The Dawn of Réunion's History

Since we're here with Mahé de la Bourdonnais, who served as governor general of the East India Company, let me tell you about Réunion's earliest colonial beginnings, before the Company established its coffee plantations and introduced slavery to the island. The truth is, there's very little known about Réunion before the 17th century. We know that Arab navigators passed by on their trading routes, and Portuguese sailors stopped here in the 16th century. It was actually the Portuguese who gave neighbouring Rodrigues its name. Here's the thing: nobody really saw the point of colonising this volcanic chunk of rock. The Dutch seized Mauritius, which unlike Réunion has natural harbours, but they used it more as a convenient stopover and supply base for ships heading to the Indies rather than developing a colony. The world's attention shifted toward the Americas, whose recent discovery changed global priorities. Plus, reaching the Indian Ocean took three times longer than sailing to the West Indies, so the French focused their colonial energy on their American territories instead. The French didn't pay it attention until 1638, and even then, it was almost an afterthought. They claimed this uninhabited island and named it Bourbon in honor of the reigning French dynasty, headed by Louis XIII. The French were betting everything on nearby Madagascar, where they'd established the trading post of Fort Dauphin. That gamble backfired spectacularly. Tropical diseases ravaged the Madagascar colonists, and many of the survivors were rebelling because colonial life was nothing like what they'd been promised! The authorities started shipping the troublemakers to the penal colony on the island across the water: Bourbon. A few years later, when officials finally checked on these exiled prisoners, they got quite a shock. Instead of finding corpses or miserable survivors, they discovered healthy, well-fed, remarkably happy people. No crocodiles lurking in the rivers, no yellow fever, no disease-carrying mosquitoes. This unexpected discovery sparked an idea in one man's mind: Louis Payen. In 1663, Payen decided to try his luck and landed on Bourbon with a friend, some Malagasy servants, and three women. After some time, the Malagasy people and the women fled into the mountains. When Louis Payen left the island, those Malagasy refugees stayed behind, and formed the roots of the Réunionese family tree. That's the story of the island's earliest days, before the East India Company arrived.