From plantations to ghettos: The longue durée of Mauritius’s former slave population

Abstract

ABSTRACT Various uses have been made of Fernand Braudel’s concept of the longue durée. But the concept does not appear to have ever been used to explain how former African slave populations have become ghettoized. In this paper, I propose to use the concept of the longue durée to make sense of the manner in which a former African slave population in the southwest region of Mauritius has become ghettoized. The most obvious benefit that comes from using the concept is the depth-in-time perspective it adds to studies of low-income housing areas in the region, which allows us to develop a better understanding of the various factors that have contributed to the ghettoization of this population. The other benefit that comes from using the concept of the longue durée is that in encouraging comparisons with different geographical areas, the concept can also help us to specify what is particular or unique to a region. As will become evident from this study, while there is compelling evidence of the increasing ghettoization of low-income housing areas in the southwest region of Mauritius, the paper underlines that the factors contributing to the ghettoization of former African slave populations both in Mauritius and other parts of the world need not be identical.