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Genesis of the Settlement of the Chagos Archipelago
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Genesis of the Settlement of the Chagos Archipelago
During the month of April 2006, after more than three decades, the Chagossians will finally be able to visit Diego Garcia, Peros Banhos, and the Salomon Islands that form part of the Chagos Archipelago and which they still consider as being their home. Until the 1990s and early 21st century, the history of the Chagossians and the settlement of the Chagos Archipelago, between the late 18th and early 19th centuries, was a largely neglected theme in modern Mauritian historiography.
The permanent settlement of the Chagos islands began during the 1780s, when Mauritius was under French rule. The rich, interesting, and complex history of this cluster of islands and its inhabitants span a period of almost two centuries, or from 1784 until 1973, when the last ?Ilois? were forced to leave by the British government with the firm backing of the American government.
The Settlement of the Chagos
In February 1783, Sieur Pierre Marie Le Normand, an influential sugar and coconut plantation owner from the Black River district, petitioned Governor Vicomte de Souillac for a major land concession on Diego Garcia in order to establish a large coconut plantation. During the same month, the French governor gave this important Mauritian landowner ?a favourable reply?. In 1784, more than a year after the land concession was granted, Le Normand set out with two ships from Mauritius to Diego Garcia with 79 Mozambican and Malagasy slaves as well as a few free coloureds who were skilled workers. The ships also contained materials for the construction of a large coconut plantation.
By 1790, Le Normand was able to send back large quantities of copra annually to Mauritius where a limited amount of coconut oil was produced for local consumption. The significance of this plantation cannot be underestimated because it marked the genesis of the permanent settlement as well as of the emergence of an important industry in Diego Garcia which was based exclusively on slave labour.
By the 1790s and first decade of the 1800s, three new coconut plantations and a fishing settlement, also relying on unfree labour, emerged on that coral atoll thanks largely to Mauritian entrepreneurs such as Lapotaire, Didier, Danquet, and the brothers Cayeux. By 1808, there were 100 Mozambican and Malagasy slaves working in Diego Garcia under Lapotaire alone.
In 1813, there was a similar number of enslaved labourers in Peros Banhos, shortly after Governor Farquhar granted a jouissance in 1813 to create a coconut plantation there. Other coconut plantations were similarly established under other owners at Six Iles in 1808 and at Trois Frères, Île d?Aigle, and Salomon Islands in 1813. It is evident that between the mid-1780s and mid-1830s, like in other island colonies of the period, it was the Mozambican and Malagasy slaves who built the archipelago?s infrastructure, produced its wealth, and formed the overwhelming majority of its inhabitants, who were to become the ancestors of today?s Chagossians. Furthermore, it was slave labour which was used to exploit the natural resources of the Chagos which, apart from copra, included fish, guano, timber, and tortoise. By the first decade of the 1800s, coconut oil was also being manufactured at Diego Garcia and exported to Mauritius.
In 1826, Baron d?Unienville, the Chief Archivist of Mauritius, reported on some of the bountiful conditions which were found throughout the Chagos when he observed: ?L?île produit beaucoup de cocos, elle ne manque pas non plus de bois, tels que [t]atamaka, bois blanc bon pour pirogues, bois à brûler; elle abonde en poissons, tortues, oiseaux de mer, poules sauvages??
?Outside their work days and working hours, some of the Chagossian slaves were able to save some money and have a ?petite plantation.?</I>
Between the late 1780s and 1828, conditions in Diego Garcia were so bountiful that the island temporarily became a destination for dozens of lepers who were sent by force from Mauritius by the French and then the British authorities to feast on abundant tortoise meat which was thought to be a cure for leprosy.
Slavery in the Chagos
By the first decade of the nineteenth century, French colonial power in the Indian Ocean crumbled with the capture of Mauritius and some of the other islands in the south west Indian Ocean. The Chagos, like the Seychelles at this point, was considered to be one of the dependencies of Mauritius and was formally ceded to Great Britain through the Treaty of Paris in 1814. In general, life in the Chagos archipelago changed very little under British rule and slavery remained the defining feature of the coconut plantations and settlements, as it would until the abolition of slavery in Mauritius and its dependencies in 1835.
A letter dataed in 1828 from the Mauritius Archives mentions the names and origins of some of the slaves of the Chagos, who eventually became its permanent residents, such as Pierre Louis (Creole of Mauritius), Prosper Jean (Malagasy), Marie Jeannie (Mozambican), Michel Levillain (Mozambican) and his wife, Prudence Levillain (Malagasy), and Theophile Le Leger (Creole of Mauritius).
These names, while they were common in the Chagos archipelago during the 1820s and 1830s, to a certain extent, resemble some of the names of today?s Chagossians who reside in Mauritius and the Seychelles. In 1826, barely a decade before the abolition of slavery in Mauritius and its dependencies, there were 375 slaves, 9 whites, 22 free coloureds, and 42 lepers. In all, there were 448 inhabitants in the Chagos archipelago with Diego Garcia containing more than half of the residents. For the Chagossian slaves, life was dominated by the daily orders of the administrateurs which was enforced by their commandeurs.
The work of the slaves was long and arduous, as the owners reported, ?from sunrise to sunset for six days a week.?Outside their work days and working hours, some of the Chagossian slaves were able to save some money and have a ?petite plantation?, which allowed them to raise animals and cultivate produce. They seem also to have exercised some control over their own social relations through the guidance of older men and women as well as an informal council of elders, a system that may have had its roots in East Africa and Madagascar.
The Chagos after emancipation
After emancipation in February 1835, the general nature of labour relations changed little, even if the quantity and demands of work lessened over time in favour of the labourers during the late 1830s and 1840s. In fact, in 1949, a visiting representative of the Mauritian Labour Office commented that generally the ?patriarchal? labour relations between the managers and labourers in the Chagos as ?dating back to what I imagine would be the slave days, by this I do not imply any oppression but rather a system of benevolent rule with privileges and no rights.?
The biggest change with the end of slavery came when plantation owners during the 1840s and 1850s began importing some indentured labourers from India to work. These new workers gradually integrated themselves into Chagossian society and many among these newly arrived labourers as well as the Ilois converted to Catholicism. Many of the Indian labourers intermarried with the inhabitants, thus becoming the ancestors to some of today?s Chagossians who live in Mauritius and the Seychelles.
During the course of the 19th and early 20th centuries, it was due largely to its isolation that a distinct and insular micro-island society emerged in the Chagos Archipelago. A distinct Chagos Creole, related to the Mauritian Creole and ?Seyselwa Kreole?, emerged among the islanders. Diego Garcia remained the most important island in the archipelago and the most important of the ?Oil Islands of Mauritius?.
During the 19th century and first half of the 20th century, the Chagossians, especially those of Diego Garcia, developed an identity of their own in their little archipelago in the middle of the Indian Ocean.
Satyendra PEERTHUM
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