ABSTRACT
Contemporary Mauritian society has been marked by two conceptions of the state that have taken place and directly succeeded each other; the French colonial administration that preceded English colonisation, which was established after the Treaty of Paris (1814). French colonial institutions have been preserved, in particular the colonial assembly and municipalities. The social categories of Mauritian settlement were determined by census differentiations which evolved with each census and finally settled on a duality of “general population,” and the origins of East Asian migration – Indian, Chinese and Arab migration, some of which have governed parts of India – while other migrations have crossed African trade and trade networks, as well as the Indian Ocean due to their advance in shipping. Today, it is the religions synonymous with “civilisations” that structure Mauritian society and its distinction of origin of migrations. From mid-17th to early 20th centuries, the two major changes introduced by the British colony have simultaneously concerned the production and operating ratios of the former East India Company by the introduction of the sugar economy and the generalisation of the wage system substitute for slave labour. The capitalist model of the former East India Company gave birth to the sugar plantation economy based on the inequality of polarised world trade in the north of the planet.
