Month: October 2023

An article written by Audrey Carotenuto, Historian

During the final century of slavery, the slaves working on Reunion island did always kowtow to their masters, patiently awaiting a hypothetical emancipation in a society that would suddenly become benevolent. The colonial violence they underwent was a daily reality that they attempted to protect themselves from.

Their acts of heroism, while perhaps not spectacular, involved ways of adapting to the ferocious constrains of a repressive society. From the very beginnings of the period, they thus perpetuated means of resistance in a perspective of permanent adjustment.

Three examples taken from the legal archives will be used to focus on the three main means of opposition to slavery and will highlight certain quantified and comparative findings around the final century of slavery.

The first important group is that of resistance through preservation. The slaves shared a common history of cultural uprooting; each element of preserved tradition, whether through dancing, singing or telling stories, was a victory in the face of the destruction of their identity. Certain woman, by preventing childbirth, refused to give birth to further violence. But it is physical preservation that is the most clearly visible in the archives, since this led to illegal acts.

The second group was that of resistance through escape: maroonage was the form of denial the best adapted to the island’s geography, filled with hostile and uninhabited crags; reflecting the inability of the newly-arrived Blacks to adapt or the nostalgia experienced by Madagascans, actions of escape might be impulsive, short-tem or permanent. Escape by sea, concerning mainly Madagascans, reflected the dream of returning to the land of their ancestors.

Finally, resistance through violence, involving deterioration of means of production or directly aimed at the settlers, covers all forms of violence applied by slaves attempting to break their chains, including self-inflicted violence.

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The Intercontinental Slavery Museum opened to the public on 4th September 2023 in Port-Louis (Mauritius), twelve years after the creation of the Truth and Justice Commission, set up with the aim of reconciling the Mauritian population with its history.

This new museum dedicated to slavery has been opened in the former military hospital of Port Louis. The building, constructed in 1740 under Mahé de Labourdonnais, Governor of Ile de France, was one of the first major constructions put up in this former French colony.

The location is highly significant. The building was constructed by slaves and bears the memory of this painful period of the island’s history.

The restoration project, covering several years, has been financed by the Mauritian government, donations from the heritage lottery, as well as contributions from France, Japan and the United States. Researchers and students from the University of Nantes and the Aquitaine Museum in Bordeaux contributed their know-how and expertise regarding the organisation of the different spaces in the museum.

The challenge of the scenography consisted in providing visitors with an immersive experience of the different atmospheres, enabling them to experience the intense emotions linked to this chapter of the island’s history. The aim was to give a voice to the slaves, reflecting aspects of their resistance, rather than the physical conditions of their day-to-day lives.

The experience is a multi-sensorial one, with exhibits including documents on the slaves’ culture and music. In one of exhibition rooms, loudspeakers have been set up to broadcast early Sega music that has never been recorded in the form of musical scores. In another room is exhibited an original copy of the Black Code, on loan to the museum from the Carnegie library in Curepipe. The document, drawn up under XIV, legislated on the condition of enslaved persons.

Among the exhibits, visitors can, notably, appreciate objects that belonged to slaves, unearthed during archaeological digs carried out in 2021 and 2022 in the old cemetery of Albion: buttons, tools made of bone, earrings and a rosary.

 

In particular, visitors are confronted with a somewhat troubling and moving image: 63 ethnographical busts created by Eugène de Froberville in 1846 in a plantation on Mauritius Island. These plaster faces were cast from those of slaves coming from Mauritius, Tanzania and the Comoros. The busts, property of the town council of Blois in France and conserved at the château of the town, are presented in digital format. An agreement has been signed between ISM Mauritius Ltd and Blois so that they may be exhibited in Port-Louis once all the conditions for their conservation at the Museum have been set up.

The current exhibition is in a pre-representation phase and is the basis of the final version of the future museum once it is ready.