History of Rodrigues History of Rodrigues

Like Mauritius, Rodrigues was probably visited by Arab navigators in the 10th century. The first Europeans to discover the island were the Portuguese. Diego Rodriguez was the first to land there in 1528 and gave it its name. No settlement on the island.

Rodrigues was rediscovered by Dutch navigators in the early 17th century. In 1601, Admiral Wolphart Harman was the first to stop there. He stayed there for 4 days in search of drinking water, without success. Rodrigues was then visited by several European navigators who did not stay there any longer. In 1644, the Dutch East India Company sent a flotilla to survey the possibilities of exploiting ebony wood. A small group stayed there for 3 months before returning to Mauritius, empty-handed. It was during the second attempt of colonization of Mauritius by the Dutch (1644-1710) that Rodrigues was for the first time permanently inhabited.

Several French Huguenots, refugees in Holland after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes by Louis XIV in 1685, decided to found a Protestant community on an isolated island at the end of the world. They chose Rodrigues, where François Leguat and his seven Huguenot companions landed on 30 April 1691. They lived in a wooden camp for two years before leaving the island.

After the passage of the Huguenots, Rodrigues remained deserted until the arrival of the French. The first attempt of French colonization was a failure, but it allowed Tafforet to write a very nice book about his stay: Relation de l'Isle Rodrigues

It was not until the arrival of François Mahé de La Bourdonnais in 1735 that Rodrigues took its first steps. The rapid development of the Isle of France (Mauritius) requiring more and more food, the administrators decided to exploit the meat of the giant tortoises of Rodrigues. The massacre of the carapace continues until their complete disappearance around 1795. After the extinction of the turtles, a few concessions are given to the first settlers who want to stay to cultivate a little corn and to breed. Other settlers, led by Philibert Maragon, join them from Reunion and Madagascar, to develop the culture of sweet potatoes, manioc, rice, as well as the breeding of chickens, turkeys and pigs. These first French occupants benefited from the intense slave trade in progress at that time and welcomed the ancestors of the island's current population.

On 27 December 1807, Rodrigues was taken by the British. On their arrival, Rodrigues had 22 settlers and 82 slaves, all French speaking and attached to their culture. The population increased, notably following the sending of African slaves freed by the English to the island. The population thus increased to more than 200 people in 1825.

During the 19th century, the English invested very little in the development of Rodrigues which they confined to the role of granary of Mauritius. A regular maritime link was established to transport to Mauritius the foodstuffs produced in Rodrigues: salted fish, livestock, poultry, corn, manioc and beans. The island remained overwhelmingly populated by descendants of African slaves, all of them Catholics, and had only 3,300 inhabitants in 1901.

The beginning of the 20th century is not marked in Rodrigues by any major event or change. Some technical progress was made such as the opening, in September 1901, of a cable communication station and the construction, from 1925 to 1930, of the first road linking Port Mathurin to Saint-Gabriel. As the State owned 90% of the land, the Rodriguans had to confine themselves to small conceded plots and could not develop large modern farms

The Second World War was more significant. For fear of a Japanese attack, the British sent troops to Rodrigues to protect the island and its cable communication station. The island was never attacked, but suffered from serious rationing. Economically, the salaries of the English and Rodriguan soldiers brought in a significant amount of foreign currency to the island. At the end of the war, Port Mathurin already looked like a small town and the population of Rodrigues reached 11,885 inhabitants. After the war, the authorities concentrated all their efforts on Mauritius, while Rodrigues was practically forgotten in the economic and social development plans.

The island suffered from numerous cyclones that destroyed crops and houses. In order to cope with the poverty, it was decided to employ the people left behind in the administration. This indirect help to the population leads to a positive "rodriganisation" of the administration.

From the 1950s onwards, the State agreed to a few development initiatives, small in scale compared to those implemented in Mauritius at the same time. In 1949, in order to replace the Zambézia (a steamer serving the island) by a new 2,200-ton ship, the Mauritius, the harbour was dredged and the quays were enlarged. And in 1959, the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, the first on the island, opened its doors. The first flight on September 10, 1972 was a major event for the people of Rodrigues

But the main development initiative of the second half of the 20th century was undoubtedly the agricultural land terracing programme carried out from 1955 to 1968 by the English agronomist Philip Hotchin. Despite these efforts in favour of agriculture, Rodrigues quickly ceased to be the granary of Mauritius, and was content to painfully provide for its own needs. The island then fell victim to an evil that had been eating away at it since the beginning of the century: overpopulation. With a natural growth rate of 3.45% in the 1960s, the island's population reached 34,828 in 1995. Despite a slowdown in population growth since the 1980s and significant emigration to Mauritius, the island remains overpopulated in relation to its natural resources, especially drinking water.

If the economic initiatives of the second half of the 20th century have hardly left their mark on Rodrigues, the same cannot be said of the political events. Fundamentally against independence and in favour of English rather than Hindu domination, the island has never stopped fighting to reduce its dependence on Mauritius and gain autonomy. This battle was won in 2003 thanks to the establishment of the Rodriguan Regional Assembly, which has been running the "country" ever since.

Since the beginning of the year 2000, Rodrigues has decided to become a 100% ecological island. Thus, Rodrigues has banned the use of plastic bags on an island where it is still more pleasant to go shopping with a woven bag made of local vacoas. An initiative that continues with the banning of plastic plates and cutlery, as well as a greater awareness of the environment among young people. The regional government wants to make Rodrigues a "garden island".