Description
Book SynopsisA historical reconstruction of the making of a slave society in the Indian Ocean.
Trade Review“
Creating the Creole Island is a riveting portrait of a slave-owning society. Megan Vaughan’s elegant narrative combines rich and ground-breaking historical analysis with acute theorizing of human subjectivity. It will be of compelling interest to anyone concerned with the emergence of our modern ‘creole’ world.”—Michael Lambek, author of
The Weight of the Past: Living with History in Mahajanga, Madagascar“Megan Vaughan has given us a vivid portrait of how a society was formed from the mixture of peoples and languages of eighteenth-century Mauritius. Slaves take the initiative here—one of the many new insights that
Creating the Creole Island brings to history, literature, and anthropology. And the book is a wonderful read besides.”—Natalie Zemon Davis, author of
Women on the Margins: Three Seventeenth-Century Lives“
Creating the Creole Island offers an exciting and innovative approach to slave history in the eighteenth century. It is an extremely valuable resource for scholars working on slave histories from a variety of disciplinary angles. Its primary objective of historicizing the process of ‘creolisation’ contributes an invaluable dimension to current debates on ethnicity and identity in postcolonial Mauritius.” -- Srilata Ravi * Postcolonial Studies *
"[P]owerful set of arguments about what it means to be a slave. . . . [A] compellingly detailed tale. . . . This is an important book of huge interest to Mauritian specialists and historians of the slave trade and slavery elsewhere, as well as scholars interested in questions of gender and identity." -- Clare Anderson * American Anthropologist *
"Megan Vaughan's study is a tour de force. . . . A truly splendid and wide-ranging book with ramifications well beyond Mauritius. . . .This is a highly engaging, lively book." * Statement of the Prize Committe for the Heggoy Prize from the French Colonial Historical Society *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix
Preface xi
1. In the Beginning 1
2. Engineering a Colony, 1735–1767 33
3. Enlightenment Colonialism and Its Limits, 1767–1789 56
4. Roots and Routes: Ethnicity without Origins 91
5. A Baby in the Salt Pans: Mothering Slavery 123
6. Love in the Torrid Zone 152
7. Reputation, Recognition, and Race 178
8. Speaking Slavery: Language and Loss 202
9. Métissage and Revolution 229
10. Sugar and Abolition 253
Notes 277
Works Cited 305
Index 329
