as a revelation from God, deduced the equality of all men
before God from the principles of natural reason.[9] The prohibition
of slavery was rendered null and void by the planters of Mauritius and
the members of local government, all of whom were slaveholders and
opposed to any change. The only effect of the prohibition was to
alienate the affections of the colonists from the mother-country, and
to lead them to rejoice when Napoleon assumed the consular power and
annulled the ordinance prohibiting slavery after the capture of the
island by the British. The importation of slaves was prohibited under
severe penalties.
As the execution of this law was vested in the local authorities, who
had a direct personal interest in the continuance of this traffic,
slaves were still imported in sufficient numbers to satisfy the wants
of the planters.[10] It is true that trading in slaves was declared to
be felony, that the two harbors of Port Louis and Matubourg were
closed against their entrance, that a slave registry was opened in
1815, and that credulous Governors wrote to the home authorities that
the Mauritians, far from wishing to renew this nefarious traffic, were
filled with indignation at the remembrance of its horrors. All this
may be true, but the slave trade was as brisk as ever, and the island
swarmed with Negroes whose peculiar appearance and ignorance of the
Creole language proved them to be of recent introduction.
No law can be executed unless it be in accordance with public opinion,
and the feelings of the white Mauritians were altogether in favor of
slavery. The illicit introduction of slaves was a felony by law, and
yet, notwithstanding the notorious violations of this law, no one was
ever convicted. The prisoner might have turned on the judge and proved
his complicity in the crime. The only convictions that were obtained
were in the case of offenders that were sent to England for trial.
This statement will excite no astonishment on the part of those who
are acquainted with the manner in which justice is still administered
in Mauritius. The slave registry was opened in 1815, but the entries
were so falsified that instead of checking slavery it threw its mantle
of protection upon it.[11] Slaves were not introduced publicly at the
two chief ports of the island from Africa, but the Seychelles Islands
lay at a convenient distance, and slaves registered at the Seychelles
were admitted into Mauritius without any questions being asked. The
coral reef that surrounds the island could easily be passed and the
slaves loaded in those light coasters that are used by fishermen. The
governors were surrounded by functionaries who were slaveholders and
who were therefore interested in supporting the traffic and screening
the offenders from punishment, so that their reports, based on
information received from these parties, were not entitled to much
credit.
As to the feelings of indignation expressed by the colonists at the
remembrance of the horrors of the slave trade, it is sufficient to
remark that rogues are always louder in protestation of their
innocence than honest men--that this change of feeling was too rapid
to be sincere, and that truthfulness of character does not stand high
in the code of Mauritian morality, to judge from the attitude of the
white population.
In judging the treatment of the slaves in Mauritius, recourse must be
had to those writers who visited or lived in the colony during the
prevalence of slavery, and have given the world the benefit of their
experience. These are St. Pierre, Soumerat and Baron Grant. St. Pierre
spent several years in the island, and mingled freely with the
inhabitants of all classes. The last was born in the island where his
father had sought to retrieve his fortune after the failure of Law's
Mississippi scheme. The pictures presented in the writings of St.
Pierre might appear exaggerated, or prejudiced, if drawn by a
foreigner; but it must be borne in mind that he describes only what he
witnessed, and that his good faith has never been questioned.[12] He
thus speaks of the importation and treatment of slaves:
"They are landed with just a rag around their loins. The men are
ranged on one side and the women on the other with their infants,
who cling from fear to their mothers. The planter, having
examined them as he would a horse, buys what may then attract
him. Brothers, sisters, friends, lovers, are now torn asunder,
and bidding each other a long farewell, are driven weeping to the
plantations they are bought for. Sometimes they turned desperate,
fancying that the white people intended eating their flesh,
making red wine of their blood, and powder of their bones. They
were treated in the following manner:
"At break of day a signal of three smacks of a whip called them
to work, when each betook himself with his spade to the
plantation, where they worked almost naked in the heat of the
sun. Their food was bruised or boiled maize, or bread made of
cassava root, their clothing a single piece of linen. Upon the
commission of the most trivial offence, they were tied hands and
feet to a ladder, where the overseer approached with a whip like
a postilion's and gave them fifty, a hundred, and perhaps two
hundred lashes upon the back. Each stroke carried off its portion
of skin. The poor wretch was then untied, an iron collar with
three spikes put round his neck, and he was then sent back to his
task. Some of them were unable to sit down for a month after this
beating--a punishment inflicted with equal severity on women as
on men. In the evening, when they returned home, they were
obliged to pray for the prosperity of their masters, and wish
them a good night before they retired to rest. There was a law in
force in their favor called the _Code Noir_ or the Black Code,
which ordained that they should receive no more than thirty
lashes for any offence, that they should not work on Sundays,
that they should eat meat once a week, and have a new shirt every
year; but this was not observed."[13]
Soumerat, who visited the island during the period of slavery, speaks
of their treatment by their white masters in the following terms:
"I have known humane and compassionate masters who, instead of
maltreating them, tried to mitigate their servile condition, but
they are very few in number. The rest exercise over their Negroes
a cruel and revolting tyranny. The slave, after having labored
the whole day, sees himself obliged to search for his food in the
woods, and lives only on unwholesome roots. They die of misery
and bad treatment, without exciting the smallest feeling of pity,
and consequently they never let slip any opportunity of breaking
their chains in order to escape to the forests in search of
independence and misery."
So miserable indeed was their condition that they welcomed death as a
friend, and often committed crime in the hope of being executed.[14]
Conditions decidedly improved in Mauritius, however, after the British
took possession in 1814. The freedom of slaves was then agitated
throughout the civilized world. The British interfered with slavery
there in 1826, endeavoring to ease the burden of the bondmen. In 1829
the charter of the slave population was proclaimed. It provided for
the religious instruction of the slaves, the recognition of the
sanctity of the Sabbath, toleration in worship, the right of the slave
to contract marriage, and prohibition of the separation of husband
from wife or the mother from her children. Slaves were made competent
to acquire stock and movable or immovable property. They were given
power to dispose of property by will. Punishments were diminished and
the way to elevation to civil power was opened.[15]
The end of this ordeal finally came. The British Emancipation Act was
passed in 1833. From 1834 the traffic in human flesh ceased. In 1839
all slaves in Mauritius six years old and upwards became apprentice
laborers and remained so until 1841 as regarded field laborers, and
until 1839 for those unattached. There were then in the island 39,464
men and boys and 25,856 women and girls, in all 65,320. Knowing that
the change in the status of so many inhabitants might interfere with
the labor supply, the planters prepared for this contingency by
importing coolies from Ceylon and India. By 1838 they had brought in
24,566 such natives, but because they had managed the importation so
badly that many evils resulted therefrom, it was stopped by public
protest. When the apprentices were freed in 1839, however, there
followed such a scarcity of labor that the immigration of the
Cingalese and Hindoos was reopened. So many have since then made their
way to the island that they now constitute a substantial element of
the colony. So much race admixture has followed, on the other hand,
that observers sometimes refer to the Mauritians as creoles and
coolies.