The Vernacular Life of the Street: Ratsitatanina and Indian Ocean Créolité1

Abstract

The record of an alleged conspiracy of Madagascar-born slaves and apprentices in Mauritius during 1822 offers a useful vantage onto the vernacular life of the street in the colonial Mascarene islands of the western Indian Ocean. This article examines details of the alleged conspiracy to propose that Ratsitatanina, the accused ringleader, neither planned nor participated in a servile revolt. A close reading of the trial record, however, suggests that the Malagasy language was widely spoken in Mauritius in 1822 and that Malagasy speakers maintained communities in Mascarene diaspora through frequent encounters and vernacular exchanges along urban byways. Together with colonial censuses, these documents challenge scholars to rethink the timing and nature of creolisation in the French slave islands of the western Indian Ocean. Multilingualism and cultural heterogeneity were more salient features of colonial human landscapes during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries than commonly admitted in prevalent models of Indian Ocean créolité. This article proposes a dynamic model of creolisation for the Indian Ocean islands that emphasises the cultural and linguistic agility of subaltern colonial populations.