The First Arrival.
RAJ BOODHOO
On Christmas Eve of 1721, three hundred years ago, the ship Le Courrier de Bourbon anchored at Port Louis, then known as Port Nord-Ouest, and landed a party of French settlers from Saint Paul, Bourbon Island (Reunion). The group, composed of sixteen men and a few slaves under the command of Le Toullec Duronguet, included a surgeon and a chaplain. Parat and Jean Beauvoillier de Courchant, successive governors of Bourbon, had been urging French authorities to start a settlement in Mauritius, abandoned by the Dutch. In September 1715, Dufresne d’Arsel, captain of the ship Le Chasseur, sailing home from Pondicherry via Moka in Arabia, claimed Mauritius as a French possession calling it Ile de France. However, no single effort was made to start a settlement since.
In the meantime, Louis XIV passed away in September 1715, leaving behind France ruined by wars, in the hands of a regency. Development in the French empire lagged behind while the new financial system devised by general financial controller John Law was not viable. The political situation in France delayed several important trading and colonization operations, not only in the Mascarenes but also in North America. In India, France, a latecomer, struggled to start a few trading posts (comptoirs), Pondicherry being the main one since 1674. Trade in spices, cotton and silk fabrics expanded in the late 17th century, even coarse cloth was also in demand to clothe slave populations in different colonies in the west. New products, tea, coffee and sugar were also in great demand among the elite. France had to face cut-throat competition from Dutch, English and Portuguese rivals.
Beauvoillier de Courchant believed that natural ports at Ile de France could be used as naval bases, or refuge for ships during cyclones; Bourbon was devoid of such advantages. He was anxious since he had received distressing reports of foreign European ships anchoring at Ile de France, and pirates using it as a hide-out. He was worried about the security of Bourbon Island. Moreover, colonisation of Madagascar had been a dismal failure. After Ile de France was claimed a second time in September 1721, Beauvoillier decided to send the party led by Le Toullec.
On their arrival, Le Toullec’s companions built a few huts and planted a small garden of vegetables, sugar cane and pineapples at the place where the Company Garden is found today. For about twenty days, Le Toullec and some companions toured the island, visited Port Sud-Est (Grand-Port), and came across a German, Wilhem Lechnig, living a Robinson Crusoe life in the region that was given his name. They also found large numbers of wild pigs, deer and land tortoises. However, Le Toullec wrote an unfavourable report on the island. He even sent back to Bourbon some of his companions, while he waited for the arrival of Denyon who had already left France.
In France, different trading companies were merged to form La Compagnie Française des Indes, French East India Company (FEIC) in 1719. In April 1721, the FEIC receiving Ile de France as a concession obtained the right to appoint governors, to maintain troops, and to start a settlement by French migrants. Denys Denyon, a former engineer who had built fortifications at Pondicherry, was appointed the first governor. He was instructed to establish a port at Ile de France, which was supposed to be a vital link on the sea-route between France and India. The expedition led by Denyon made up of two ships L’Atalante and La Diane having on board a few officials, a regiment of 210 soldiers, 20 women, 30 children, and 4 priests. Young Jean Francois Dupleix who was on his way to Pondicherry was also on board. The expedition set sail from Lorient in June 1721, stopped at Brazil for four months, anchored at Port Nord-Ouest in April 1722. The voyage had lasted about nine months and cost the lives of many passengers, soldiers and sailors, women and children.
The early years of the colony were disastrous. Denyon took the wrong decision to establish the main port at Port Sud-Est, named Port Bourbon; ships could not sail out safely when the South East Trade Wind was blowing. Settlers, constantly experiencing shortage of food, depended on hunting and fishing, or on imports of provisions from Bourbon Island and Madagascar, while ships bringing food from India were quite irregular.
Agriculture did not develop due to the small population of settlers and lack of sufficient servile labour. Land concessions were given to white settlers in the valley, between the sea in the east, the mountain range of Grand Port in the west and north-west, and the contours of rivers in the south. The Company encouraged its chief agents to invest in land and develop agriculture and thus serve as a model to new settlers. Lenoir, Benoist-Dumas, La Farelle and even Dupleix received land concessions in the quartier de Port Bourbon. Concessions were also allotted in Trois Islots and Savanne districts. A stretch of land along the coast, known as Pas Géométriques, was reserved by the Company and planted with trees.
The peopling of Ile de France was tardy. The population of white settlers and slaves started to rise during the time of Labourdonnais who encouraged former soldiers and artisans to settle down. France had to face similar difficulties in peopling New France in America.
In 1730, Governor Maupin transferred the main port and administrative centre to Port Louis. Most inhabitants abandoned their lands in the region of Port Bourbon and Savanne and applied for new concessions in the hinterland of Port Louis: Pamplemousses, Moka and Plaines Wilhems. They preferred to settle near the new headquarters to obtain some provisions from Company stores, in case they ran short of food after cyclones or droughts. Moreover, they avoided isolated localities, which were easy targets of maroon slaves who looted the farms and carried away animals. Pamplemousses became the favourite district attracting numerous residents, so that a new parish was created.
In brief, this is the story of the difficult beginning. The rest is better known. Labourdonnais founded Port Louis, building the essential infrastructures of the port, government house, hospital, stores and water canals. He made tremendous efforts to make the island self-sufficient in food production. More food plants were introduced from abroad and a garden was created at Pamplemousses. Two other outstanding acclimatization gardens were created, one by Etienne Le Juge at Mon Gout, another by Charpentier Cossigny de Palma, near Quatre Bornes today. However, the Company failed to support Pierre Poivre’s project to establish spice plantations to challenge Dutch monopoly in spice trade.
Against the backdrop of these events in Ile de France, the FEIC in India was deeply involved in conflicts on three main fronts: the land forces of the English East India Company, the Royal Navy, and the Marathas who were on the warpath in the Carnatic. In the wake of the decadence of the Mughal Empire, both English and French commercial companies were bent upon building an empire to protect their trading activities. The Company’s directors in Paris, however, could not accept Dupleix’s heavy expenditures in acquiring territories in the Deccan, a disagreement that led to his downfall. However, political events in Old Europe were going to wreak havoc on French trading activities in India. When the Seven Years War broke out in 1756, hostilities between the English and the French spread worldwide, in India, in America and on the oceans. When the war ended, France had lost a large part of its empire in India and in America, the Company was bankrupt. Different wars in India damaged the economy of lle de France. The demand for food supplies for fleets that anchored here on their way to India was too excessive for inhabitants having shortage of food themselves due harvest failures. Events happening in different parts of the French empire cannot be dissociated.
On the other hand, no longer able to administer the island, the Company returned Ile de France to the Crown of France in 1767. Although, dismissed by some writers as a futile period, Company rule recorded at least two major accomplishments: firstly, the foundation of Port Louis, a port that played a major role in trade and as a base for French corsairs, and a frontier station for exploration of the south seas in the late 18th century, and secondly the accumulation of plants from various parts of the world, which formed the basis of later plant research networks initiated by Pierre Poivre, Ile de France becoming a centre for dissemination of plants and botanical information on plants worldwide.