Creating the Creole Island: Slavery in Eighteenth-Century Mauritius

Book Description
The island of Mauritius lies in the middle of the Indian Ocean, about 550 miles east of Madagascar. Uninhabited until the arrival of colonists in the late sixteenth century, Mauritius was subsequently populated by many different peoples as successive waves of colonizers and slaves arrived at its shores. The French ruled the island from the early eighteenth century until the early nineteenth. Throughout the 1700s, ships brought men and women from France to build the colonial population and from Africa and India as slaves. In Creating the Creole Island, the distinguished historian Megan Vaughan traces the complex and contradictory social relations that developed on Mauritius under French colonial rule, paying particular attention to questions of subjectivity and agency. Combining archival research with an engaging literary style, Vaughan juxtaposes extensive analysis of court records with examinations of the logs of slave ships and of colonial correspondence and travel accounts. The result is a close reading of life on the island, power relations, colonialism, and the process of cultural creolization. Vaughan brings to light complexities of language, sexuality, and reproduction as well as the impact of the French Revolution. Illuminating a crucial period in the history of Mauritius, Creating the Creole Island is a major contribution to the historiography of slavery, colonialism, and creolization across the Indian Ocean.

From the Publisher
“An inquiry into the limitless ambiguity of violence, lust, and law in the early French Caribbean, The Libertine Colony is a daring scholarly feat. A model of convergence for its contribution across disciplinary boundaries, this book not only challenges how we read Old Regime colonial narratives, but prompts us to think again about the proximity of the common and the sacred. In giving a detailed history to the vagaries of colonial slavery, Garraway confronts the gist of torture in those realms that most seem to deny it. In fascinating detail, she rethinks conceits of love, as she exhumes rituals of belief. ”â€"Joan Dayan, author of Haiti, History, and the Gods “Extremely well written, with a wonderful balance between impeccable scholarship and theoretical sophistication, The Libertine Colony is a very important contribution to postcolonial studies and the study of Caribbean literature and history.”â€"Peter Hulme, author of Remnants of Conquest: The Island Caribs and their Visitors, 1877-1998

About the Author
Megan Vaughan is Smuts Professor of Commonwealth History at Cambridge University. She is the author of several books including Cutting Down Trees: Gender, Nutrition, and Agricultural Change in the Northern Province of Zambia, 1890â€"1990 (with Henrietta L. Moore) and Curing Their Ills: Colonial Power and African Illness.


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