THE 1st FEBRUARY is a public holiday when the struggle for freedom, the achievements and contributions of the Mauritian slaves in the making of our great country is honoured. This celebration also reminds the Mauritian nation of the long and bloody resistance of the Mauritian maroons or first freedom fighters on Mauritian soil against the tyranny of slavery and European colonialism.

Mauritian maroons

By their struggle for freedom and acts of resistance, the Mauritian maroons had a direct impact on the colonization of Mauritius and the shaping of colonial society. The constant fear of maroon attacks greatly altered colonial laws, colonial architecture, and the lifestyle of the colonists. During the entire period that maroonage existed in colonial Mauritius, or between 1641 and 1839, it was common for maroons or fugitive slaves to organise themselves into either small or large bands.

These maroon bands lived in the forests, mountains, ravines, and near to the rivers of the island from where they attacked colonial troops, the homes, settlements and the estates of the colonists. Maroonage and freedom fighting formed an integral part of colonial slavery in Mauritius ever since the time the first slaves were introduced into our country during the early years of Dutch colonization.

Mauritian slaves

In May 1638, Mauritius was still unoccupied by human beings when Dutch occupation began. It was only during the following year that the first slaves reached the shores of T?Eylandt Mauritius or Dutch Mauritius. These first Mauritian slaves were three emeritus divers, two from Muscat and one from Bengal. In November 1639, the Dutch commander, Adrian van der Stel, who came to replace Cornelius Gooyer, the first Dutch commander, brought them with him from Batavia or modern-day Java.

In May 1642, following the first slaving expedition of Van der Stel, a first batch of slaves from Madagascar was landed in the small Dutch colony and inaugurated the slave trade to Mauritius which continued until the early nineteenth century. Thus, the landing of the three slaves from Asia in 1638 and from Madagascar in 1642 marked the genesis of colonial slavery in Mauritius which existed from the mid-1600s until the 1830s. Furthermore, Mauritian slavery existed under three different European colonial occupations, the Dutch, French, and British.

First maroon hunt

According to the Dutch author, Dr. K. Heeringa, of the one hundred and five slaves brought from Madagascar by Adrian van der Stel in 1642, fifty-two of both sexes took to the woods within the first weeks of their arrival and only eighteen were ever captured. The presence of these first fugitive slaves in the dense woods of T?Eylandt Mauritius marked the beginning of the history of the maroons and of maroonage in the island which would last until 1839.

Within the first decade of the Dutch colonial occupation, the maroons already became a serious threat to the very survival of the fledgling colony. The first maroon hunt was organized in 1644, but without much success. The number of maroons living in the island?s forests were constantly increasing through the desertions of the newly introduced slaves and convicts known as banditens from Batavia.

Only women with children in their arms could be easily captured, as they were unwilling to abandon their children and run away. But, they were almost immediately replaced by other slave women who were carried away by the male maroons or by new deserters who joined them. During the 1640s, a plan was mooted to physically destroy the maroons by shooting them on sight and had even received the approval of the Dutch governor-general in Batavia. However, this draconian approach to the maroon problem was rejected by the Council of Seventeen or Heren XVII, the Directorate of the Dutch East India Company.

Between the 1640s and early 1700s, the fear of slave rebellions and attacks by the maroons were ever present in the minds of the Dutch colonial administrators and the free burgers or the Dutch colonists. This led them to keep the number of slaves on the low side for ease of control which eventually became a major factor which contributed to the failure of the Dutch colonial experiment in Mauritius.

1695 maroon attack

The worst fears of the Dutch in Mauritius came true in 1695 with the destruction of Fort Frederick Hendryk which was the most important maroon attack against Dutch colonial rule in Mauritius. On the morning of 18th June, 1695, Aaron of Amboina, Antoni alias Bamboes, Anna of Bengal, Paul, a recently arrived slave from Batavia, and Esperance, female slave of the burger, Class van Wieringen, set fire to Fort Frederick Hendryk, after weeks of minute preparation. Everything went up in smoke and the Dutch commander barely saved himself in his shirt. He wrote to the Dutch governor of the Cape Colony in South Africa: ?These were matters of very dangerous consequences, tending to the utter ruin of this island.?

In their confessions, after their capture, the maroons clearly acknowledged that their objectives were to destroy the fort, kill all the Dutch East India Company officials, and after that, burn down the houses of the free burgers in order to become masters of the island. For the Company employees and the free burgers, this was a nightmare scenario come true. The first freedom fighters on Mauritian soil had sounded their clarion call of liberty.

The punishment meted out to them was of the utmost barbarity. The males were affixed to a cross by the executioner and with a pair of red-hot tongs, the flesh from their bodies were torn from six different places where it was thickest. Shortly after, they were left alive until sunset, when they received what was called the ?stroke of mercy?. The females were strangled and scorched with palmetto leaves. All the bodies were exposed under the blue sky and hung on a gibbet as a tangible warning to the maroons.

But even such ghastly punishments could not deter the first Mauritian freedom fighters from their objectives. A conspiracy by the maroons and their slave accomplices in February 1706, to set fire to the houses of the free burgers and to assassinate them, greatly contributed in breaking the resolve of the Dutch to persevere in their colonization of our island.

Their continued harassment was a major reason which finally led to the abandonment of the colony by the Dutch East India Company in 1710. This is a unique instance in the annals of colonial slavery where the maroons played a vital role in frustrating the colonial enterprise of a European colonial power. After the departure of the Dutch, the Mauritian maroons became the sole masters of this island until the arrival of the French in the early 1720s.

First condemnation

On 8th December, 1722, Le Rubis arrived with a cargo which included sixty-five slaves. Within a few days, these newly landed African slaves took to the woods where they most likely joined the maroons left behind by the Dutch. The temerity of the fugitive slaves during the first months of the French administration of Mr. de Nyon made the task of governing the new colony very arduous, despite of the small size of the population.

The first condemnation of maroons in Ile de France took place on 12th November 1723. The Provincial Council gave a judgment condemning three slaves convicted of maroonage for the third time to draw lots in order to decide who among them was to be hanged. During the rest of the 1720s, much of the attention to the local French colonial officials was devoted to dealing with the growing problem of maroonage.

On 2nd June, 1726, the Provincial Council promulgated a decree concerning maroons and detachments or armed maroon catching units were sent in their pursuit. It was enacted that maroons who were captured alive became the property of the detachments, with the exception of two or three of the most dangerous to be executed to teach a lesson to the others.

For a maroon killed during an encounter, a sum of one hundred livres was paid on the presentation of his left hand. This decree was motivated by the need for the administration to exterminate the maroons who were the cause of much disorder and were preventing, by their frequent raids and pillaging, the cultivation of the soil for a colony suffering from frequent food shortages. This clearly indicates the gravity of the threat posed by the maroons to this fledgling colony.

Organized attacks

In spite of the severity of the punishments meted out to the maroons as well as the numerous captures made by the detachments which were sent after them, the fact remained that organized maroonage kept on increasing. During the 1720s and 1730s, in the course of their attacks on the colonists, the Mauritian maroons were able to acquire fire arms and ammunitions.

In the some of the most inaccessible parts of the island, they established their camps, created well organised as well as armed groups and planned their next attack. They spread out in bands, pillaging, setting fire and spreading death and destruction in their wake. There are two important and spectacular maroon attacks which took place during the early history of Ile de France, in 1724 and 1732.

On 24th March 1724, an armed maroon band took by force a military post in the district of Savanne and forced the soldiers to beat a hasty retreat. Saint Elme le Duc, a French historian, explained that these French colonial troops ?were soldiers only in name as they were confused by drunkenness and debauchery?. One can sense in these lines penned by a French scholar who refused to admit that the French soldiers were no match for the maroons who had themselves been valiant warriors in their native lands in Madagascar and West Africa before they were enslaved. The military prowess of slaves from West Africa is a well known fact in the history of slavery in the Caribbean, specially in Jamaica and Suriname.

In 1732, another armed band of maroons attacked a garrison as well as a French settlement at Poste de Flacq. After a bitter skirmish, they forced the French troops and the colonists to flee. The French troops lost ten men, several colonists were killed and only one maroon perished. Many years later, Governor Labourdonnais wrote, ?In 1732, maroons attacked the quarter of Flacq and forced the whites to abandon.?

Furthermore, almost a century later, Adrien d?Epinay, the leader of the Franco-Mauritian slaveowners during the 1830s, saw in this incident ?a threat to civilisation?. Indeed, the great maroon attacks of 1724 and 1732 clearly showed that the Mauritian maroons were true guerrilleros of freedom. In fact, the French were only able to turn back the tide against them during the late 1730s and early 1740s, under the governorship Mahé Labourdonnais.

Maroon legacy

For several decades, the Mauritian maroons waged a protracted and valiant campaign against slavery and colonialism in Mauritius. Through their actions, they helped shape colonial policy and struck fear in the hearts and minds of colonial officials and the slaveowners. Thus, to a certain extent, they were the makers as well as shapers of their own history.

Their constant struggle against their oppressors and their personal or individual battles to reclaim their humanity shielded them from the terrible dehumanizing effects of the slavery. Therefore, on each 1st February, their long and valiant struggle for freedom must be remembered by the Mauritian nation.

Satteeanund Peerthum & Satyendra Peerthum