Abstract
In this essay written in 2004, Françoise Vergès and Carpanin Marimoutou explore the ways in which processes and practices of creolization occurred in Réunion Island. They argue that creolization must be analyzed within the historical, political and cultural context in which they emerge. 
 Vergès and Marimoutou reflect on these processes -- frictions, conflicts, and exchanges among slaves, settlers, migrants, and indentured workers from Madagascar, Mozambique, Gujarat, Bengal, France, Tamil Nadu, Southern China, Malaysia, Vietnam..., who were brought or came on the uninhabited island, colonized by the French in the 17th century. The authors also looked at the post-colonial moment, the French policies of assimilation and repression in the 1960s-1970s. For them, vernacular cultural practices and memories of struggle continue to work as counter strategies against local and national reactionary politics. In their conclusion, Vergès and Marimoutou look at the current form of globalization and its consequences on processes of creolization.
Highlights
‘Amarres’ [moorings] in Réunion Creole means many different things: link, attachment, bewitchment, spellbinding, to be in love, to be captivated, to be in a relationship, to care for [amar lë ker], to enliven the senses [i amar la boush]
We want to inscribe our island into a network of meetings and exchanges, at the crossroads of African, European, Asian, and islander worlds
The island archipelago We propose to begin from what made us: the land where we grew up—the volcanic peak, the uninhabited land, isolated in the Indian Ocean, known to the Arabs, avoided by the Portuguese, colonised by the French—by retracing the trading routes criss-crossing the Moorings worlds that made it
Summary
We are native to an island that is often left off maps of the world, and often confused with other French overseas territories. Voices were raised to assert the solidarity of the Réunionese people with other Indian Ocean peoples, with social movements in France, to affirm the Moorings existence of a Creole language, and a culture moored to Africa, Asia, Europe and the other islands of the Indian Ocean. Intellectual history merged with political demands that countered an hysterical campaign for ‘Frenchness.’ The hegemonic discourse of Frenchness took the line that Réunion had no history, culture or language; that the inhabitants could not count as a people; only France could give it meaning, identity and existence. Moorings between ‘us’ and ‘them’ was even picked up by the anti-colonialist movement, opening the way for the emergence of an ‘us’ from Réunion, which played two roles: one to try to get away from the two-bloc logic (campaign for the ‘Indian Ocean Zone of Peace’), and the other to try get recognition for the fact that on Réunion there were networks and practices more complex than the simple Creole-French opposition. Today we will have to forge new alliances, leave behind simplistic approaches, and recognise complexity
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