Landscape Transformation under Slavery, Indenture, and Imperial Projects in Bras d’Eau National Park, Mauritius

ABSTRACT

The archaeology of Bras d’Eau National Park, Mauritius provides a case study of transformations in physical and social landscapes under the coercive labor regimes of slavery and indenture, and twentieth-century colonial and post-colonial environmental projects. This article considers the regional and domestic spatial practices in the Bras d’Eau site that, over the course of three centuries, transitioned from farm, to sugar plantation, to forestry crown lands, to national park. Archaeological analysis and archival documentation show that the material traces of each phase of occupation are layered in Bras d’Eau’s landscape like a palimpsest. The built infrastructure of the estate facilitated movement and access to broader island resources essential to later sugar production, but the organization of the estate was also embedded within emerging everyday Mauritian expressions of agency, health, and environment. Today, ancient roads, village ruins, and the forest together form a heritage of environmental and cultural preservation and loss.

KEYWORDS:

• Historical archaeology
• Indian Ocean
• diaspora
• landscape archaeology
• migration
• sugar plantations

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Lydia Wilson Marshall for inviting me to contribute this article to this special issue of landscape of slavery in Africa and for her patient editing. I also extend my appreciation to the two anonymous reviewers who provided detailed comments and encouragement in the revision process. Warmest thanks to Macario Garcia, Madeleine Gunter Bassett, and Jerome Handler for reading early versions of this article and to Adria LaViolette and Marina Carter for providing feedback and mentorship. I express my deep appreciation to Krish Seetah, Saša Čaval, Alessandra Cianciosi, Diego Calaon and the researchers at the Aapravasi Ghat Trust Fund for their continued support and advice in Mauritius. Thank you to all the dedicated students from the University of Mauritius, Stanford University and the University of Virginia who worked in Bras d’Eau. Lastly, this work was made possible by a research permit from Ministry of Agro Industry and Food Security of the Republic of Mauritius through National Parks and Conservation Services.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Julia Jong Haines is currently a doctoral candidate at the University of Virginia, Department of Anthropology. She has been working in Mauritius since 2012 with the Mauritius Archaeology and Cultural Heritage project.

ORCID

Julia Jong Haines http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3557-1842

Notes

1 Maps throughout this article were created using ArcGIS® software by Esri. ArcGIS® and ArcMap™ are the intellectual property of Esri and are used herein under license. Copyright © Esri. All rights reserved. For more information about Esri® software, please visit www.esri.com.

2 One arpent is approximately 1.04 acres or 4,220.87 square meters. There are 100 perches in one arpent.

3 Ayurveda, meaning “knowledge of life,” first emerged in the mid-second millennium B.C.E. Buddhists were observers of and contributed to Ayurvedic medicine through the first millennia of its development (Mishra et al. 2013, 469). Siddha medicine, practiced in south India by Tamil people, is similar to Ayurveda and emerged around the same time. Unani-tibb, a Greco-Arabic medical practice was brought to India around the twelfth century C.E. during the rise of the Mughal Empire. After Unani was brought to the subcontinent, exchange occurred between the two traditions in the form of indigenous medicinal drugs and ideologies (Siddiqi 1980; Mishra et al. 2013). Berger (2013) argues the direct association with Ayurvedic practices and Hinduism emerged during anti-colonial/Indian-nationalist movements in the first half of the twentieth century. Ayurveda came to be seen as a north Indian “Hindu” medical British hegemonic biomedicine culture through these movements, which also put Unani/Muslim and Ayruveda/Hindu in opposition to one another.

4 Gagnsoley literally translates to “getting sun.” Koutsoley translates, colloquially, to “sunburn.”

5 Grove (1996, 168–263) also argues conservation efforts on Mauritius began with physiocrat, Pierre Poivre, who studied Chinese, Indian, Zoroastrian and Dutch environmental knowledge systems, thus challenging western notions of cultural imperialism.

Additional information

Funding

This material is based upon work supported by the American Council of Learned Societies and Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Fulbright Association, Social Science Research Council, National Science Foundation [grant number 1536095], University of Virginia Library Scholars’ Lab, and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, University of Virginia. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of these funding institutions and organizations.