L’immigration indentured à l’île Maurice, 1840-1870 : conditions, abus et résistance

Abstract

This article analyzes the indentured labour in Mauritius between the 1840s and the 1870s. In particular it focuses on labour forms and relationships, the salaries level and payment, debt and eventually savings, health assistance and the conditions for repatriation. As all these aspects were highly differentiated in different districts and from each plantation to another, this article will seek to avoid one single explanation of the indentured labour for the whole island. This approach is required in order to overcome simple approaches to “dependence”. Without abandoning broader explanations, it is nevertheless worth mentioning that most explanations of labour dependence – linking for example coercion to labour scarcity, the size of the estate, the access to credit and the planter’s debt – require to be discussed in specific contexts where the peculiar history of each estate and its owner is of central importance.

Keywords

• immigration
• Mauritius
• La Réunion
• indentured
• living conditions
• debt