Abstract
Throughout the three decades after 1810 Port Louis never lost its power to fascinate and almost overwhelm newcomers with the sights, sounds and smells of frequently brutal squalor. The ‘filthy and miserable State of Nudity in which the Blacks are there allowed to go about’1 was remarked on by many and repellent to most. To Lady Cole, Governor’s wife arriving in 1823, the chaotic throng of multi-coloured humanity seemed like a dream from the Arabian Nights. But even she could ‘never get used to seeing the wretched creatures treated like beasts of burden, many of them loaded with chains!’.2
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Notes
James Backhouse, Narrative of a Visit to the Mauritius and South Africa (London, 1844), p. 11.
Kuczynski, Demographic Survey, Vol. 2, p. 770, Table 15.
Kuczynski, Demographic Survey, Vol. 2, p. 770, Table 15.
Kuczynski, Demographic Survey, Vol. 2, p. 770, Table 15.
Rev. Patrick Beaton, Creoles and Coolies, or, Five Years in Mauritius, 1859, 2nd edn (Kennikat, Port Washington, NY, 1971), p. 14.
Ibid., p. 13.
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© 1996 Anthony J. Barker
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Barker, A.J. (1996). Slavery and Freedom in Port Louis. In: Slavery and Antislavery in Mauritius, 1810–33. Cambridge Commonwealth Series. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-24999-2_9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-24999-2_9
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