The Courier

Réunion has been officially inhabited since around 1663 when the first real colonists arrived. Many of the first inhabitants of the island were deported from Madagascar in 1646 by Jacques de Pronis, head of the French India Company’s trading post, for having criticised the misappropriation of funds to give to a Madagascan mistress. 

However, the island was not completely virgin territory. Arab sailors, most probably Egyptians, had arrived in the 12th century and on the first nautical maps, it was known as ‘Dina Morgabim’ or ‘Mghrebin’. Later, the Portuguese visited the island when exploring the Cape of Good Hope route to the Indies. The first traveller to name the island was Pedro Mascarenhas on his return voyage from Goa between 1512 and 1516. This is where the name the Mascarene Islands, which Réunion shares with Mauritius and its sister island Rodrigues, comes from.

Sailors made it a regular port of call, appreciating the beauty of its flora and the diversity of its fauna. In 1638, Captain Goubert established French sovereignty on the island then called ‘Mascarin’ in French, in the name of Louis XIII. Four years later, the French India Company obtained a ten-year concession from Cardinal Richelieu (who formed the company) with Jacques de Pronis appointed as head of the trading post based at Fort Dauphin, Madagascar. In 1649, Captain Roger Lebourg took possession of the island in the name of the King and renamed it ‘Bourbon Island’. He found the exiles - who had been presumed dead - in good health and rescued them.

Refuge of the mutineers

In 1654, Flacourt, who succeeded de Pronis, adopted the old ways of doing things by removing anyone standing in his way. This time the victim was Antoine Couillard, together with seven French volunteers and six Madagascan servants. They were confined to Bourbon Island for four years before escaping by boat. Then in 1663, Louis Payen, together with a companion and ten Madagascan servants, arrived on the island. They were true colonists and established the beginnings of farming and cattle rearing. Later, Etienne Regnault, governor of Bourbon Island, arrived with around 20 colonists in 1665. Madagascans were also dispatched there as part of the takeover of the island.

The colony developed very slowly in the beginning. The introduction of coffee plants, however, brought from the Yemen in 1715, resulted in a much faster growth. Also during that period, the French India Company had become a virtual state within a state, controlling the entire Bourbon Island economy and trade between the colony and its homeland and making huge profits in the process. This was the time when the notorious Olivier Le Vasseur, known as ‘La Buse’, was one of many pirates sailing the waters of the Indian Ocean. In April 1721, it was said that he captured ‘Vierge du Cap’, a ship that had been damaged in a cyclone, and stole a large amount of gold, diamonds and precious stones which he supposedly buried near the town of Saint-Gilles. Le Vasseur was sent to the gallows in Bourbon in 1727, but today still it is said on the island that every so often some local landowners become incredibly rich through excavation in this area!

The coffee crop provided a major economic boom for almost a century. After coffee production declined, it fell back on the spice trade, introduced by Pierre Poivre in 1767.

Bonaparte Island

The French Revolution then arrived. The ‘Black Code’, (Code noir) which had been in force since 1685, still only gave slaves the same status as personal property and in contrast to the West Indies, there was no opposition to slavery on the Bourbon Island in 1789. The February 4 decree on the abolition of slavery which was implemented in the West Indies, especially in San Domingo (Haiti), was ignored on Réunion. Instead, it brought about a ‘union’ created out of a desire for independence.This lasted until the reintroduction of slavery by Napoleon in May 1802. To mark this event, the island changed its name in 1806 to become ‘Bonaparte Island’.

The English, who had since arrived in Mauritius and Rodrigues, succeeded in conquering Bonaparte Island in 1810, after several attempts before they eventually handed it back under the Treaty of Paris of 1814 (which actually took place in April 1815). At this point, the island took back its Bourbon title with France having been restored to a monarchy again. Both Mauritius and Rodrigues remained under English control.

Monoculture of sugar cane and a period of despair

During the 19th century, agriculture was based on a single crop - sugar cane. This led to the population almost doubling in size between 1848, the year when slavery was actually abolished, and 1869. After a period of great prosperity, there was a sugar crisis in 1860. Cyclones, cholera and social problems meant desperate times for those on the island. From 1880, France lost interest in Réunion.This benefitted Madagascar. Attempts were made at diversification from sugar to vanilla and other fragrant plants, principally geraniums. Eventually, Réunion became the leading global exporter of essential oils.

Civil commitment 

Despite having no military conscription, many Réunion islanders signed up for action during the First World War. There were 15,000 volunteers, of which 3,000 died. During the Second World War, the local authorities sided with Vichy leading to an English blockade. The island was liberated in 1942 by the Free French Forces. Yet the country was still underdeveloped.

The Réunion Communist Party led by the Vergès family and the railway union, fought to establish the island as a French local administrative area. A strategy drawn up by Réunion, Martinique (with Aimé Césaire as flag-bearer), Guadeloupe and Guyana ended with the adoption of the law on regional government on March 19, 1946.

The 1960s saw a great deal of modernisation. Réunion made up lots of lost ground and today looks like a modern European society with its road networks, telecommunications and other 21st century infrastructure.

Réunion is France’s only region with a single ‘département’. A project is currently on the table to divide the region into two ‘départements’, supported by the Communists and a right wing party, with St Pierre as the capital of the second ‘département.’ Paul Vergès, who was re-elected in 2004, currently heads the Regional Council of the ‘departement’ which manages the island’s development plans with Nassimah Dindar of the UMP party as head of the ‘département’s’ General Council: one is a Communist, the other a Muslim woman.