X3 Reunion

[Senaqua Hildreth]

LaRunion,[note 1] officially Department of La Runion,[note 2] is an island in the Indian Ocean that is an overseas department and region of France. Part of the Mascarene Islands, it is located approximately 679 km (422 mi) east of the island of Madagascar and 175 km (109 mi) southwest of the island of Mauritius. As of January 2024[update], it had a population of 885,700.[1] Its capital and largest city is Saint-Denis.

La Runion was uninhabited until French immigrants and colonial subjects settled the island in the 17th century. Its tropical climate led to the development of a plantation economy focused primarily on sugar; slaves from East Africa were imported as fieldworkers, followed by Malays, Vietnamese, Chinese, and Indians as indentured laborers. Today, the greatest proportion of the population is of mixed descent, while the predominant language is Runion Creole, though French remains the sole official language.

Since 1946, Runion has been governed as a French region and thus has a similar status to its counterparts in Metropolitan France. Consequently, it is one of the outermost regions of the European Union and part of the eurozone;[3] it is, along with the French overseas department of Mayotte, one of the two eurozone areas in the Southern Hemisphere. Owing to its strategic location, France maintains a large military presence.

France took possession of the island in the 17th century, naming it Bourbon, after the dynasty that then ruled France. To break with this name, which was too attached to the Ancien Rgime, the National Convention decided on 23 March 1793[5] to rename the territory Runion Island. ("La Runion", in French, usually means "meeting" or "assembly" rather than "reunion". This name was presumably chosen in homage to the meeting of the fdrs of Marseilles and the Paris National Guards that preceded the insurrection of 10 August 1792. No document establishes this and the use of the word "meeting" could have been purely symbolic.)[6]

The island changed its name again in the 19th century: in 1806, under the First Empire, General Decaen named it le Bonaparte (after Napoleon), and in 1810 it became le Bourbon again. It was eventually renamed Runion after the fall of the July monarchy by a decree of the provisional government on 7 March 1848.[7]

In accordance with the original spelling and the classical spelling and typographical rules,[8] "La Runion" was written with a lower case in the article, but during the end of the 20th century, the spelling "La Runion" with a capital letter was developed in many writings to emphasize the integration of the article in the name. This last spelling corresponds to the recommendations of the Commission nationale de toponymie[9] and appears in the current Constitution of the French Republic in articles 72-3 and 73.

The island has been inhabited since the 17th century, when people from France and Madagascar settled there. Slavery was abolished on 20 December 1848 (a date celebrated yearly on the island), when the Second Republic abolished slavery in the French colonies. However, indentured workers continued to be brought to Runion from South India, among other places. The island became an overseas department of France in 1946.

The first European discovery of the area was made around 1507 by Portuguese explorer Diogo Fernandes Pereira, but the specifics are unclear. The uninhabited island might have been first sighted by the expedition led by Dom Pedro Mascarenhas, who gave his name to the island group around Runion, the Mascarenes.[12] Runion itself was dubbed Santa Apolnia after a favourite saint,[11] which suggests that the date of the Portuguese discovery could have been 9 February, her feast day. Diogo Lopes de Sequeira is said to have landed on the islands of Runion and Rodrigues in 1509.[citation needed]

By the early 1600s, nominal Portuguese rule had left Santa Apolnia virtually untouched.[12] The island was then occupied by France and administered from Port Louis, Mauritius. Although the first French claims date from 1638, when Franois Cauche [fr] and Salomon Goubert visited in June 1638,[13] the island was officially claimed by Jacques Pronis [fr] of France in 1642, when he deported a dozen French mutineers to the island from Madagascar. The convicts were returned to France several years later, and in 1649, the island was named le Bourbon after the French royal House of Bourbon. Colonisation started in 1665, when the French East India Company sent the first settlers.[12]

The French colonists developed a plantation economy founded on the cultivation of coffee and sugar by use of slave labor. From the 17th to the 19th centuries, French colonisation, supplemented by importing Africans, Chinese and Indians as workers, contributed to ethnic diversity in the population. From 1690, most of the non-Europeans on the island were enslaved. Of the 80,000 slaves imported to Runion and Mauritius between 1769 and 1793, 45 % was provided by slave traders of the Sakalava people in North West Madagascar, who raided East Africa and the Comoros for slaves, and the rest was provided by Arab slave traders who bought slaves from Portuguese Mozambique and transported them to Runion via Madagascar.[14]

On 19 March 1793, during the French Revolution, the island's name was changed to "La Runion" in homage to the meeting of the Federates of Marseille and the National Guards of Paris, during the march on the Tuileries Palace on 10 August 1792, and to erase the name of the Bourbon dynasty.[15]

The abolition of slavery voted by the National Convention on 4 February 1794, was rejected by La Runion, as well as by le de France (Mauritius). A delegation accompanied by military forces, charged with imposing the liberation of slaves, arrived on the island of Bourbon on 18 June 1796, only to be immediately expelled without mercy. There followed a period of unrest and challenges to the power of the metropolis, which no longer had any authority over the two islands. The First Consul of the Republic, Napoleon Bonaparte, maintained slavery there, which was never abolished in practice, with the law of 20 May 1802. On 26 September 1806, the island took the name of Bonaparte and found itself in the front line of the Franco-British conflict for the control of the Indian Ocean.

Following climatic catastrophes of 1806-1807 (cyclones, floods), coffee cultivation declined rapidly and was replaced by sugar cane, whose demand in France increased, due to France's recent loss of Saint-Domingue, and soon of the le-de-France (Mauritius). Because of its growth cycle, sugarcane is not affected by cyclones.

During the Napoleonic Wars, the island was invaded by British forces and its governor, General Sainte-Suzanne, was forced to capitulate on 9 July 1810. The island then came under British rule and was under British occupation until the end of the Napoleonic period.

La Runion was returned to the French under the Treaty of Paris of 1814. The slave trade operated openly again after the British occupation, and despite international condemnation, La Runion imported 2,000 slaves every month during the 1820s, mostly from the Arab Swahili coast or Quelimane in Portuguese Mozambique.[16]

In 1841, Edmond Albius' discovery of hand-pollination of vanilla flowers enabled the island to soon become the world's leading vanilla producer. The cultivation of geranium, whose essence is widely used in perfumery, also took off.From 1838 to 1841, Rear Admiral Anne Chrtien Louis de Hell was governor of the island. A profound change of society and mentality linked to the events of the last ten years led the governor to present three emancipation projects to the Colonial Council.

On 20 December 1848, Joseph Napolon Sbastien Sarda Garriga finally proclaimed the abolition of slavery (20 December was a holiday in La Runion). Louis Henri Hubert Delisle became its first Creole governor on 8 August 1852, and remained in this position until 8 January 1858.

After abolition, many of the foreign workers came as indentured workers. Slavery was replaced by a system of contract labor known as engags, which lasted from 1848 until 1864.[17] In practice, an illegal slave trade was conducted in which slaves were acquired from Portuguese Mozambique and the Zanzibar slave trade and then trafficked to Runion via the Comoros slave trade, officially called engags-workers to avoid the British Anti-Slavery Patrol.[18]

The opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 reduced the importance of the island as a stopover on the East Indies trade route [19] and caused a shift in commercial traffic away from the island. Europe increasingly turned to sugar beet to meet its sugar needs. Despite the development policy of the local authorities and the recourse to compromise, the economic crisis became evident from the 1870s onwards. However, this economic depression did not prevent the modernization of the island, with the development of the road network, the creation of the railroad and the construction of the artificial harbor of the Pointe des Galets. These major construction projects offered a welcome alternative for agricultural workers.

During the Second World War, Runion was under the authority of the Vichy regime until 30 November 1942, when Free French forces disembarked from the destroyer Lopard and took over the island.[20]

La Runion became a dpartement d'outre-mer (overseas dpartement) of France on 19 March 1946. INSEE assigned to Runion the department code 974, and the region code 04 when regional councils were created in 1982 in France, including in existing overseas departments which also became overseas regions.

Runion is an overseas department and region of France (known in French as a dpartement et rgion d'outre-mer, DROM) governed by article 73 of the Constitution of France, under which the laws and regulations are applicable as of right, as in metropolitan France.[27]

Already at the time of the India Route or Route des Indes, Runion was a French possession located between Cape Town and the Indian trading posts, although far from the Mozambique Channel. le de Bourbon (its name under the Ancien Rgime) was not, however, the preferred position for trade and military. Governor Labourdonnais claimed that le de France (Mauritius) was a land of opportunity, thanks to its topography and the presence of two natural harbours. He intended le de Bourbon to be a depot or an emergency base for le de France.[28]

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