Introduction
This chapter considers the period prior to the abolition of slavery in Mauritius. The years leading up to this event witnessed a hardening of positions between the French inhabitants and the British administration, and was marked by ineffecÂtive amelioration policies which eventually culminated in the legal abolition of a system that had been part of the colonial project in Mauritius from the very beginning.
In a continuation of the approach taken by the first British goverÂnor, Farquhar’s successors preferred to adopt a placatory policy towards the local French elite, yet the latter continued their resistance to directives from Britain. The result was growing tensions between the metropolitan government and the local British administration, which to a significant degree sympathized with the ruling class. These frictions (between Britain and its own local government, and the latter with the resident oligarchy) only eased with the arrival of indentured labourers, the first phase of which occurred simultaneous to the “apprenticeship” term of emancipated slaves.The concurrence of post-abolition apprenticeship and early indenture is a significant one. In Mauritius, the impact of emancipation cannot be evaluated without considering the large-scale introduction of indentured labour from the Indian subcontinent, since the presence of the new workers changed the dynamÂics on the island fundamentally. For this reason, emancipated apprenticeship is discussed alongside the first phase of indentured labour in Chapter 5. This gives opportunity in this chapter to focus on the Franco-Mauritian elite, for whom, as will be seen, the abolition of slavery came at an inopportune time.
It should be noted that an evaluation of the severity of Mauritian slavery is not an aim within the ambit of this work. Research suggests that the experience of slavery generally varied with time and location. Inevitably, assessments into its harshness are frequently hampered by the limited availability of sources. The conÂcern here is to attend to the underlying dynamics of slavery as a system of labour.
Having already considered the importance of slavery to Mauritian colonial society and the Indian Ocean context in Chapter 3, the backdrop of amelioraÂtion and pending abolition in this chapter serves to illuminate the position of the Franco-Mauritian plantation owners, and their relationship with the slaves
DOI: 10.4324/9781003313366-5 and the British colonial government. First, the concept of slavery will be examÂined to provide the context for a discussion of the 1833 Abolition Act. In the section that follows, the actual management of slavery in Mauritius is examined, and how its importance increased rather than diminished in the decade precedÂing abolition.
4.2