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Can I read Where We Belong: Maroon Villages and National Memory in Mauritius on EtoBox?

Where We Belong: Maroon Villages and National Memory in Mauritius by Justin Gest is a book available to read on EtoBox.

What is Where We Belong: Maroon Villages and National Memory in Mauritius about?

This chapter examines the case of Mauritius. After arriving as slaves imported by Dutch colonists in 1641, African-origin Creoles accounted for three-quarters of Mauritius’s population until the 1820s. Over nearly two centuries of slavery, fugitives persistently established maroon settlements in Mauritius’s forbidding woodlands. When the British finally emancipated slaves in 1834, Mauritius recruited indentured laborers from India, who swiftly outnumbered people of African origin and came to define the island. Outnumbered before they could claim independence or nationhood, Creoles now embrace the legacy of maroons’ defiance as their claim to sovereignty over an island they never did rule. This chapter examines the segregated history of social relations in Mauritius, exploring how Creole identity is understood in two maroon villages, Le Morne and Chamarel—rare symbols of Creole self-determination in an Indian-dominated country.

Author
Justin Gest
Publisher
Oxford University Press
Published
2022
Language
EN

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