African Studies and African Country Resources @ Pitt: Réunion

The collection addresses the significance of islands in the Atlantic economy of the eighteenth century, the exploration of the Pacific, the important role played by islands in the process of decolonisation, and island-oriented developments in postcolonial writing. Islands were often seen as natural colonies or settings for ideal communities but they were also used as dumping grounds for the unwanted, a practice which has continued into the twentieth century. The collection argues the need for an island-based theory within postcolonial studies and suggests how this might be constructed.

Uninhabited by humans, the Mascarene Islands of the Indian Ocean were once home to an extraordinary range of birds and reptiles. But the discovery of the three isolated islands in the 1500s, and their colonization in the 1600s, led to dramatic ecological changes. This fascinating book provides the first full ecological history of the Mascarene Islands as well as the specific story of each extinct vertebrate, accompanied by Julian Hume’s superb color illustrations.

The islands of Madagascar, Mauritius, Reunion, the Comoros, and the Seychelles form a region that has a particular cultural identity because of the varied mixture of populations that have settled there and the dominant influence of French colonialism. This survey concentrates on the period since the Second World War, when most of the islands achieved independence, except for Reunion and Mayotte, which maintain a regional status within the French Republic. The rich cocktail of cultural and linguistic influences surveyed is situated in relation to the contemporary political and social context of the islands and their marginal status within the global economy.