When hundreds of school children and teenagers have been participating in national celebrations, their forebears in the 1960s and earlier celebrated each year the Empire Day.Children in rural areas and even their elders in those days hardly under- stood the meaning of Empire and had no idea why that event was celebrated. Yet, that particular occasion was remarkable for children at least as they usually put on their best dress when they came to school and they gathered in the playground to sing ?God save the Queen...? Years after, they still remembered that they were given a mug of lemonade and classes ended early.

There was hardly any reference to the Empire in the primary books. It is only through the documentaries shown by the Mobile Cinema that sometimes came to the school that they could learn something about the English monarchs or they could see images of Asian and African countries in other parts of the Empire.

Those who were fortunate enough to go to the secondary schools studied history and geography of the Empire. It is only then they understood that Mauritius was a colony of the British Empire. Those who happened to go to ?Baitkas??, Hindi evening schools, learnt that India too had been under the British ?Raj?? and Nehru, Prime Minister at that time, had struggled with Gandhi and others for the independence of their country. Sometime after Mauritius became independent, the history of the Empire disappeared from secondary school curriculum as every effort was made to ?mauritianize? the teaching and learning materials. It is only with the setting up of the History Department at the University of Mauritius in 1993 and the introduction of B.Ed-History at the M.I.E. that Mauritians started to learnimperial issues through the history of India and Africa.

Tertiary level students are supposed to study the causes of empire building, how it was controlled and the ?imperial experience??. They also explore the development of trade, which was the main link among different Crown Colonies and Britain. They are required to grasp the events that led to the end of Empire, how and when it started and the process of decolonisation. The decline has intrigued many scholars.?How is the empire??? enquired King George V on his deathbed in 1936. The monarch?s preoccupation reflected the feelings of the rulers and the ruled. Little did he know that only ten years later, the end was near. India obtained independence in 1947, other countries followed at a rapid pace.

Several reasons are given: new political ideologies, the effects of World War II, which was a life and death struggle, the downgrading of England, which became a second rate world power. Other questions came up, like: was Britain really so weak and overstrained by war efforts to support the world empire it had created ? Did the colonies really liberate themselves? Did not anti-imperialist ideas emanate from England itself ? Etc?

When the empire ?ended?, Britain devised a new institution, the Commonwealth, made up of Dominions and the decolonised countries with the monarch at its head. When India became a Republic and still wanted to be a member, the Commonwealth had to adapt to this new situation. In the same way, when independence was only a false dawn, many old colonies, known as Third World countries, preferred not to sever themselves from the imperial matrix. New bodies were created to replace the old empire trade like the Fund for Technical Co-operation (CFTC) or regional ones like the African Caribbean Pacific (ACP), etc. To adapt further to the post-imperial era, there have been efforts to ? de-Britanize? the Commonwealth and organize functions without the Queen or even to globalize and establish links with other international bodies to work towards wider goals. On the other hand, the violence of wars and tensions has been replaced by Commonwealth games and art competitions.

In England, the Empire culture is very much present, with ?mandirs? and mosques, kebab restaurants and cinema halls showing Bollywood films like ?Lagaan? with a story based on an imperial theme. Britain has founded a museum of the Empire at Bristol and several centers for research, for example: the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS). The study of the Empire has obtained a high academic rank.

There have been a number of conflicting interpretations from Marxist and non-Marxist historians about the nature and causes of imperialism, the economic ?dependence? of independent countries...

Thus, for many reasons, the study of Mauritian history cannot be disconnected from the history of the world, nor can it be studied in isolation from British imperial history.