Réunion Island - A Bit of France in the Indian Ocean 2

Réunion Island – A Bit of France in the Indian Ocean

 Historians can’t say much about Réunion’s

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Reunion on World Map

history prior to the arrival of the Portuguese in the early sixteenth century.  It is known that some Arab traders were familiar with the island, which they called Dinna Morgabin.  The island is also possibly depicted on a 1153CE map created by Al Sharif el-EdrisiDiogo Fernandes Pereira, a Portuguese explorer, was possibly the first European visitor to arrive, around 1507.   Or it could be that the first European to sight the island

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Map of Reunion

was actually Dom Pedro Mascarenhas.  The details are unclear.  At any rate, the island was uninhabited.

Over a century later the island was occupied by France and administered from Port Louis,

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Port Louis

Mauritius.

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Mauritius Map

While the French claimed the island up to four years earlier, it wasn’t until 1642 when Jacques Pronis of France in 1642.  At this time island was named Île Bourbon after the French Royal House of Bourbon.

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House of Bourbon

Colonization started in 1665, when the French East India Company sent the first settlers.  “Île de la Réunion” was the name given to the island in 1793 to commemorate the union of revolutionaries from Marseille with the National Guard in Paris.  This renaming also eliminated a reference to the deposed Bourbon dynasty.  Later, the island would be renamed yet again, this time “Île Bonaparte”, after Napoleon Bonaparte.

The island came under the control of the British Navy in 1810 but was returned to France by treaty in 1815.  In 1848 the island was officially renamed “Île de la Réunion”.

Between the 17th and 19th centuries, a program of colonization by French citizens as well as the importation of Africans, Chinese, and Indians as slaves, a diversity of ethnicities was present from early times.  The colony abolished slavery on 20 December 1848. Afterward, many of the foreign workers came as indentured workers.

Réunion became a Department in Overseas France

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Overseas France Present Day

19 March 1946.  Saint-Denis

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Saint Denis Reunion Island

functions as the de-facto capital of the island.

Réunion island is 63 kilometres (39 mi) long; 45 kilometres (28 mi) wide; and covers 2,512 square kilometres (970 sq mi).   It is above a hotspot in the Earth’s crust.   The Piton de la Fournaise,

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Piton de la Fournaise

a shield volcano on the eastern end of Réunion Island,

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Piton de le Fournaise

rises more than 2,631 metres (8,632 ft) above sea level and is sometimes called a sister to Hawaiian volcanoes because of the similarity of climate and volcanic nature. It has erupted more than 100 times since 1640 and is under constant monitoring, most recently erupting on 14 July 2017.  Réunion shares its volcanic creator with the nearby islands of Mauritius and Rodrigues.

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Rodrigues Island Map

The Piton des Neiges volcano,

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