The Tapestry of Old Mahebourg: People, Place, and Progress

A Story of Land and Legacy

By Sada Reddi

Visiting the different sites of old Mahebourg, one can only imagine all the people who lived and worked there in the past. Ruins of buildings, streets, roads, canals, and a wharf remind us of African, Mozambican, and Indian slaves, White, Coloured, and Indian artisans, Indian convicts, indentured labourers, and the White and Coloured proprietors who transformed that disregarded flat piece of land from Cent Gaulettes Road to the seacoast into what became known as the town of Mahebourg. Whoever they were, one needs to give some names to this heterogeneous group of people, although we can hardly put faces to their names unless we probe deeper into family albums.

Mahebourg Market. Pic – Vintage Mauritius

After the grid plan of the town had been mapped and the land allotted, either bought or rented to the inhabitants, land clearing by slaves enabled the first houses and buildings to emerge from the ground. Early government buildings sited at Pointe de la Colonie were functional. After 1810, the British administration not only made use of them but also added new buildings. By the 1840s, it was a quiet, small town with a buzzing commercial street, a river wharf, and a market.

The main commercial street, along Rue des Créoles, had a number of retail shops, owned by merchants such as the Decube, Gestas, Montille, Boete, Quesnel, Montille, and Fabien Rault. Shops belonging to Fayd’herbe and Adonsce were luxury shops for the elite, indicating the existence of a consumer culture. From these outlets, one can imagine women and men shopping for fabrics, hats, ribbons, and shoes for their social gatherings at Pastourel’s house or for balls and receptions held at the Robillard mansion. As indentured labourers grew in numbers on sugar estates, they provided a market for Indian goods and textiles.

Indian merchants and hawkers stepped in to supply the market and by the mid-nineteenth century, there were already 150 little Indian shops in town, mostly run by Muslim and a few Tamil merchants. There were also two pharmacies belonging to Baillace and Etienne. At Baillace pharmacy, newspaper subscribers could collect le Cernéen, La Balance, and the Government Gazette. When it was announced that a new publication, Le Mauricien, would appear on the 2nd of October 1833, subscribers had to turn to Mr. Font for their copy.

On the wharf, Rochecouste, Etienne, Pastourel, Fabien, and Desmazures owned warehouses to store sugar and other agricultural produce. Goods were loaded on boats and canoes, either ferried to villages along Grand Port Bay, or sent to or received from Port-Louis for their shops. A few of the proprietors also owned boats, ferries, and coasters. The wharf would have been busy with bags of goods being loaded or unloaded by slaves while Indian sailors, living in the nearby bancasal, would be operating the different vessels.

Some of the inhabitants living in the town were Brodelet, Poulet, Avice, Keating, Suran, Cheron, and Montille. There were a few Indians from Pondichéry such as Nayna, Pitchen, Maniacara, Saveriya, and Pachimoutou. The townsfolk had built houses made of wood, usually with one storey, in the middle of a yard surrounded by gardens and trees. They cultivated some crops to feed them throughout the year and reared animals: cows, pigs, and poultry. Some used the house frontage as a shop. With the continuing development of the town, the services of several artisans and other skilled workers were required. There were masons, sailors, carpenters, wheelwrights, blacksmiths, carters, but also tailors, seamstresses, and laundresses, all of them assisted by both skilled and unskilled slaves.

The anti-slavery laws

No one could live or survive without two or three slaves. Names of some of the slaves were Alexis, Marianne, Jean Louis, Coralie, Brigitte, Jeannot, Papillon, Cécile, Felix, Désiré, and Modeste. Alexis, who failed to give a shave to Mr Robillard because he was drunk, had impudently replied to his master that he could go to Mahebourg for his shave. He was condemned to receive 25 lashes from the whip.

In the 1830s, when the abolitionist John Jeremie was in Mauritius to implement the anti-slavery laws, slave owners opposed abolition. Volunteer corps were formed to maintain control over the slave workforce and mobilize against the British government. In Mahebourg, five inhabitants were arrested and imprisoned on a charge of collecting arms for an insurrection. They were Brodelet, Robillard, Keating, Fenaillet, and Grandemange from the elite class. There were several witnesses in the Grand Port case and among them were Saminaden Arlanda – mason; Favori – carpenter; Ladaube – butcher; Romarin Poisson – carpenter; and Pierre Thibault – cabinet maker. In Le Cernéen were published letters and petitions to support the accused. The petitioners deplored the fact that they were lodged in prisons in Port Louis together with hundreds of slaves, among whom one was awaiting execution. A rumour that they were chained in irons was quickly dissipated so that their reputation might not sink low among their slaves.

The 1830s was a period of great expectations among slaves that they would be free. It appears that they had become restless, increasingly defiant, and challenged orders from their owners. Proprietors regularly lodged complaints against them and they were severely punished. Le Cernéen too wrote about increasing slaves’ defiance of their owners in this period, but one should guard against such depictions because it was in the interests of slave owners to exaggerate slaves’ behaviour to oppose and delay emancipation. Nonetheless, it is well known that slaves always rejected their enslavement, and protests, both overt and covert, including marooning, were endemic to slavery.

There were several schools in the first half of the nineteenth century. There was a government school where George Clark was teaching. He was the one who discovered the skeletons of the Dodo at Mare aux Songes. A prize-giving day in 1854, unusually held in the Magistrate Court of Mahebourg, provides the names of pupils at school and hence the names of inhabitants of Mahebourg. The pupils were Adelcy Poisson, Aurele Poisson, J. Joseph François, David Saveriya, Honoré Fabien Rault, P. Eole Simonet, Cyril Lefevre, Canon Rasou, Arthur Avice, Evariste Michaud, Auguste Barbe, Céline Baptiste, Rosalina Poisson, Adonia Potage, Eugénie Lucile, Elmire Michaud, Élodie Rose, Héloïse Andore, and Evrestie Barbe.

After the abolition of slavery, many of the ex-apprentices cultivated small gardens, turned hawkers, were self-employed artisans, and many became fishermen, for there were a few fisheries and two of the proprietors were Aufrey and Etienne.

Indian immigrants

When Indian immigrants were first employed on Rivière la Chaux Sugar Mill is not known. But during the apprenticeship period, 1835-1839, apprentices and Indian labourers worked side by side, and later, more Indian labourers worked for Rivière la Chaux estate, later Villeneuve and Beau Vallon sugar estates. The area extending from L’Allée Gheude to and around the Catholic Church is mostly inhabited by Indians, mostly descendants of Indian indentured labourers. With more laborers in Mahebourg and during the early sugar boom, the town attracted Indian merchants and in 1845 there were around 150 Indian shops in the town, mostly Muslim merchants and a few Tamil merchants. Names like Mamoojee, Moolna, Dustgheer, Salejee, Atchia, Haboo, Natoo, Cassim, Bahamia, Mussajee, Mahmod, together with a few Tamil merchants.

In the 1850s, the great landowners and proprietors were given new responsibilities by the government. Two planters, P. Mollieres and A. Rochecouste, formed part of the committee presided over by the local magistrate to deliver licenses for restaurants, taverns, and distilleries. They also were members of the Comité des Pauvres (Committee of the Poor).

In 1854, the country was visited by cholera, and the two most affected areas with high mortality were Port-Louis and Mahebourg. The early cases occurred in Mahebourg from people coming from Port Louis. In Port Louis, the Health Committee opened a new cemetery in Roche Bois. In Mahebourg, the Health Committee was presided over by Robertson and the other members were the district doctor and two inhabitants, Mollieres and Montochio. Early measures included whitewashing houses with lime, and all pigs were removed to Ville Noire.

During French rule, Catholic religion was the official religion, but the different groups freely practised their own religions, whether they were slaves or Indians. This religious pluralism was maintained by the British in the Capitulation terms signed by the inhabitants, including Indians, particularly Tamils, who were allowed to retain their customs and religion.

Religious pluralism

Taking advantage of this religious pluralism, the inhabitants built several places of worship with or without assistance from the government. In the nineteenth century, a new Catholic church was built in 1849, although Avice the Commissioner had made an appeal for subscription since 1837. There was an Anglican Church for British soldiers and a Church of Scotland. After the cholera epidemic, which killed about hundreds of people in Mahebourg, Tamil merchants and proprietors—Sanassy, Kathan, Tasabady Chetty, Priambitaby Valaydon, and Pachimootto—appeared before notary Macquet in 1854 to buy a plot of land at Beauvallon to build a kovil (temple) to protect their village. They spelled out their objectives: to set up schools, to teach their language, to build a kovil, and to set up a solidarity fund to help those in difficulty because of diseases and epidemics and to preserve their culture and values. The kovil was completed in 1856 and in 1869, Muslim merchants built their own Mosque.

Today, Mahebourg may be the only town with places of worship for every religious and sub-religious group. It has remained a dynamic plural society as it was since its origins and almost a face-to-face society where most families know, meet, and encounter each other as they did 200 years ago.

Mauritius Times ePaper Friday 26 September 2025