Isle De France Research Articles

From ethnobotany to emancipation: Slaves, plant knowledge, and gardens on eighteenth-century Isle de France.

This essay examines the relationship between slavery and plant knowledge for cultivational activities and medicinal purposes on Isle de France (Mauritius) in the second half of the eighteenth century. It builds on recent scholarship to argue for the significance of slaves in the acquisition of plant material and related knowledge in pharmaceutical, acclimatization, and private gardens on the French colonial island. I highlight the degree to which French colonial officials relied on slaves' ethnobotanical knowledge but neglected to include such information in their published works. Rather than seeking to explore the status of such knowledge within European frameworks of natural history as an endpoint of knowledge production, this essay calls upon us to think about the plant knowledge that slaves possessed for its practical implementations in the local island context. Both female and male slaves' plant-based knowledge enriched - even initiated - practices of cultivation and preparation techniques of plants for nourishment and medicinal uses. Here, cultivational knowledge and skills determined a slave's hierarchical rank. As the case of the slave gardener Rama and his family reveals, plant knowledge sometimes offered slaves opportunities for social mobility and, even though on extremely rare occasions, enabled them to become legally free.

A hard nut to crack: nutmeg cultivation and the application of natural history between the Maluku islands and Isle de France (1750s-1780s).

One of France's colonial enterprises in the eighteenth century was to acclimatize nutmeg, native to the Maluku islands, in the French colony of Isle de France (today's Mauritius). Exploring the acclimatization of nutmeg as a practice, this paper reveals the practical challenges of transferring knowledge between Indo-Pacific islands in the second half of the eighteenth century. This essay will look at the process through which knowledge was created - including ruptures and fractures - as opposed to looking at the mere circulation of knowledge. I argue that nutmeg cultivation on Isle de France was a complex process of creolizing expertise originating from the local populations of the plants' native islands with the horticultural knowledge of colonists, settlers, labourers and slaves living on Isle de France. In this respect, creolization describes a process of knowledge production rather than a form of knowledge. Once on Isle de France, nutmeg took root in climate and soil conditions which were different from those of its native South East Asian islands. It was cultivated by slaves and colonists who lacked prior experience with the cultivation of this particular spice. Experienced horticulturalists experimented with their own traditions. While they relied on old assumptions, they also came to question them. By examining cultivation as an applied practice, this paper argues that the creolization of knowledge was a critical aspect in French colonial botany.

Monsieur Georges par Roland Monpierre

Reviews 247 respecté, voire mis en exergue. Une bibliographie d’une demi-page et un index de sept, facilitent ce voyage à travers le temps et l’espace jalonné de références, comme points de repère. Il est recommandé de consulter le site où l’on trouvera une panoplie d’exercices interactifs supplémentaires. En somme, rien n’a été laissé au hasard dans ce précieux outil. Kutztown University of Pennsylvania S. Pascale Vergereau-Dewey Monpierre, Roland. Monsieur Georges. Tome 1. Achères: Dagan, 2013. ISBN 978-2919612 -41-3. Pp. 62. 15 a. Given the popularity of graphic novels among American youth, a wonderful means of introducing students to French literature with an Afro-centric twist is via Monpierre’s bande dessinée inspired by Georges (1843), the only novel Dumas wrote that addressed a slave rebellion. Set on Isle de France (now Mauritius) from 1810 to 1825, race and racism are at the center of the story, a particularly sensitive and rarely broached topic for Dumas because of his part-African ancestry. Using rich color designs and deftly weaving the essence of Dumas’s original prose, Monpierre integrates all the ingredients, from an engrossing plot to multifaceted characters, which are characteristic of Dumas’s novels. For example, the main protagonist Georges is a lightskinned mulatto who is readily mistaken as white. His father Munier is a wealthy mulatto plantation owner with slaves. Georges’s older brother Jacques becomes a slavetrader and a pirate captain. As a child, Georges witnesses the British attempt to gain control of the island. Since Munier is a mulatto, the white plantation owners will not fight alongside him. Consequently, he leads a group of blacks against the impeding British attack. Greatly embarrassed by the fact that a mulatto, or worse yet in their eyes, a man of color, saved them, the white plantation owners ignore Munier’s success against the British. In preparation for reading Monpierre’s Monsieur Georges, teachers will want to include a study of Dumas, the author, and his father, General Davy de la Pailleterie, who had been born in the French colony of Saint-Domingue (now Haiti), himself the mixed-race son of the marquis Alexandre-Antoine Davy de la Pailleterie, a French nobleman and commissaire général in the colony’s artillery, and MarieCessette Dumas, a slave of Afro-Caribbean ancestry. This pre-reading preparation will allow students to gain insight into why Dumas rarely if ever addressed the issue of slavery in France or in its colonies—but for one story, Georges. In addition, teachers may want to ask students, depending on their grade level and maturity, to research the history of France’s slave trade as well as the economic, social, and cultural impact it had on native cultures in Guadeloupe, Martinique, Haiti, and other sugar islands. Finally, teachers will want to explore with students the role that the French Revolution plays in the story. Beyond an investigation of the fascinating characters and its reallife connections to the little-known history of the Caribbean and African Diaspora cultures, there is tremendous cross-cultural learning that can be generated from reading Monsieur Georges as one cannot help but draw comparisons to the American slave trade. Even the most reticent of young readers will be engrossed by this entertaining bande dessinée and will benefit from the crucial lessons on race and tolerance that it instills. Canisius College (NY) Eileen M. Angelini Film edited by Michèle Bissière Baecque, Antoine de, et Noël Herpe. Éric Rohmer: biographie. Paris: Stock, 2014. ISBN 978-2-2340-7561-0. Pp. 604. 29 a. This biography of the director of the Contes moraux, Comédies et proverbes, and Contes des quatre saisons cycles is based on unpublished archival documents and some eighty original interviews. Baecque and Herpe enjoyed unfettered access to Rohmer’s artistic collaborators as well as to the small family circle that Maurice Schérer (1920– 2010) kept separate from his directorial activities, all signed under pseudonym. Unlike the unruly, peripatetic Truffaut, Rohmer was a faithful family man who led an austere life, free from brushes with the law, amorous escapades, or calculated public appearances . Though...

Buttons and Blood, or, How to Write an Anti-Slavery Treatise in 1770s Paris

This article contributes to our understanding of the rise and nature of French anti-slavery thought through a close analysis of ‘Observations sur les Négres esclaves’, an essay written by Jean-Baptiste-Christophe Fusée-Aublet (1720–1778) and published in his Histoire des plantes de la Guiane françoise (1775). A botanist, Fusée-Aublet worked in the Isle de France (now Mauritius) and French Guiana during the 1750s and 1760s in service to the Compagnie des Indes. A close comparison of a surviving draft and the published essay shows how he drew on his observations of colonial slavery, east and west; how he responded to contemporary intellectual currents and publications critical of slavery; and how he modified his draft for publication to satisfy the expectations of a metropolitan audience. Reflecting the influence of Rousseau, both versions combined a withering critique of French empire with a spirited, quasi-ethnographic defence of the moral character and culture of Africans. After detailing his travels and the evolution of his antipathy to slavery, the article details how Fusée-Aublet combined sentimental and economic arguments to craft an essay whose themes engaged with larger debates over luxury and political economy, citizenship and patriotism.

‘Le centre de toutes choses’: Constructing and managing centralization on the Isle de France

In their recent book The colonial machine, James McClellan III and François Regourd detail how ancien regime France’s government marshalled science in the service of colonial expansion. By focusing on the local and long distance struggles to make the Isle de France (present day Mauritius) a globally significant centre during the long eighteenth century, this essay suggests an alternative to McClellan and Regourd’s geography of metropolitan centre and colonial periphery, as well as their claim that the investigation of nature was tied to colonial expansion by state centralization. Rather than view centralization as a double process whereby a metropolitan state is able to dominate increasingly peripheral territory by concentrating power and the means of its production and management under state authority, this essay argues that centralization occurred in numerous places and involved the organization, pursuit and management of various sorts of accumulation, with geographically extensive consequences. The goal is to present centralization as historically open and multi-centred, inviting examination of both its local dynamics and long-distance entanglements from various perspectives, which in turn reveals the multi-centred dynamics of empire building and governance, including the organization and pursuit of natural inquiry.

Policing the oeconomy of nature: The oiseau martin as an instrument of oeconomic management in the eighteenth-century French maritime world

The natural environments of the Isle de France and Isle de Bourbon (present-day Mauritius and Réunion) were radically altered by European colonization in the eighteenth-century. In the 1740s, locusts were introduced to the islands, then under French possession, through the trans-oceanic movement of plants, peoples, animals, and foodstuffs. By straining agricultural production in the islands, locusts challenged French colonial administrators’ attempts to transform the islands into a granary that could supply fleets sent to pursue France’s imperial ambitions in the Indian Ocean. The introduction of insect-eating mynah birds (acridotheres tristis), imported from other parts of France’s colonial empire by the naturalist and administrator Pierre Poivre, was envisioned as a strategy for achieving a productive balance between the natural and human oeconomies of the islands. Yet engineering a stable balance between the natural and human elements on the islands proved to be more difficult than Poivre and his contemporaries had anticipated, as the mynah birds came to be widely seen as equally destructive as the locusts they were intended to eliminate by the 1770s and 1780s.

Banaras in the Indian Ocean: Circulating, Connecting and Creolizing Island Stories

What links Bernardin de Saint Pierre’s 1788 novel about Isle de France, Paul et Virginie, with V.S. Naipaul’s 1972 piece, An overcrowded Barracoon? What is common to Joseph Conrad’s 1910 novella, A Smile of Fortune, and tourist brochures of La Grande Baie? What brings together the story of the ruins of Babylon and the Ghats of the Ganges? Actually, these seemingly disjointed narratives make up a vast library of inter-connecting Indian Ocean island stories. In this study I will use the image of ‘Banaras’ as the locus of an inter-textual reading exercise connecting the literary spaces of Mauritian writer and filmmaker Barlen Pyamootoo with other stories like those mentioned above. Pyamootoo’s literary universe reveals to us the dynamic, multilayered and polyphonic nature of Indian Ocean island cultures.

Re-thinking Creole identities in eighteenth-century Isle de France

Re-thinking Creole identities in eighteenth-century Isle de France

Slavery and Colonial Identity in Eighteenth-Century Mauritius

On 25 May 1785, a M. Lousteau arrived at the police station in Port Louis, Isle de France (now Mauritius) to complain that his slave Jouan had been abducted. He described Jouan as an ‘Indien’, ‘Lascar’ and ‘Malabar’, and said that he had learned that he had been smuggled on to the royal shipLe Brillant, bound for Pondicherry in southern India, by one Bernard (whom Lousteau describes as a ‘creol libre’ but who later is described as ‘Malabar, soi-disant libre’ and ‘Topa Libre’). The story of the escape had been told to him by a ‘Bengalie’ slave called Modeste, who belonged to the ‘Lascar’ fisherman, Bacou. A number of people had apparently assisted Jouan's escape in other ways—most importantly his trunk of belongings had been moved secretly from hut to hut before being embarked with him. Lousteau was a member of that ever-growing professional group of eighteenth-century France and its colonies: the lawyers. He was clerk to the island's supreme court, the Conseil Superieur. He supported a large family, he said, and the loss of Jouan represented a serious loss to their welfare. Jouan, it turned out, was no ordinary slave. He was a skilled carpenter who earned his master a significant sum every month; he was highly valued, and Lousteau had refused an offer of 5,000 livres for him. What is more, he could be easily recognised, for he was always exceptionally well turned-out and well-groomed. To facilitate in the search for his slave, Lousteau provided the following description of him:He declares that his fugitive slave is of theLascarcaste, aMalabar, dark blackin colour, short in height, with a handsome, slightly thin face,a gentle appearance, with long hair …that he is very well dressed,abundantly endowed with clothes, such as jackets and shorts … wearingsmall gold earrings, a pin with a gold heart on his shirt, and on the arm a mark on the skin which he thinks reads DM.

Nana K Nana, Nana K Napa

A recent study of Tayo shows an obligatory subordinator sa in all relative clauses. The Isle de France dialects, like most other varieties of Creole French, have an obligatory subordinator ki for subject relatives, while ki is optional elsewhere. Reunion Creole has a subordinator ke which is almost always optional, and thus stands out as different from all others in this respect. To explain this oddity, the paper contains the following topical sequence: 1) Reunion Creole relative clauses and the "mysterious" verb marker i with which they interact are described, using data covering nearly three centuries; 2) a highly specific past tense formation is described and discussed; and 3) inferential arguments are advanced, with the addition of data that pertain to both Tayo and Isle de France Creole, to suggest that the anomalous optionality of the relative subordinator in Reunion Creole became established in the 17th century as a result of Malagasy influence on what is essentially a continuation of 17th century (varieties of) French. Tayo and Isle de France Creole are seen as new creations, new solutions to problems of interethnic communication.

A reconnaissance of tropical resources during Revolutionary years: the role of the Paris Museum d'Histoire Naturelle

SUMMARYThe recent extensive literature on exploration and the resulting scientific advances has failed to highlight the contribution of Austrian enterprise to the study of natural history. The leading role of Joseph II among the neutral powers which assumed the carrying trade of the belligerents during the American War of Independence, furthered the development of collections for the Schönbrunn Park and Gardens which had been set up on scientific principles by his parents. On the conclusion of peace, Joseph entrusted to Professor Maerter a world-encompassing mission in the course of which the Chief Gardener Franz Boos and his assistant Georg Scholl travelled to South Africa to collect plants and animals. Boos pursued the mission to Isle de France and Bourbon (Mauritius and Reunion), conveyed by the then unknown Nicolas Baudin. He worked at the Jardin du Roi, Pamplemousses, with Nicolas Cere, or at Palma with Joseph Francois Charpentier de Cossigny. The linkage of Austrian and French horticultural expertise created a situation fraught with opportunities which were to lead Baudin to the forefront of exploration and scientific research as the century closed in the upheaval of the Revolutionary Wars.

L'insertion socio-professionnelle chez les nouveaux immigrés. Le cas des Mauriciens en France

Socio-economic integration of new immigrants: the case of Mauritians in France A survey of the employment, family and housing conditions of the Mauritians in France, reveals the new characteristics of the recent waves of immigration. Their integration is considered to be a replication of the French colonial past in the former «Isle de France». It is characterised by their large scale introduction into the urban informal economy. In two activity sectors investigated, namely domestic services and clothing industry, it is shown how social relationships in the workplaces prevail over the economic aspects. This trait is fundamental to a paternalistic socio-economic system internalised by these immigrants. It is one of the factors, besides the emergence of an ethnic entrepreneurship that explains a continuous migration flow.

Louis Monneron agent de la France à Ceylan

Ananda Abeydeera : Monneron, a French agent in Ceylon (1781-5). Ceylon, with ports in both east and west, accessible in all weather, and near to India, was considered as the main base for Suffren's campaign to reconquer India in 1781. For this purpose, the Mascarene authorities placed Jean-Louis Monneron in Ceylon as agent for the French nation. As can be seen from his instructions, the authorities appreciated his financial ability and his knowledge of Indian trade. He was to ensure logistical support enabling the fleets of Suffren and Orres to continue their campaign at sea as long as necessary without having to go back to Isle de France. His critical analysis of the situation in Ceylon and his recommendations for improving it are the result of his work and his observations. They indicate the role of a French diplomat in the Indian Ocean during the pre-Revolutionary decade.

Stativity and other aspects of the creole passive

This paper investigates passive structures in Carribean French Creole (CFC) and takes issue with the analysis proposed for Dominican French Creole (DFC) by Amastae (1983). Using a broad data-base drawn primarily from DFC and St. Lucian Creole French, it argues that there is no justification for A.'s claim that DFC passives are embedded under a higher-predicate BE. Evidence is also presented that CFC passivization is a productive process, with few restrictions on subject-type or tense/aspect marking of the sort A claims. An alternative analysis is presented, in which the CFC passive is treated as a simplex structure, directly generated by the base. It is argued that CFC passivization is limited to a restricted class of ambi-transitive verbs whose essentially actional character is preserved in their passive use. The derivation is best handled by a lexical rule which relates active and passive verb pairs. The distinction between passive and anti-causative constructions is also discussed as well as its implications for the rule of final-vowel truncation in Isle de France Creole. Finally, there is some discussion of the possible sources of the Creole passive in West African languages.

With a daughter's eye: A memoir of Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson By Mary Catherine Bateson (review)

198LANGUAGE, VOLUME 62, NUMBER 1 (1986) phonology, lexicon, and syntax, T discusses lexical patterning with reference to metaphorical language (119-31), and shows how the lexicon of each language reflects cultural items adopted from the indigenous mother tongues. Some of her data recapitulate material already described elsewhere (e.g. Hancock 1977, 1980); but she makes her point clearly. Peter Mühlhäusler, 'Synonymy and communication across lectal boundaries in Tok Pisin' (134-53), is a self-contained discussion of one aspect of TP, but one which fits into a tradition of research on on-going changes in this language (e.g. Mühlhäusler 1980). TP uses a technique of pairing synonyms such that an old and a new expression appear together linked by o 'or, that is': hospitel o haus sik. Such pairings are discussed from several viewpoints: the status of synonymity in TP, the function of synonym pairs, their grammatical properties, their role in linguistic change, and the implications for language planning. The functions are varied: the introduction ofnew lexical items for new concepts, communication across regional boundaries, the elimination of clumsy paraphrases and low prestige non-English forms, and the replacement of referentially wide items by more specialized terms. This is one of M's shorter papers, but it displays his usual thoughtful and thorough work. It is, indeed, the most workmanlike contribution to the collection. The volume concludes with a 'Bibliography' (155-68) containing—in principle —all works referred to in the various papers (in fact there are a couple of minor errors/omissions). This practice of integrating references, favored by Karoma, has much to recommend it. REFERENCES Andreski, S. 1972. Social sciences as sorcery. London: Deutsch. Baker, Philip, and Chris Corne. 1982. Isle de France Creole: Affinities and origins. Ann Arbor: Karoma. Bickerton, Derek. 1981. Roots of language. Ann Arbor: Karoma. ------. 1984. The Language Bioprogram Hypothesis. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 7:2.173-221. Hancock, Ian F. 1969. A provisional comparison of the English-based Atlantic creóles. African Language Review 7.7-71. ------. 1972. A domestic origin for the English-derived Atlantic creóles. Florida FL Reporter 10.7-8, 52. ------. 1977. Lexical expansion within a closed system. Sociocultural dimensions of language change, ed. by Ben G. Blount & Mary Sanches, 161-71. New York: Academic Press. ------. 1980. Lexical expansion in creóle languages. Theoretical orientations in creóle studies, ed. by Albert Valdman & Arnold Highfield, 63-88. New York: Academic Press. -----. 1985. The domestic hypothesis, diffusion and componentiality: An account of Atlantic Anglophone Creole origins. Paper presented at the Workshop on Universals vs. Substrata in Creole Genesis, University of Amsterdam. Mühlhäusler, Peter. 1980. Structural expansion and the process of creolization. Theoretical orientations in creóle studies, ed. by Albert Valdman & Arnold Highfield, 19-55. New York: Academic Press. [Received 11 July 1985.] With a daughter's eye: A memoir of Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson. By Mary Catherine Bateson. New York: William Morrow, 1984. Pp. 242. $15.95. [Paperback edition, New York: Pocket Books, 1985. $4.95.] Reviewed by Deborah Tannen, Georgetown University Why review here a book that has been widely discussed in the popular press? Reviews of this book have focused primarily on the private life and personality of Margaret Mead (hereafter MM). One would hardly know, reading them, that REVIEWS199 the book is also about Gregory Bateson (GB), let alone suspect how much of it is devoted to summary and discussion of their scholarly work. There is also little in those reviews to indicate that the book is important for linguists, or that it could be used as a text in courses on anthropological linguistics and discourse analysis. For this is a biography and a memoir which demonstrates as it advocates—and shows to have been demonstrated, in the lives and work of MM, GB, and Mary Catherine Bateson (MCB)—the inseparability of the intellectual and the personal, of observer and observed, of ideas and their contexts, of the public and the private, of knowing and feeling. By describing her experience of her parents' lives and work and how they shaped her own, MCB has written a book that can be read in several ways— as a novel, for its...

Notes on Indigofera (Leguminosae) for 'Flore des Mascareignes'

This small tree grows as a pioneer on the escarpments of the cirques of R6union between 300 and 1500 m. It has been exploited for cabinet-making and for a red dye to stain other woods. It is slow growing and rarely sets fruits (Cadet, loc. cit., said none had been seen for fifteen years, although a few were collected in 1978 by Friedmann). It is now extremely rare. The type is said to be from Mauritius and an isotype at P is clearly labelled 'Isle de France, 21 Feb. 1772, Commerson', but no other material has been collected there and from its elevated distribution on Ri6union it seems improbable that it ever occurred on Mauritius. According to the label on the P isotype the vernacular name, Bois de Sable, alludes to the pustules of a rust on the leaves of the type gathering, not to its habitat. Bojer (1837: 102), says it grew on the windward shores of Mauritius. The basis for that statement is unknown, but may have been deduced erroneously from the vernacular name. The species was described in a separate genus Bremontiera because the fruits are jointed, a feature referring it to the Hedysareae in the classical tribal scheme. Bentham in Benth. & Hook.f. (1865: 464), and Taubert in Engl. & Prantl (1894: 384), lacking adequate material, treated Bremontiera as an imperfectly known genus (Taubert determined a flowering specimen at P as Indigofera sp. in January 1894). Hutchinson (1964: 468), reduced it to synonymy in Taverniera (including an extraneous element). Much earlier, however, Baillon (1870a: 234 & 1870b: 308) had recognized its true affinity, and thought it might be necessary one day to make it a section of Indigofera. Since then several species have been described from Madagascar which agree so well in a number of different features that Bremontiera must be regarded as congeneric. It probably does deserve subsectional rank with I. depauperata Drake (I. gorgoniceps Drake, nomen), I. cloiselii Drake, I. perrieri R. Viguier and perhaps others, next to Tinctoriae (Bak.) Gillett, which has been regarded as the most primitive subsection of Indigofera (Gillett (1958, especially p. 4); Polhill in Polhill &

Contacts between Schonbrunn and the Jardin du Roi at Isle de France (Mauritius) in the 18th Century

Contacts between Schonbrunn and the Jardin du Roi at Isle de France (Mauritius) in the 18th Century

Forces and Elements Forming a Political Style

Previous articleNext article No AccessForces and Elements Forming a Political StyleTheodor HeussTheodor Heuss Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Journal of Politics Volume 15, Number 4Nov., 1953 Sponsored by the Southern Political Science Association Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.2307/2126537 Views: 4Total views on this site PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

Printing in the Mascarene Islands (Isle de France and Bourbon) from 1767 to 1810

Printing in the Mascarene Islands (Isle de France and Bourbon) from 1767 to 1810 Get access A. Toussaint, Ph.D. A. Toussaint, Ph.D. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research, Volume 21, Issue 64, May 1948, Pages 247–249, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2281.1948.tb01121.x Published: 12 October 2007

Sturm aus Isle de France

Annalen der PhysikVolume 122, Issue 1 p. 188-188 Miscellaneous Sturm aus Isle de France First published: 1839 https://doi.org/10.1002/andp.18391220122AboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article. Volume122, Issue11839Pages 188-188 RelatedInformation