The Poverty of Archival Riches: Reconstructing Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Mauritian History

Scholars seeking to reconstruct the history of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Mauritius can draw on rich archival collections in Mauritius, the United Kingdom, and France. While the documents in these collections reveal a great deal about some aspects of colonial Mauritian history, they frequently shed little light on topics such as the sociocultural universe in which the island’s inhabitants lived, the transition from slave to indentured labor, creolization and religio-cultural syncretism, and the environmental impact of colonization. Archaeological research holds out the promise of providing insights into some of these hitherto hidden aspects of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Mauritian life, and highlights the need for interdisciplinary approaches to studying the multicultural societies that developed in the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century colonial plantation world.