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Text: Zhang Runchen
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introduction
Do you know where the longest domestic direct flight route in the world is? This route is not in Russia or Canada, but in France, the flight from Paris to Reunion Island in the Indian Ocean in southeastern Africa is 9,200 kilometers and takes up to 12 hours.
Yes, although Reunion Island is located in Africa, it is still a French overseas department to this day.
(Reunion Island route)
1. Beautiful volcanic island
The history of Reunion Island is not very long, and it was not until 3 million years ago that the island was formed by a volcanic eruption. The geographical location of Reunion Island in the Indian Ocean has not been devoid of any indigenous people for a long time. It is 650 kilometers from the island of Madagascar in a straight line, and it is extremely difficult for the boats of the primitive tribes of Africa to reach it.
It wasn't until 1513 that the Portuguese navigator Masquerin came to the western part of the Indian Ocean, where he discovered an archipelago and named it the Masculin Islands, one of which was Reunion Island. However, at that time the island was not called Reunion, but "Sant'Apollonia".
When Maskelin landed on the island of Santa Apollonia, there were no indigenous people, but Masklin found that there were some ancient supply depots for the Arabs, who had been active in the Maskelin Islands since the 10th century. The land on the island is very fertile because of the perennial volcanic ash accumulation.
(Paris is very far from Reunion Island)
After Spain's colonies in the Americas matured, many Creoles who had no way to survive on the American continent began to migrate to the Masculine Islands. Creoles were Caucasian people born in the Americas, mostly to parents from the Iberian Peninsula, who were "second-class citizens" in the Americas at the time.
In this way, the Creoles became the first "natives" of Reunion Island, who lived alone in this "land outside the law" for decades. During this period, Reunion Island became an important supply point for European ships, and when Reunion Island began to show its important value, the island was not far from being colonized by the great powers.
In 1642, France occupied Reunion Island, renamed it Bourbon, and began to use the island as a springboard for the occupation of Madagascar and the entire island of Mascretin. Note that there are still no blacks on the island. In 1663, French colonists began bringing large numbers of indigenous people from Madagascar as slaves.
(View)
Since Madagascar is an island with a predominantly yellow population, the slaves imported into Reunion were not entirely black, and even more yellow merina. At this time, Reunion Island was an important supply point for French navigation in the Indian Ocean, and the actual controller of the island was the French East India Company.
In 1767, King Louis XV of France bought Reunion Island from the French East India Company and began to establish an administrative and judicial structure on the island. In fact, it was only at this time that the island was truly under French jurisdiction. And in the eighteenth century, France seized Mauritius from the Netherlands and basically controlled the entire Mascrean Islands.
(Mascrean Island)
After the French king took control of Reunion Island, he began to organize a large number of European immigrants and African slaves to enter the island to grow coffee, and the population of Reunion Island began to soar for a while, and the Creoles, as the earliest permanent residents, had become a "minority" at this time. But the influx of slaves and European immigrants also made the island's demographic composition increasingly complex.
During the French Revolution, the island was renamed "Reunion", a word that means "union" in French, that is, the many peoples of the island. In fact, this is one of the main reasons why Reunion Island still has no independence to this day, that is, the inhabitants of Reunion Island are all immigrants, they cannot form nationalism, so there is not much demand for independence.
In the near future, however, the ethnic composition of Reunion Island will become even more complex...
(French Revolution)
2. Chinese workers in Réunion
During the Napoleonic Wars, Reunion Island and Mauritius were occupied by British troops, and it was not until after the Congress of Vienna that Reunion Island was returned to France, and Mauritius was occupied by the British. In 1830, the republican revolution broke out in France, the Bourbon dynasty completely collapsed, and in 1848 slavery was abolished on Reunion Island, which by then had 40,000 slaves.
However, by this time sugar cane had replaced coffee as the main cash crop on Reunion Island, and the sugar industry, which had evolved from sugar cane cultivation, required a higher number of workers. Therefore, Reunion Island, which was the main sugar supplier to France at that time, not only did the demand for labor not decrease, but increased...
Although slavery was abolished on the island in 1848, the slave trade was banned on Reunion Island as early as 1817. To solve this problem, the island's plantation owners and sugar mill owners began to ask the government to bring in workers from elsewhere, initially from India.
(Slave trade)
However, in 1829, British Mauritius succeeded in bringing in a large number of Chinese workers, so in the same year, when the French Réunion authorities promulgated the Labor Import Law, they also liberalized the introduction of labor from other Asian countries, including China. In the beginning, the French Reunion authorities only brought in Chinese workers from Southeast Asia, and the main place of recruitment was Singapore.
As an attempt to test the waters, the first batch of Chinese laborers consisted of only a few dozen, but the plantation owners were very satisfied with these Chinese laborers. Therefore, in 1845, the French authorities in Réunion began to recruit laborers directly from the southeast coast of China, which was also the first colony of a foreign power to recruit labor directly from China.
However, after arriving in Réunion, these laborers were generally not accustomed to the environment and were not well treated, the work was very heavy, and they would not be treated when they fell ill. Therefore, in 1901, the Fujian people began to protest, and the French authorities in Réunion also interrupted the introduction of Chinese laborers. By this time, however, there were already thousands of Chinese and Indian laborers on the island.
(Chinese Workers)
Today, the total population of Reunion Island is about 1 million people, while the number of Chinese reaches 4-50,000, which is about 5% of the total population of the island. The reason why there are no exact figures is because of the ban on ethnic censuses on the island. On the official tourist website of Reunion Island and in various promotions, there is always a concept that is "Reunion people" in Reunion Island.
3. Reasons for not being independent
It seems that the island's government is deliberately obscuring the concept of race on the island, and perhaps this effort is one of the reasons why Reunion Island remained in France in the end. Unlike the British colonists, the French colonists usually taught the colonists in French and tried to assimilate the locals into "French".
But as a result, France's "assimilation policy" was not very successful, because in the wave of national independence of the twentieth century, the North and West African colonies that had embraced centuries of "assimilation policy" became independent from France. Algeria, the most important French colony, even went to war with the French army in order to gain independence from the French.
(Reunion)
But it would not be entirely true to say that the French policy of assimilation was completely undesirable, at least in Reunion Island, where it was very successful. Under hundreds of years of colonial rule, French Réunion has always been very stable, and the island's inhabitants have never thought of independence.
The main reason why the French assimilation policy on Reunion Island has been so successful is that the island's inhabitants are all made up of immigrants. If there are no indigenous people on the island, it is natural that nationalism cannot be formed. Reunion Island, on the other hand, is indeed the land pioneered by the French and their laborers. In this case, the inhabitants of the island do not have a low sense of identification with France.
Of course, there is certainly not only one reason not to choose independence. On the other hand, all the industries in Reunion Island are based on the large French market, and the sugar industry, which is the pillar industry of Reunion Island, is mainly exported to the French mainland. The tourism industry in Reunion Island is also aimed at French tourists, and the processing of perfumes and fragrances, which is a modern emerging industry on the island, is also sold on a large scale to the French market.
(Residents of Reunion Island)
If Reunion really became independent from France, then the economy of Reunion Island would collapse completely within a year, people are always realistic, and when the benefits of independence are much smaller than the disadvantages of independence, Reunion Island is naturally reluctant to choose independence. The island's population of nearly one million and the small size of the island make the employment pressure on the local people very high.
At this time, for the locals, there are only two options. The first is not to work, because France's welfare policy on Reunion Island is the same as that of mainland France, and the inhabitants of the island will not starve to death even if they do not work. The second is to go to France to work, or even to work in other European countries, after all, there are always job opportunities in the whole of Europe.
But the important thing is that no matter which way out, it is ultimately inseparable from France. Staying in France and staying in the EU is better than being independent no matter how you look at it. Grants and economic aid from France and the European Union are themselves the driving force behind Reunion Island's economic development. Today, Reunion Island has a GDP per capita of $25,900, compared to $10,300 in neighboring Mauritius.
(France)
Although Mauritius' GDP per capita does not seem to be low, it is very watery. Réunion, on the other hand, as a "European country", is able to guarantee that the majority of the island's population will certainly be better off than the majority of Mauritius. If you look at it this way, sometimes independence is not the best choice, and not being independent is not a good road.
In the foreseeable future, Reunion Island will never become independent from France.
Resources
Most of Africa is an independent country, why is Reunion Island still in France?. [OL].2020.06.07.
China National Geographic.Reunion The Chinese Romance of the Flame Islands. [OL].2012.11.16.
YU Jianhua.Analysis of the import of modern indentured Chinese laborers into the islands of the West Indian Ocean[J].West Asia and Africa, 1991(1):7.
Li Pengtao, Shen Dan.On the French "Union" Policy of the West African Colonies after World War I[J]. 2016.