ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the importation of human labour into the Africa continent as a long and complex process that led to the creation of new nations, nationals, memories and memorials. The South Western Indian Ocean seaboard holds a number of islands reckoned to have originally been unoccupied until almost 400 years ago but that today boasts a population of mixed origins with the majority either from slavery or indenture origins. One of such islands is Mauritius where the abolition of slavery and the arrival of the Indian indentured labourers led to the initiation of what has now become known as the ‘Great Experiment’. This was the importation of people to provide labour that originally was provided by enslaved people and this labour experiment was meant to show the superiority and effectiveness of indentured labour over slave labour. Today Mauritius is a country of not only mixed origins but mixed and diversified heritage originating from different parts of the world that have been moulded in this island nation and now form the national estate to be managed at different levels.
