World War 1 centenary tribute to the Anderson and ...

  World War 1 centenary tribute to the Anderson and Blackburn family ancestry of Mauritius World War 1, known as the Great War, officially commenced on 28 July 1914 and lasted four years until 11 November 1918. The United Kingdom entered the Great War on 4 August 1914, which in turn implicated all British Allied Nations, of which Mauritius was one of the Indian Ocean islands to show allegiance. According to Daniel Elie...

Extraordinary Lives – Slave Voices

    This collection of stories shows the extraordinary lives of some people who venture to better their life condition in a political climate/context that was to some degree unfavourable to them. This book, the first one in a series, shows us that there are positive aspects from the past that we can be proud of – that we can even learn from. These individuals, although disadvantaged at the very start of their...

Last Voyage of Le Coureur

Last Voyage of Le Coureur The Wreck of a Slave Ship off the Mauritius Coast View of the wreck site March 1821. Night had just fallen and there was a full moon. A small lugger was waiting offshore to deliver a cargo of slaves to French colonists residing on the British colony of Mauritius. Unfortunately, the seas were rough, a cyclone having passed through the region only days earlier. Dorval, commanding the small vessel, was...

An eye witness account of the 1968 riots

An eye witness account of the 1968 riot Plaine Verte is a suburb of the capital of Mauritius. Until 1968, it was home to a heterogenous community of Muslims and Christians. This closely intertwined community of two ethnic/religious groups who co-existed for over a century found itself at the centre of the riots which took place in that year. Shawkat Ally Gozeer was very young at the time, but provided the following account of...

The Biharis of Mauritius: Past and Present

  The Biharis of Mauritius: Past and Present To be a Bihari, or a person of Bihari descent, may seem a simple concept, free from confusion or distortion. Yet the state of Bihar itself has undergone modifications, whilst the absorption of other minority ethnic groups into the present-day self-defined community of Biharis has been a continuous feature of Mauritian social evolution. The populous state of Bihar situated in...

Captain Matthew Flinders at the Isle of France [M...

  Captain Matthew Flinders  at the Isle of France [Mauritius], 1803-1810 On 15th December 1803 Captain Matthew Flinders sailed into a quiet bay of the Isle of France, a small French outpost in the southwest Indian Ocean, in the Cumberland.  Only a few weeks earlier, a French ship had brought news of the rupture of the Peace of Amiens. The English crew of the leaky Cumberland, unaware that war had again broken out and...