Probing the historical sources of the Mauritian miracle: sugar exporters and state building in colonial Mauritius

Abstract

Scholars increasingly agree that the ‘Mauritian Miracle’ was enabled by the country's significant level of state capacity. This article probes Mauritius's state-building past to identify the early sources of Mauritian state capacity. Specifically, I find that the close collaboration between the island's export-oriented sugar planters, known as the Franco-Mauritians, and colonial officials accounts for the growth of Mauritian state capacity during the nineteenth century. Following the island's first major commodity boom, in 1825, sugar planters pressed colonial officials to ‘regulate’ the island's labour supply, improve its transportation infrastructure, and undertake research and development initiatives. These efforts collectively promoted the growth of state capacity and laid the groundwork for the country's relatively capable state. The influence of Mauritius's export-oriented coalition on state building may shed light on the country's comparative success to other African countries, where export-oriented coalitions have been rare both historically and in the contemporary era.

[Sonder les sources historiques du miracle mauricien: les exportateurs de sucre et la construction des bâtiments dans les colonies de l'Etat de l'île Maurice.] De plus en plus, les chercheurs s'accordent à dire que le « miracle mauricien » a été activé par le niveau important du pays par sa capacité d'État. Cet article fait un bilan du domaine de construction dans le passé par l'État Mauricien afin d'identifier les sources préalables de capacité pour l'État mauricien. Plus précisément, je trouve que la collaboration étroite entre les planteurs de canne à sucre de l'île orientés vers l'exportation, lesquels étaient connus sous la désignation de Franco-Mauriciens et des fonctionnaires coloniaux, compte pour la croissance de la capacité de l'État mauricien au cours du dix-neuvième siècle. A la suite de l'explosion de la principale marchandise en 1825, les planteurs de sucre ont fait pression sur les autorités coloniales de « régulariser » les conditions de la main d'œuvre sur l'île, d'améliorer ses infrastructures de transport, et d'entreprendre des initiatives de recherche et développement. Ces efforts ont collectivement contribué à promouvoir la croissance de la capacité de l'État et jeté les bases d'état relativement capables pour le pays. L'influence de la coalition d'exportation de l'île Maurice sur l'édification de l'État peut apporter de la lumière sur le succès comparatif du pays par rapport à d'autres pays africains, où des coalitions axées sur l'exportation ont été rares à la fois historiquement et à l'époque contemporaine.

Mots-clés: L'île Maurice; les exportations de sucre; l'explosion des matières premières; les coalitions; l'édification de l'État; le développement politique

Keywords:

• Mauritius
• sugar exports
• commodity booms
• coalitions
• state building
• political development

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Richard Allen, Bill Storey, and the journal's anonymous reviewers for valuable suggestions on prior versions of this paper.

Notes

A recent noteworthy example was the rioting by the island's marginalised Creole community in 1999, an episode infused with racial and class difference (Guardian, 24 February 1999).

An arpent is the landholding measure used in Mauritius. One arpent equals 1.043 acres.

Sugar planters were so concerned with securing an adequate labour supply that they revolted when, in 1832, John Jeremie, a known sympathiser to abolition, was appointed as the colony's advocate-general. Sugar elites mobilised with ‘armed volunteer bodies’ and reduced ‘the lawful government to a mere shadow, and … had effectually taken military possession of [Port Louis]’ (Jeremie 1835, pp. 26–28). Jeremie was forced back to England, only to be returned again to Mauritius by the Colonial Office. His second tenure was no more auspicious: lacking support from local colonial officials, he resigned his post in 1833.

Indians did have legal rights and filed thousands of complaints against their employers during the 1860s in particular. Most complaints were for late or non-payment of wages, something of obvious benefit to planters, whose labour costs then accounted for 30% of the value of sugar exports (Allen 1999, pp. 67–71, Carter 1995, pp. 201–211). Such contractual violations were easy to demonstrate, and judgments overwhelmingly favoured labourers. But Indians secured convictions on more contentious issues like assault at dramatically lower rates (see the data in Carter 1995, p. 211). Planters tended to win such cases.

In the early 1860s, the Chamber of Agriculture asked the government to reform mortgage laws and provide a detailed system of land registration in order to facilitate secured lending to planters, as capital was then scarce. The government complied (Lamusse 1964b, p. 360).