By Satyendra Peerthum, Historian, Writer, & Lecturer & Kiran Jankee Chuttoo, Researcher, Oral History Expert, and TV Personality
On 2nd November 2024, the Mauritian people will be commemorating the 190th anniversary marking the arrival of the indentured workers to Mauritian shores. It is a very special day of remembrance of the history and achievements of the indentured workers and also on the indenture sites, like the Trianon Barracks and Antoinette-Phooliyaar, which are intimately tied to the Mauritian experience with indentured labour.
During the mid-1970s, the Old Labourers’ Quarters of Trianon was decreed national monument by the Government of Mauritius. In 1960, in an article in Le Mauricien, Pierre de Sornay, a Mauritian writer, explained that our country’s “National monuments constitute a veritable treasure trove which exude edifying imprints of their epoch on the Mauritian identity.” The Old Labourers’ Quarters is such a national monument because it is closely linked with the history of the indentured labourers and the sugar estate camps of Mauritius.
- The Sugar Estate Camps
Between 1826 and 1910, more than 462,800 Indian and non-indentured labourers were brought to Mauritius mostly to work on the island’s sugar estates. In general, after leaving the Aapravasi Ghat World Heritage Site or the Immigration Depot, the indentured workers had to settle in one part of the estate which became known as ‘Camp des Indiens’ as well as ‘estate camps’ or ‘sugar camps’. During the entire period that the indenture system existed in Mauritius and until the late twentieth century, hundreds of thousands of Indian labourers and their descendants lived for many years in the more than estimated 300 estate camps spread across the island’s 8 districts. Furthermore, on many of the large Mauritian sugar plantations, there were usually hundreds of male and female labourers who lived in those sugar camps with their children.
In order to accommodate so many individuals, the large estates had one or several separate estate camps. In the early 1870s, Governor Gordon explained that: “the house of each immigrant family consisted of one single compartment in a long row of similar habitations, without any aperture whatever for ventilation except the door, and of such moderate dimensions that it resembled rather the cell of a lock up than a human habitation”.
During the nineteenth century, camp dwellings consisted mostly of long rows of thatched huts and barrack-style housing which were made mostly of earth, wood, cow dung and cane straw. A few of these living quarters were made of bricks and stones. In the 1800s, in the Plaines Wilhems district, large sugar plantations, such as the one at Trianon, provided some of their labourers with living quarters which consisted of stone barracks.
- The History of the Structure
The Old Labourers’ Quarters at Trianon was built sometime between the 1860s and 1870s and resembles the stone barracks of Union Vale Sugar Estate which dates from the same period but is a bit bigger in size. It has often been called a barrack complex and it consists of 15 large chambers and it is mostly black in color. The Old Labourers’ Quarters is made of basalt stone blocks and it has very thick walls, the structure is mostly in tact, but decaying very rapidly.
There are some documents in the National Archives Department which make brief references to this structure. In 1880, the Protector of Immigrants informed the manager of Trianon Sugar Estate that the stone barracks, where the Indian labourers were housed, was in an unhealthy state. The Protector took a personal interest in this matter and even summoned the manager to the Coolie Depot, or the present-day Aapravasi Ghat, and urged him to rectify the matter as soon as possible.
In a letter to the estate manager, the Protector emphasized once again: “Having seen you personally on this matter and heard your explanations that the overgrowth of shrubs and plants around the labourers’ stone dwellings is a chief cause of dampness, dirt, and unhealthy conditions in the camp, I have to request that you will immediately take steps to have all such shrubs or plants cut down or entirely removed from the stone structures.”
It was mostly during the winter months that the Indian labourers suffered a lot from the dampness and unhealthy conditions in the stone structure. Unfortunately for them, the manager and owners of Trianon Sugar Estate did not follow the Protector’s instructions and the situation remained the same throughout the 1880s. After all, in 1889, Mr. B.A. Francis, the Inspector of Immigrants, in his report on the sugar estates for the Plaines Wilhems district, observed that the estate workers at Trianon, in particular those who resided in stone barracks, still had to endure unhealthy conditions.
During the course of that same year, it was reported that there were 1469 Indian men, women, and children who lived in the camps of Trianon Sugar Estate. The overwhelming majority among them lived in small huts and only a small number of the indentured labourers and their families lived in the stone barracks. In general, the archival records clearly show that by the late nineteenth century, the Old Labourers’ Quarters had been in use for several decades and it was already in a dilapidated state.
In 1909, a document was submitted to the royal commissioners, who were in Mauritius to investigate the island’s sugar industry, which briefly mentions a labourers’ quarters made of stone at Trianon where Indian workers were housed. Throughout the first half of the twentieth century, the stone barracks or the Old Labourers’ Quarters at Trianon were still used to house Indian labourers.
In 1960, after the passage of the cyclone Carol, the 15 large rooms of this structure were renovated, with eight of the fifteen chambers being provided with a small kitchen which was built of concrete. The Old Labourers’ Quarters was used to house some of the estate workers who had lost their homes during the cyclone. Therefore, until the early 1960s, this structure was still occupied by Indo-Mauritian labourers.
- Its Heritage Value
In September 1974, the Old Labourers’ Quarters was decreed national monument through Government Notice No.666. In fact, this structure is one of the rare monuments, like the Union Vale Barracks, in Mauritius which offers us an insight into what the living conditions of Indian labourers might have been like. In 2018, after several years, the Old Labourers’ Quarters was fully renovated and undergoes regular maintenance. Furthermore, it was the Aapravasi Ghat Trust Fund’s 3rd major conservation project after the Aapravasi Ghat World Heritage Site in 2010 and the Vagrant Depot of Grand River North West in 2011.
In the near future, the Trianon Barracks, along with the other indenture sites, will form part of a local Mauritian Indenture Route Project. After all, these three national heritage sites are closely associated with the history of more than seventy percent of the Mauritian population. Between the mid-nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries, this structure has played a central role in the daily lives of hundreds of the Indian workers and their families and their Mauritian descendants who continued to live on Trianon Sugar Estate until the early 1960s. Therefore, the Old Labourers’ Quarters is directly and tangibly linked with the way of life of the Indian labourers who lived in the sugar camps during and after the indenture period in Mauritius.
Lastly, it is interesting to note the collaboration between the Mauritius Broadcasting Corporation and Aapravasi Ghat Trust Fund in producing heritage programs called Virasat in the vernacular language of indentured labourers – Bhojpuri. These programs not only present the documentation of indenture sites like Trianon but also the multiple voices of the descendants of the Indian indentured labourers. Several months ago, one of the Virasat programs focused on the life histories and experiences of Indo-Mauritian cane cutters who lived and worked on Trianon which shows that this site is a living heritage.
