Satyendra Peerthum, Historian, Writer, & Lecturer
On 8th March 2025, several Mauritian women’s organizations and associations will be observing International Women’s Day which was first officially recognized and commemorated by the United Nations in 1977. It is a day of reflection and commemoration and also highlights the fact that until the 1990s and early 21st century, the social history of the Mauritian slave women, indentured women, and modern-day workers has been largely overlooked in Mauritian historiography including the experiences of the female Liberated Africans.
Female Liberated Africans in Mauritius
Between 1856 and 1869, 552 Liberated African women and girls, also known as “African Recaptive slaves” or “free slaves”, were landed and registered at the Immigration Depot in Port Louis harbour. They represented only 21% of the total number of Liberated Africans who were registered at the Immigration Depot over a period of thirteen years. They were brought to Mauritius on 11 ships which were captured by the British Royal Navy in the Western and South-Western Indian Ocean. These slave trading vessels originated from ports in Mozambique, Madagascar and the Comoro Islands.
During that period, the Liberated Africans were registered once they landed at the Immigration Depot (known today as the Aapravasi Ghat World Heritage Site) and were provided with an immigrant number and a new status as indentured workers which marked the start of a new life. According to a colonial government circular of 1861 and colonial ordinance of 1865, they fell under the jurisdiction of the Protector of Immigrants and were given the same rights and working conditions as the Indian indentured immigrants.
During the 1860s, the employers of Liberated Africans were given certificates of allotment by the Protector of Immigrants which detailed the wages and rations to be provided to their labourers. In addition, each indentured Liberated African, including the women and girls, was provided with an immigrant ticket.
The Liberated African girls were usually engaged for five years to a private employer in order to learn a skilled or semi-skilled trade (as domestics or house servants, seamstresses, dyers, washerwomen and dressmakers). They were provided with a wage (usually between 2 to 4 shillings per month), a place to stay, three changes of clothes and two blankets each year, rations, cooking utensils and medical care.
It becomes evident that when the Liberated Africans arrived in Mauritius, they were no longer slaves but were given a new identity as indentured immigrants. After serving their period of indenture, they became legally free British subjects. However, unlike the majority of the Indian female immigrants who came to Mauritius after 1843 and 1844, all of the female Liberated Africans were required to serve a five-year indenture contract. Once their indenture contracts were completed, the majority of them continued to work for the same employer and later on, some of the Liberated African women established their own businesses in Port Louis.
An in-depth analysis of the Mauritian archival records reveals the fact that it was through their hard work, intelligence and perseverance that they were able to achieve in some measure, social and economic mobility. This can clearly be seen in the life experiences of Mariam Mohammed and Beatrice Soolia.
Mariam Mohammed was a Liberated African Mozambican of the Makua ethnic group and was a Muslim who reached Mauritius in 1856 as a 6-year old child. She got married to Ahmed Mohammed, an Indian Sidhi skilled artisan in Port Louis in 1877. She became a seamstress and opened her own shop and had four children and became a small property owner by the mid-1890s. She passed away there in 1920 at the age of 70 and her descendants still reside in the same house in Port Louis today over a century after her death.
The Life-Story of Beatrice Soolia
Recent research on the Liberated African women led to the discovery of an interesting life story of a young Mozambican woman, namely Beatrice Soolia, which recalls the achievement of certain liberated African females during the colonial era of the Mauritian history.
Beatrice was only 11 years old when she landed in British Mauritius on 13th June 1861 on board of the Sidon. In addition, there were 62 other Liberated African females on board of the same ship. After her arrival, she was first registered at the Immigration Depot before being transferred to the Government Orphans’ Asylum, near the village of Pamplemousses, where she was provided with new clothes, food and lodging.
According to available archival sources, Beatrice was born in 1850 in a village situated several days’ march from the Mozambican Coast and she has been identified as belonging to the Makua ethnic group. Her father’s name was Dooma and her mother died soon after her birth. She and her father were enslaved when their village was destroyed in an inter-ethnic conflict between the Makua and the Yao. Beatrice, her father and their fellow villagers were marched to the coast and sold to Portuguese slave traders in the town of Ibo on the Mozambican coast.
Shortly after her arrival, more precisely on 26th June 1861, Beatrice was apprenticed to Mr. Omsbry, a British merchant in Port Louis, as a house servant for a period of five years. Five years later, after completing her indenture contract, she was registered at the Immigration Depot as an Old Immigrant and provided with an Old Immigrant Ticket. In December 1870, she was arrested as a vagrant because she had lost her immigrant ticket and paid one pound sterling to obtain a new one as she was still under contract.
During the course of the same year, Beatrice quit the job as house servant at Mr. Omsbry’s place and started working as trainee seamstress in a clothing store situated at Royal Street in Port Louis owned by Mr. Le Conte. During the 1870s, she was able to learn to read and write and received 20 shillings per month as a fully trained and experienced seamstress.
Beatrice Soolia’s Social and Economic Mobility
Beatrice left the service of Mr. Le Conte in 1882 after being educated and acquiring several years of working experience as a seamstress and rented a small house on a small plot of land situated at Camp Yoloff, in Port Louis, in order to establish her own business as a seamstress. During that period, Beatrice lived there with Jean Louis Adolphe, her companion and a Creole foreman in the Mauritius Docks Company. She converted to Catholicism and had five children, three sons and two daughters.
In 1909, at the age of 59, she obtained a non-marriage certificate and legitimized her relationship with Jean Louis Adolphe through a civil marriage. Another important reason for contracting a civil marriage was because they purchased the wooden house and 10 perches plot of land for the sum of Rs. 5, 102 which they had been renting for more than a quarter century at Camp Yoloff.
Between the early 1900s and the mid-1920s, Beatrice continued to work as a seamstress with a clear sense of business acumen. At the same time, she also provided training to other Liberated African and Creole women residing in Camp Yoloff and Port Louis who aspired to enter the same profession.
After the death of her husband in 1921, Beatrice contacted Mr. Raoul, a lawyer in Port Louis and asked him to prepare a will. Thus, Beatrice had already made provision for the legal transfer of her property to her children after her death. Beatrice passed away on 1st June 1925 and was buried at Bois Marchand Cemetery.
The life experience of Beatrice Soolia in Mauritius depicts the success story of a Liberated African woman who arrived as a slave child and after starting her career as an indentured domestic worker and then as a skilled seamstress, she established her own business and provided training to other Liberated Africans. In addition to this achievement, she became owner of her own property, became a Christian and legitimized her relationship with her companion and children by contracting a civil marriage. Literacy and her determination helped her to make provision for the legal transfer of her property to her children through a will.
The life story of Beatrice Soolia demonstrates that more than a century and a half ago, in a Mauritian society considered to be hierarchical, paternalistic and racist, she was one among a handful of Liberated African women who was able to achieve an important and successful socio-economic mobility. The archival records clearly show that through her long and arduous journey from being a slave to an indentured worker to a legally free person and successful independent business woman, Beatrice Soolia gave meaning to her freedom.
Her struggles, sacrifices and success, as well as those of other Liberated African women, should serve as a source of inspiration to all Mauritians on 8th March. Definitely, this is how we can pay homage to the female Liberated Africans and Mauritian women as a whole in the making of Mauritian history.
