Réunion (known as Île Bourbon before 1848) is an island in the Indian Ocean that is an overseas department and region of France within the African region. Part of the Mascarene Islands, it is located approximately 679 km east of the island of Madagascar and 175 km southwest of the island of Mauritius. As of, it had a population of 910,985.[1] Its capital and largest city is Saint-Denis.
Before the arrival of French colonial subjects and immigrants in the 17th century, Réunion was an uninhabited island. Its tropical climate led to the development of a plantation economy focused primarily on sugar; slaves from East Africa were imported as fieldworkers, followed by Malays, Vietnamese, Chinese, and Indians as indentured laborers. Today, the greatest proportion of the population is of mixed descent, while the predominant language is Réunion Creole, though French remains the sole official language.
Since 1946, Réunion has been governed as a French region and thus has a similar status to its counterparts in Metropolitan France. Consequently, it is one of the outermost regions of the European Union and part of the eurozone;[3] it is, along with the French overseas department of Mayotte, one of the two eurozone areas in the Southern Hemisphere and in Africa. Owing to its strategic location, France maintains a large military presence on the island.
Name
The French took possession of the island in the 17th century, naming it Isle Bourbon after the House of Bourbon which then ruled France. To break with this name, which was too attached to the Ancien Régime, the National Convention decided on 23 March 1793[4] to rename the territory La Réunion ("réunion", in French, usually means "meeting" or "assembly" rather than "reunion"). This name was presumably chosen in homage to the meeting of the fédérés of Marseilles and the Paris National Guards that preceded the insurrection of 10 August 1792. No document establishes this, and the word "meeting" could have been purely symbolic.[5]
The island changed its name again in the 19th century: in 1806, under the First Empire, General Charles Decaen named it Isle Bonaparte (after Napoleon), though, in 1810, it became Isle Bourbon again. It was eventually renamed La Réunion after the fall of the July monarchy by a decree of the Provisional Government on 7 March 1848.[6]
In accordance with the original spelling and the classical spelling and typographical rules,
History
The island has been inhabited since the 17th century, when people from France and Madagascar settled there. Slavery was abolished on 20 December 1848 (a date celebrated yearly on the island), when the Second Republic that had been established months earlier by the February Revolution abolished slavery in the French colonies. However, indentured workers continued to be brought to Réunion from South India, among other places. The island became an overseas department of France in 1946.
Early history
Not much is known of Réunion's history before the arrival of the Portuguese in the early 16th century.[9] Arab traders were familiar with it by the name Dina Morgabin, "Western Island" (likely Daniyah/ Maghribīy).[10] The island is possibly featured on a map from 1153 AD by Al Sharif el-Edrisi. The island might also have been visited by Swahili or Austronesian (ancient Indonesian–Malaysian) sailors on their journey to the west from the Malay Archipelago to Madagascar.[9]
Bibliography
- James Rogers and Luis Simón. The Status and Location of the Military Installations of the Member States of the European Union and Their Potential Role for the European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP). Brussels: European Parliament, 2009. 25 pp.
External links
References
- Estimation de population par région, sexe et grande classe d'âge – Années 1975 à 2026 retrieved 2026-01-22^
- EU regions by GDP, Eurostat^
- Réunion is pictured on all Euro banknotes, on the back at the bottom of each note, right of the Greek ΕΥΡΩ (EURO) next to the denomination.^