A historical reconstruction of the making of a slave society in the Indian Ocean.

The island of Mauritius lies in the middle of the Indian Ocean, about 550 miles east of Madagascar. Uninhabited until the arrival of colonists in the late sixteenth century, Mauritius was subsequently populated by many different peoples as successive waves of colonizers and slaves arrived at its shores. The French ruled the island from the early eighteenth century until the early nineteenth. Throughout the 1700s, ships brought men and women from France to build the colonial population and from Africa and India as slaves. In Creating the Creole Island, the distinguished historian Megan Vaughan traces the complex and contradictory social relations that developed on Mauritius under French colonial rule, paying particular attention to questions of subjectivity and agency.

Combining archival research with an engaging literary style, Vaughan juxtaposes extensive analysis of court records with examinations of the logs of slave ships and of colonial correspondence and travel accounts. The result is a close reading of life on the island, power relations, colonialism, and the process of cultural creolization. Vaughan brings to light complexities of language, sexuality, and reproduction as well as the impact of the French Revolution. Illuminating a crucial period in the history of Mauritius, Creating the Creole Island is a major contribution to the historiography of slavery, colonialism, and creolization across the Indian Ocean.

"“Creating the Creole Island offers an exciting and innovative approach to slave history in the eighteenth century. It is an extremely valuable resource for scholars working on slave histories from a variety of disciplinary angles. Its primary objective of historicizing the process of ‘creolisation’ contributes an invaluable dimension to current debates on ethnicity and identity in postcolonial Mauritius.”" - Postcolonial Studies

"[P]owerful set of arguments about what it means to be a slave. . . . [A] compellingly detailed tale. . . . This is an important book of huge interest to Mauritian specialists and historians of the slave trade and slavery elsewhere, as well as scholars interested in questions of gender and identity." - American Anthropologist

"Megan Vaughan's study is a tour de force. . . . A truly splendid and wide-ranging book with ramifications well beyond Mauritius. . . .This is a highly engaging, lively book." - Statement of the Prize Committe for the Heggoy Prize from the French Colonial Historical Society