A Local View on Global Climate and Migration Patterns: The Impact of Cyclones and Drought on the Routier Family and Their Slaves in Île Bourbon (Réunion), 1770–1820

Peabody, Sue

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-70028-1_6

Sue Peabody³

Part of the book series: Palgrave Series in Indian Ocean World Studies ((IOWS))

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Abstract

This multi-generational history of a family of planters and slaves in Île Bourbon (Réunion) and Île de France (Mauritius) explores the role of the physical environment on strategies of slave ownership and both masters’ and slaves’ vulnerability to cyclones and drought. Human settlement in the 1700s rapidly transformed the islands’ ecology through the introduction of alien species and the replacement of indigenous forest with less robust agriculture. Severe weather patterns periodically created famine conditions in the Indian Ocean rim, subjecting the vulnerable to debt peonage and enslavement. Torrential rains and severe droughts also affected the productivity of the islands’ arable land, which affected the capacity to feed the growing population of slaves and the success of Réunion’s experiments in export commodities.

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Notes

1.
Sue Peabody, Madeleine’s Children: Family, Freedom, Secrets, and Lies in France’s Indian Ocean Colonies (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017).
2.
Sue Peabody, “Furcy, la question raciale et le ‘sol libre de France’: une micro-histoire,” Annales: histoire, sciences sociales 64, no. 6 (2009): 1305–34.
3.
“All round the island the land slopes steeply upwards towards the centre, 61 per cent of the land surface being above 1000 m.” Anthony S. Cheke and Julian P. Hume, Lost Land of the Dodo: The Ecological History of Mauritius, Réunion and Rodrigues (London: A & C Black, 2010), 13–14.
4.
Ève describes the avalasse as “Période d’une dizaine de jours pendant laquelle la pluie tombe fortement et sans interruption. Dans certaines régions le sol est alors lavé jusqu’au tuf.” Prosper Ève, Le corps des esclaves de l’île Bourbon (Paris: PUPS—PU Paris Sorbonne, 2012), 70, footnote 41.
5.
Cheke and Hume, Lost Land of the Dodo, 35. See also Mireille Mayoka, Cyclones à La Réunion (La Réunion: Centre des Cyclones Tropicaux de la Réunion, Météo France , 1998).
6.
See Gwyn Campbell, “Environment and Enslavement in Highland Madagascar, 1500–1750: The Case for the Swahili Slave Export Trade Reassessed,” Chap. 3 of this volume.
7.
See Hideaki Suzuki , “Environmental Knowledge and Resistance by Slave Transporters in the Nineteenth-Century Western Indian Ocean,” Chap. 9 of this volume.
8.
Cheke and Hume, Lost Land of the Dodo, 104–09. Alessandro Stanziani (“The Cyclone, the Meteorologist, the Planter, and the Indentured Immigrant: The Strange Story of Selective Cyclone Damage in Réunion Island, 1840s–1870s,” Chap. 7 of this volume) shows the resilience of sugarcane to cyclones.
9.
Ève, Le corps des esclaves de l’île Bourbon, 246–53.
10.
Cheke and Hume, Lost Land of the Dodo, 35; S. Kamala Devi, “History of Cyclones on the Coromandel Coast with Special Reference to Tamil Nadu, 1800–1900” (PhD diss., Bharathidasan University, 2011), 12–18, 34–48, 76–77.
11.
Emmanuel Garnier and Jérôme Desarthe, “Cyclones and Societies in the Mascarene Islands 17th–20th Centuries,” American Journal of Climate Change 2 (2013), no. 1: 3–4. http://www.scirp.org/journal/ajcc. By their own admission, these records are incomplete and tend to be more systematic and reliable after 1789. The archives that Garnier and Desarthe consulted consist primarily of correspondence of the Directors of the English East India Company, 1700–1789, and then the Archives of the Colonial Office and Secretary of State for the Colonies, including Series C, 2C, 11C, 20C, 22C, 2C, and M of the Archives Départementales de La Réunion (hereafter ADR), in detail before about 1820.
12.
Garnier and Desarthe, “Cyclones and Societies,” 8.
13.
Devi, “History of Cyclones on the Coromandel Coast,” 78–79.
14.
Ève, Le corps des esclaves de l’île Bourbon, 65–75.
15.
Françoise Marguerite (born 1753 in Port Bourbon, Île de France) and Marie Elie (born 1761 in Saint Denis). Lucien-Jacques-Camille Ricquebourg, Dictionnaire généalogique des familles de l’île Bourbon (La Réunion) 1665–1810, vol. 3 (Mayenne: Imprimérie de la Manutention, 1983), 2589.
16.
Their first son, Marie Joseph Louise Emilie Routier, was born in 1765, but did not survive childhood. Two more sons, Augustin and Cyrille, were born in Île de France in 1766 and 1767. Ricquebourg, Dictionnaire, 3, pp. 2589–90.
17.
Ève, Le corps des esclaves de l’île Bourbon, 70. Garnier and Desarthe have determined that at least one of these cyclones was a Level Five by today’s classification. “Cyclones and Societies in the Mascarene Islands ,” 8–9. An Île Bourbon ordinance of 10 April 1771 ordered landowners to plant 100 feet of manioc per slave declared in the census and required that slaves receive at least a meal of manioc per day; these rations were to comprise one half of the slaves’ rations, the other have being the same amount of maize. Ève, Le corps des esclaves de l’île Bourbon, 63.
18.
“Personnel colonial ancien: Routier, Charles, major des milices à Bourbon 1746/1779,” ANOM COL E 358 bis. Charles Routier’s mother-in-law, Marie Panon Desblottières, had died in 1769, leaving her plantation and town house to Charles’s wife. The boys were at an appropriate age to begin their education in France , following a tradition upheld by the colonies’ elite families.
19.
In 1760, “a fearful famine swept away a third of the population of Bengal and about a third of the cultivated area of land relapsed into jungle.” Romesh Chunder Dutt, The Peasantry of Bengal (Calcutta: Thacker, Spink & Co., 1874), 196; Richard B. Allen, “A Traffic Repugnant to Humanity: Children, the Mascarene Slave Trade and British Abolitionism,” Slavery & Abolition 27, no. 2 (August 2006): 219–36; See also Gwyn Campbell, “Introduction: Bondage and the Environment in the Indian Ocean World,” Sravani Biswas and Subho Basu, “Environmental Disaster in Eastern Bengal : Colonial Capitalism and Rural Labour Force Formation in the Late Nineteenth Century,” and Steven Serels , “Famine and Slavery in Africa’s Red Sea World, 1887–1914,” Chaps. 1, 10, and 11 of this volume.
20.
R. Datta, “Crises and Survival: Ecology, Subsistence and Coping in Eighteenth-Century Bengal ,” Calcutta Historical Journal 18, no. 1 (1996): 5.
21.
Etat nominative des passagers embarqués pour les colonies, pendant les années 1769–1780, Port Lorient, ANOM COL F/5B/51. Marie Charles Eugénie Routier was born on 27 February 1773 “au bord du Brunoy.” Ricquebourg, Dictionnaire, 3, p. 2590.
22.
Evidence from the early nineteenth century shows that rice grown in Île Bourbon was traded for slaves in Zanzibar , for example.
23.
Recensement, Ile Bourbon, 1776, ANOM COL G/1/479. Routier also owned 64 head of beef, 1 sheep, 40 goats, 80 pigs, and 7 horses.
24.
Recensement, Ile Bourbon, 1776, A.N. COL G/1/479. This record totals the number of slaves but does not itemize individuals by name.
25.
Ricquebourg, Dictionnaire, 3, p. 2590.
26.
Ève, Le corps des esclaves de l’île Bourbon, p. 70.
27.
George D. Sussman , Selling Mother’s Milk: The Wet-Nursing Business in France, 1715–1914 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1982), 19. I deduce the Routier family’s dependence on enslaved wet nurses from the widespread practice among elite contemporaries in France and the rapid succession of Madame Routier’s many births (eight babies in 11 years).
28.
ADR 71C, “Grand Recensement, R. Recensement des Sieurs Routier Père, et Fils, habitants de la paroisse Sainte Marie pour l’année 1780.”
29.
Since the 1776 census did not itemize slaves by name, origin, and age, as did that of 1780, it is impossible to tell whether the reduction in that category of children was due to mortality or simply aging out of that category.
30.
ADR 71C, “Recensement des Sieurs Routier Père, habitants de la paroisse [Saint Marie] pour l’année 1784.” There is some damage at the extreme margins of this document, making it impossible to tally the ages of individuals, but the total numbers of slaves by age group and ethnicity are tallied at the end.
31.
Ève, Le corps des esclaves de l’île Bourbon, p. 70.
32.
Ève, Le corps des esclaves de l’île Bourbon, p. 66.
33.
ADR, Registre Paroissial de Saint-Denis, 1786 (2 MIEC11 [J38]). The baptismal record spells his name “Fursi” and the 1787 census was to spell it “Furci,” but all later records spell it “Furcy.”
34.
Letter from Furcy, Port Louis, Ile Maurice, to Louis Gilbert Boucher, place unknown, 15 May 1826, ADR 1Jp2007-1, no. 71. “Fursi” is the original baptismal spelling; all subsequent references spell his name “Furcy.” Furcy’s baptismal record describes him as “fils naturel [illegitimate son] of Magdelene” (2 MIEC11 [J38]). In 1826, he would write to a French magistrate and ally, “je suis né Colon Français et je suis fils d’un Français de naissance.”
35.
Ricquebourg, Dictionnaire, 3, p. 2589; ADR 1Mi28 (B23–27).
36.
ADR74C, “Recensement de dame V^ve Routier et des héritiers de feu Sr. [Routier] pour l’année 1787.”
37.
Like the environment around Cape Colony discussed by Nigel Worden in Chap. 5 of this volume (“The Environment and Slave Resistance in the Cape Colony”), Réunion’s mountainous interior encouraged hardy slaves to escape. By contrast, Réunionnais maroons did not have to contend with sometimes hostile indigenous societies. On the other hand, they could not tap into the resources of established communities, other than to remain hidden on other plantations for short-term relief.
38.
The four creole boys—Adrien, “Furci,” Ciayle (spelling?), and Charles—were all aged one or less, while the five creole girls all seem to have born around 1785: Sidaincie (spelling?),aged three; Joséphine, three; Vitoire, three; Adélaide, three; the fifth girl’s name and age are illegible, owing to damage to the paper.
39.
Five male children catalogued as cafre had apparently been recently purchased from the African mainland trade: Ratema (spelling?), aged 16; Léveillé, nine; Azore, nine; Jougna, eight; and a child whose name is indecipherable, eight. The three new malgache boys included Pinimime (spelling?), ten; Fortuné, eight; and Fidelle (sic), nine. A boy from India , Lamond (spelling?), 12, had also joined the Routier plantation. Three adult women from Madagascar also joined the rolls (Barbe, 49; Sace, 19; Élevie, 21).
40.
Claude Wanquet, Histoire d’une révolution: La Réunion 1789–1803, vol. 1 (Marseille: Jeanne Lafitte, 1981), 35. Interestingly, Wanquet’s chart does not include manioc cultivation.
41.
Wanquet, Histoire d’une révolution, 1, p. 699.
42.
Ricquebourg, Dictionnaire, 3, pp. 2364–65, 2590. The second son, Cyrille, married the older sister, Anne Adélaïde Rathier- Duvergé (aged 16), on 27 April 1790, followed several months later by his elder brother, Augustin, who married Thérèse-Agnès Rathier- Duvergé (aged 15) on 21 June 1790. ADR L 163–164, “Isle Bourbon, Année 1813, Quartier [blank], Paroisse, Saint Denis, Recensement de Monsieur Cyrille Routier”; ADR L 166/2, “Isle Bourbon, Année 1814, Quartier de Saint Denis, Recensement de Monsieur Cyrille Routier, habitant de Sainte Suzanne.”
43.
ADR L 168, “An 13^e [1804], Isle de La Réunion, Quartier Ste Marie, Déclaration de Routier, habitant”; ADR L183.2, “An [1805]. Isle de La Réunion, Quartier de Ste Suzanne, Déclaration de Cyrille Routier.” The widow gave Augustin at least six slaves, and Cyrille received Madeleine’s son, Maurice, and the aforementioned Blandine, probably as a gift to his wife.
44.
To avoid payment of the requisite (and expensive) manumission fees, which would make made them libres de droit, masters sometimes gave slaves tacit freedom, making them libres de fait. These libres de fait, also known in Martinique as libres de savane, sometimes continued to live on the master’s property, freed of labour obligations.
45.
J. Lambert, “Base de données SisFrance ‘Océan Indien’ et site Internet associé,” BRGM/RP 53711-FR (March 2005), 25, http://www.planseisme.fr/IMG/pdf/rapport_SisFrance_ ocean_indien.pdf
46.
Wanquet, Histoire d’une révolution, 1, p. 699. Unlike the 1765 eruption of Mount Macaturin discussed by Warren in Chap. 4 of this volume (“Volcanoes, Refugees, and Raiders: The 1765 Macaturin Eruption and the Rise of the Iranun”), the La Fournaise eruption did not directly cause loss of life or destruction of cropland.
47.
ADR L 12, quoted in Ève, Le corps des esclaves de l’île Bourbon, 68–69.
48.
Ève, Le corps des esclaves de l’île Bourbon, 66–69.
49.
Garnier and Desarthe, “Cyclones and Societies,” 5. Garnier and Desarthe list no cyclones for either Mauritius or Réunion between the late 1780s and 1806.
50.
Charles Grant de Vaux, The History of Mauritius: Or the Isle of France, and the Neighbouring Islands; from their First Discovery to the Present Time (London: W. Bulmer and Company, 1801), 568.
51.
ADR L 156/2, “Isle Bonaparte, Année 1810, Quartier Saint Denis, Paroisse, idem, Recensement de Joseph Lory.” The name of the ship is listed in ADR L 165, “Isle Bourbon, Année 1814, Quartier de Saint Denis, Déclaration de M. Joseph Lory.”
52.
A third of these children died at the age of 16 months; the rest are not chronicled further in Ricquebourg, Dictionnaire. The National Assembly passed revolutionary legislation permitting divorce for the first time in France on 20 September 1792; the capacity to divorce continued under the Code Civil (1804), though under more circumscribed conditions, and was suppressed altogether in 1816 under the Restoration. See Elaine Marie Kruse, Divorce in Paris, 1792–1804: Window on a Society in Crisis (PhD diss., University of Iowa, 1983); Theresa McBride, “Public Authority and Private Lives: Divorce after the French Revolution,” French Historical Studies 17, no. 2 (1992): 749–51. Ricquebourg, Dictionnaire, 3, pp. 2363–64, 2590–91. The Routier divorce was registered on 27 May 1795 in the Sainte Marie parish. Ricquebourg, Dictionnaire, 2, pp. 1515–16, and 3, p. 2590. Augustin took a new wife on 10 June 1800; she, too, would bear him four children , none of whom apparently survived to adulthood.
53.
Ève, Le corps des esclaves de l’île Bourbon, 70–71.
54.
ADR L 169. “An 12e, Isle de La Réunion, Quartier Ste Marie, Déclaration de M. Joseph Lory.”
55.
ADR L 142/1, “Saint Denis, Recensement de la Citoyenne Veuve Routier, pour l’année 4^me.”
56.
Date of burial: 16 January 1799. Ricquebourg, Dictionnaire, 2, p. 1753.
57.
Date of burial: 7 February 1799. Ricquebourg, Dictionnaire, 3, p. 2590.
58.
Garnier and Desarthe, “Cyclones and Societies,” 8. Mauritius saw devastating storms between 1806 and 1808 as well.
59.
Ève, Le corps des esclaves de l’île Bourbon, 70.
60.
ADR, L 109, “Lettre du commandant du quartier de Sainte-Suzanne au gouverneur du 6 mars 1807,” quoted in Ève, Le corps des esclaves de l’île Bourbon, 72.
61.
Ève, Le corps des esclaves de l’île Bourbon, 67, 70–72; Cheke and Hume, Lost Land of the Dodo, 109–10, 138; Garnier and Desarthe, “Cyclones and Societies,” 8.
62.
Ève, Le corps des esclaves de l’île Bourbon, 72. The hardest-hit districts were Saint Denis, Saint Pierre, Saint Joseph, Sainte Marie, Sainte Suzanne, and Saint Benoît. See also Prosper Ève, Naître et mourir à Bourbon à l’époque de l’esclavage (Paris, Saint Denis, and Bagneux: L’Harmattan, Université de La Réunion, and Numilog, 2000), 140–63. Wanquet, Histoire d’une révolution, 1, p. 699. I am basing the correlation to maize production on Wanquet’s map/graph for 1788, which admittedly is two decades out of date.
63.
ADR L 152/2, “Isle Bonaparte, Année 1808, Quartier Saint Denis, Paroisse [Saint-Denis], Recensement de la Dame Ursule Desblottières V^e Routier.”
64.
Louison and Sophie also appeared in the 1787 census; Caroline was born in the intervening years.
65.
Jean-François Géraud, “Des habitations sucreries aux usines sucrières, la ‘mise en sucre’ de l’île Bourbon, 1783–1848” (PhD diss., Université de la Réunion, 2002), 9; Garnier and Desarthe, “Cyclones and Societies,” 9; Cheke and Hume, Lost Land of the Dodo, 110.
66.
Cheke and Hume, Lost Land of the Dodo, 137.
67.
Laurent Dubois, A Colony of Citizens: Revolution and Slave Emancipation in the French Caribbean, 1787–1804 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004), 35–36.
68.
Géraud, “Des habitations sucreries,” 9, 183. Joseph Lory established a sugar refinery in Bras Panon, to the east of Saint André, around 1815–1816. Géraud, “Des habitations sucreries,” 32.
69.
Géraud, “Des habitations sucreries,” 190.
70.
Hubert Gerbeau, “Quelques aspects de la traite illégale des esclaves à l’île Bourbon au XIX^e siècle,” in Mouvements de populations dans l’Océan Indien (Paris: Champion, 1980), 276.
71.
Deryck Scarr, Slaving and Slavery in the Indian Ocean (New York: Saint Martin’s Press, 1998), 113–18; R. B. Allen, “Licentious and Unbridled Proceedings: The Illegal Slave Trade to Mauritius and the Seychelles during the Early Nineteenth Century,” Journal of African History 42 (2001): 102–03. My analysis here is also based on the many documents generated from the British confiscation of the Succès held in the National Archives of the United Kingdom, Kew, CO167/92.
72.
Marina Carter and Hubert Gerbeau, “Covert Slaves and Coveted Coolies in the Early 19th Century Mascareignes,” Slavery & Abolition 9, no. 3 (1988): 194–208.

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Sue Peabody

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Indian Ocean World Centre, McGill University, Montreal, QC, Canada
Gwyn Campbell

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Peabody, S. (2018). A Local View on Global Climate and Migration Patterns: The Impact of Cyclones and Drought on the Routier Family and Their Slaves in Île Bourbon (Réunion), 1770–1820. In: Campbell, G. (eds) Bondage and the Environment in the Indian Ocean World. Palgrave Series in Indian Ocean World Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-70028-1_6

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