25 * 27 NOVEMBER 2000
MOKA, MAURITIUS
Planters and Traders in the 19th Century:
Essays in the economic history of Mauritius
A seminar entitled 'Planters and Traders in Nineteenth-Century Mauritius' brought together scholars from the organizing Mahatma Gandhi Institute and the University of Mauritius, and also included a paper by an American historian read 'in absentia'. *
* By AMENAH JAHANGEER-CHOJOO
The seminar forms part of a major project, Essays in the Economic History of Mauritius, which invites local and foreign scholars to research the economic aspects of the sugarcane plantation-based society taking shape in nineteenth-century Mauritius. These scholars were also meant to make comparisons with similar economies likewise moulded by colonization. The replacement of freed slaves by indentured workers imported from India on a massive scale, and trade relationships with British India and Southeast Asia were instrumental in shaping plantation life and commerce in this former British colony.
Dr Amenah Jahangeer-Chojoo analysed the evolution of trade between India and Mauritius during the second half of the nineteenth century and the increasing power of a few Gujarati Muslim and British commercial firms in the grain and sugar trade. Mr James Ng Foong Kwong consulted archival sources to retrace the development of retail trade by Chinese immigrants in nineteenth-century Mauritius through the setting-up of networks. Dr Richard Allen from Massachusetts focused on the restructuring of the Mauritian sugar industry between 1848 and 1910, when Indian workers succeded to property through the large-scale subdivision of sugar estates and moved into sugar cane cultivation.
The breakdown in the health system and inadequacies in responding to a crisis situation were highlighted by Mr Sadasivam Reddi in his paper on the malaria epidemic that caused a heavy death toll in 1866-67. Finally, Mr B. Lalljee, Mrs S. Facknath, and Mr K. Mundil discussed the historical evolution in land utilization and the driving socio-economic and political forces behind the process.
This seminar and publication constitute a timely contribution to the historiography of Mauritius, as pointed out by Dr Vijaya Teelock. One session was devoted to the discussion and release of a collection of papers by Daniel North-Coombes, a Mauritian-born scholar who lived and worked in South Africa. These papers were edited by Professor W. Freund, Programme Director, Economic History and Development Studies, University of Natal, South Africa, and published by the Mahatma Gandhi Institute under the title Studies in the Political Economy of Mauritius: M.D. North-Coombes. North-Coombes writings in particular bring a highly innovative approach, as Prof. W. Freund mentioned in his presentation.
The seminar papers will be published in the next issue of the Journal of Mauritian Studies, and the collection of papers of M.D. North-Coombes is available at the Institute. *
Dr Amenah Jahangeer-Chojoo holds an MA degree in Geography at University of Louvain and a PhD in Geography at University of Bordeaux. Currently, he is working on Colonial Trade in 19th-Century Mauritius and is affiliated with the Mahatma Gandhi Institute at Moka, Mauritius.
E-mail: asibmgi@intnet.mu