Sugar cane, the story of an island

From the Dutch to the French

The Dutch brought sugar cane to Mauritius in 1639, on a small scale, mainly to make arrack, a spirit distilled from molasses. Under French rule, Governor Mahé de La Bourdonnais, in office from the 1730s, expanded production and modernised techniques. The Villebague mill at Pamplemousses, commissioned in 1745, was one of the island's first modern sugar mills.

British expansion… and slavery

After the British conquest of 1810, sugar became the engine of the economy. That prosperity rested on the labour of enslaved people, brought notably from Madagascar and East Africa. Slavery was abolished on 1 February 1835, and planters received two million pounds sterling in compensation; the enslaved received nothing.

Indentured labourers

To replace the former slaves in the fields, the British brought in indentured labourers under contract. Between 1834 and 1920, almost half a million people arrived from India through the Aapravasi Ghat, the immigration depot in Port Louis, a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2006. Most worked on the sugar estates. Their descendants now make up a large share of the Mauritian population, and the arrival of indentured labourers is commemorated every 2 November, a public holiday.

From hundreds of mills to three

In the 19th century, mills multiplied: there were 296 around 1860. Consolidation then cut their number to about thirty in the 1940s, and to three still operating in 2020. Output rose from a few hundred tonnes in 1812 to more than 400,000 tonnes by the late 1940s. Until 2009, a protocol with the European Union guaranteed the purchase of quotas of Mauritian sugar at a fixed price; its end sped up the restructuring of the industry.

L'Aventure du Sucre

At Beau Plan, in Pamplemousses, the former sugar mill that closed in 1999 now houses L'Aventure du Sucre. The museum keeps much of the original machinery and traces the island's history, from the arrival of the Dutch to independence on 12 March 1968, through slavery and indenture. The visit ends with a tasting of unrefined sugars and rums.

On the road

During the harvest, roughly June to December, lorries piled with cane crowd the roads and a sweet smell hangs around the mills. Be patient behind the wheel!