Abstract
This chapter explores the monetary history of Mauritius in order to examine the legacy of colonialism on this island nation. The economic and symbolic use of currencies became a site of resistance to, in succession, the Dutch, French and British colonizers. This resistance was encoded in two symbolic uses of money—auctioneering and jewellery. The retention of the Spanish dollar as the unit of account for auctions reflected the ambivalent position of the Franco-Mauritian elite under British rule. Similarly, Indian indentured labourers symbolically subverted their subaltern position by refashioning British coins into the “guirni necklace”. Both of these practices have been continued in altered forms into the post-colonial period.
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Notes
- 1.
R.B. Allen, Slaves, Freedmen and Indentured Laborers in Colonial Mauritius (London, Cambridge University Press, 1999).
- 2.
H.K. Bhabha, ‘Of Mimicry and Man: The Ambivalence of Colonial Discourse,’ October 28 (1984) 125–33.
- 3.
R.J.C. Young, Colonial Desire: Hybridity in Theory, Culture and Race (London, Routledge, 1995).
- 4.
M. Vaughan, Creating the Creole Island: Slavery in Eighteenth Century Mauritius (Durham, NC, Duke University Press, 2005).
- 5.
Bhabha, ‘Of Mimicry and Man.’
- 6.
A. Appadurai, ‘Introduction: Commodities and the Politics of Value,’ in The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective, A. Appadurai, ed. (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1988) 5.
- 7.
M. Carter, Servants, Sirdars & Settlers: Indians in Mauritius, 1834–1874 (New Delhi, Oxford University Press, 1995).
- 8.
H.K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London and New York, Routledge, 1994).
- 9.
See: See LyThioFane Pineo, Ile de France, 2 Vols. (Moka, Mahatma Gandhi Institute, 1993/1999); Baron d’Unienville, Statistique de l’Ile Maurice et ses Dépendances, Vol. 1 (Paris, Gustave Barba, 1830).
- 10.
J.M. Paturau, Histoire Economique de l’Ile Maurice (Les Pailles, Henry & Cie, 1988) 277.
- 11.
P. de Sornay, Isle de France—Ile Maurice: Sa Géographie, son Histoire, son Agriculture, ses Industries et ses Institutions (Port Louis, General Printing and Stationery Co., 1950) 299.
- 12.
d’Unienville, Statistique de l’Ile Maurice et ses Dépendances, 243.
- 13.
In the early nineteenth century, 1 Spanish dollar was valued at 3 livres 12 sous in the colony while in Europe its value stood at 5 livres 5 sous. The livre was struck at Tours and known as la livre tournois and was subdivided into 240 deniers.
- 14.
d’Unienville, Statistique de l’Ile Maurice et ses Dépendances, 243. It was actually the livre coloniale which was only legal tender in the French colonies.
- 15.
d’Unienville, Statistique de l’Ile Maurice et ses Dépendances, 244.
- 16.
During the war, seven French corsairs operated in the Indian Ocean, bringing in takes of around 11 million livres, Paturau, Histoire Economique de l’Ile Maurice, 77.
- 17.
From 1793 to 1802, more than 51 corsair ships were involved and they brought 126 prizes, estimated at £2.5 million. A. Toussaint, Port Louis: Deux siècles d’histoire, 1735–1935 (Port Louis, La Typographie Moderne, 1936).
- 18.
Robert Chalmers, A History of Currency in the British Colonies (London, H.M. Stationery Office, 1893) 361.
- 19.
See Allen, Slaves, Freedmen and Indentured Laborers in Colonial Mauritius.
- 20.
See Paturau, Histoire Economique de l’Ile Maurice.
- 21.
The Treaty of Capitulation can be viewed in the annex of Ly-Thio-Fane Pineo, 1993.
- 22.
To date the Civil Code of Napoleon still forms the basis of law and several niche areas, such as notarial deeds, still use French, while all subsequent laws and administrative functioning are in English.
- 23.
Smith-Simmons, Modern Mauritius, 18.
- 24.
A. Hamilton-Gordon, Mauritius: Records of Private and Public Life, 1871–1874, Vol. II (Edinburg, R. R. Clark, 1894) 176.
- 25.
T. Salverda, The Franco-Mauritian Elite: Power and Anxiety in the Face of Change (New York, Berghahn Books, 2015) 103.
- 26.
Appadurai, ‘Introduction,’ 13.
- 27.
P.L. Bernstein, The Power of Gold: The History of an Obsession (New York, Wiley, 2012).
- 28.
Ibid.
- 29.
Paturau, Histoire Economique de l’Ile Maurice, 117–18.
- 30.
N. Mehrotra, ‘Gold and Gender in India: Some Observations from South Orissa,’ Indian Anthropologist 34:1 (2004) 27–39.
- 31.
See A. Jahangeer Chojoo, ‘The Yamse and Horse-Racing: Integration and Contestation in a Stratified Society,’ in Angaje: Explorations into the History, Society and Culture of Indentured Immigrants and their Descendants in Mauritius, Vol. 3 (Port Louis, AGTF, 2013) 67–88.
- 32.
The Savings Bank had some 18,000 depositors in 1911, and the sum deposited was small compared to the assets held by Indo-Mauritians. See A. Macmillan (ed.), Mauritius Illustrated: Historical and Descriptive, Commercial and Industrial Facts, Figures, and Resources (New Delhi, Asian Educational Services, 2000 reprint of 1914 edition) 258.
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Jahangeer Chojoo, A., Beebeejaun, G. (2019). Dollar, Sovereign and Rupee: Money in Mauritius. In: Serels, S., Campbell, G. (eds) Currencies of the Indian Ocean World. Palgrave Series in Indian Ocean World Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-20973-5_9
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