Timeline Mauritius
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Mauritius is a small Indian Ocean archipelago of
four islands, 1200 miles off the coast of East Africa. The capital
is Port Louis. It is a part of the Mascarene Islands that includes
Reunion and Rodrigues. Reunion is a French territory. It is
officially divided into four ethnic groups: Hindus, Muslims,
Chinese, and the remaining "general population," and has nearly
always had a prime minister from the Hindu majority.
(SFC, 6/24/96, p.A8)(SFC, 3/14/98, p.C1)(AFP,
3/30/12)
c42Mil BC A bird ancestral to the
dodo flew from Africa about this time to the Mascarene Islands east
of Madagascar. By 1681 the dodo was extinct.
(SFC, 3/1/02, p.A2)
c26Mil BC Two separate species of dodo evolved.
One on Mauritius and the other on Rodrigues.
(SFC, 3/1/02, p.A2)
1511 Portuguese sailors first
reached the unsettled Mascarene Islands (Mauritius, Reunion and
Rodrigues). They discovered the dodo bird and killed many for sport.
(NH, 11/96, p.24)(SSFC, 12/9/01, p.C9)
1599 Jacob Cornelius Van Neck
returned to Holland from the Mascarene Islands. A narrative of the
Dutch voyage first mentioned the dodo bird.
(NH, 11/96, p.24)
1605 The first scientific
description of the dodo bird was made by the Dutch botanist Carolus
Clusius from an observation of a dodo at the home of the anatomist
Peter Paauw.
(NH, 11/96, p.24)
1681 The dodo bird was last
seen on Mauritius. The dodo bird became extinct on Mauritius. In
2005 scientists reported the discovery of a complete skeleton of the
bird on Mauritius.
(SFC, 7/7/96, BR p.5)(NH, 11/96, p.24)(SFEC,
6/21/98, Z1 p.8)(SSFC, 12/25/05, p.A2)
1693 The French explorer
Francois Leguat spent several months on Mauritius and looked hard
for a dodo bird, but found none.
(NH, 11/96, p.26)
1746 The solitaire of Reunion,
a flightless pigeon, was gone by this year.
(NH, 11/96, p.24)
1755 The last specimen of a
dodo bird, a stuffed but rotted relic, was burned at the Ashmoleum
Museum at Oxford, England. In 1996 by David Quammen authored The
Song of the Dodo: Island Biogeography in an Age of Extinctions. In
2003 Clara Pinto-Correia authored “Return of the Crazy Bird.”
(www.complete-review.com/reviews/divsci/pintocc.htm)
1790s The solitaire of Rodrigues, a flightless
pigeon, was last seen.
(NH, 11/96, p.24)
18th cent Mauritius was settled by the French. The
island was seeded with sugar and slaves were brought from Africa to
work the plantations.
(SFC, 6/24/96, p.A8)
1810 The British wrestled the
island from France. Indians were brought in as indentured laborers
and later waves of Chinese immigrants arrived.
(SFC, 6/24/96, p.A8)
1836 May 9, HMS Beagle with
Charles Darwin departed Port Louis, Mauritius.
(MC, 5/9/02)
1847 Mauritius, a British ruled
island nation, issued the two-pence “Post Office” Blue Mauritius
postage stamp along with a similar one penny orange stamp. They
became very rare and in 1904 Britain’s King George V acquired a Blue
Mauritius for £1,450. In 2008 Helen Morgan authored “Blue Mauritius:
The Hunt for the World’s Most Valuable Stamps.”
(WSJ, 8/9/08, p.W9)
1940 Dec 9, Illegal Jewish
immigrants to Haifa were deported to Mauritius.
(MC, 12/9/01)
1945 Aug 25, Jewish
immigrants were permitted to leave Mauritius for Palestine.
(chblue.com, 8/25/01)
1965 Nov, The British Indian
Ocean Territory (Biot) was created by detaching the Chagos island
group from Mauritius and other small islands from the Seychelles,
then both British colonies. Mauritius was given £3m in compensation;
the following year, Britain signed a military agreement with the US
leasing it the largest island, Diego Garcia, for 50 years.
(www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1636549,00.html)
1968 Mar 12, The British-ruled
African island of Mauritius became an independent country within the
Commonwealth of Nations and many Europeans left the country. GDP per
person was about $200. By 2008 it rose to $7,000 per person.
(SFC, 6/24/96, p.A8)(SFC, 7/1/97, p.A9)(SSFC,
12/9/01, p.C9)(AP, 3/12/08)(Econ, 10/18/08, p.58)
1972 Mauritius set up an
export-processing zone on the recommendations of Jose Poncini,
economist, watchmaker and island historian.
(WSJ, 7/14/98, p.A11)
1982 Mauritius became the 1st
African country to vote an opposition party into office. Anerood
Jugnauth (b.1930) became prime minister.
(SFC, 6/24/96, p.A8)(Econ, 9/27/03, p.46)
1986 A US military base on the
Mauritius island of Diego Garcia became fully operational and was
intensely involved in 1990 when Iraq invaded Kuwait. In the 1960s
and 1970s Britain destroyed houses, slaughtered animals, and turfed
out some 2,000 inhabitants from the Chagos islands to Mauritius and
the Seychelles.
(Reuters, 4/16/07)
1986 The Reunion island volcano
Piton de la Fournaise erupted. The lava cooled into bizarre
formations that became a tourist attraction.
(SFC, 3/14/98, p.C1)
1987 Mauritius opened a stock
exchange.
(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R42)
1988 Mauritius formed a
National Computer Board to spur technology.
(SFC, 10/28/02, p.E6)
1992 Mauritius launched itself
as a financial center.
(Econ, 2/24/07, SR p.6)
1994 Jun 15, Mauritius
established its 16,000-acre Black River Gorges National Park.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_River_Gorges_National_Park)
1995 Anerood Jugnauth and his
Socialist Movement lost elections to Labor Pary leader Navin
Ramgoolam, who formed a coalition government with Berenger’s
Mauritian Militant Movement (MMM).
(SFC, 6/24/96, p.A8)
1996 The population of
Mauritius was about 1.2 million people.
(SFC, 6/24/96, p.A8)
1998 Mar 9, The Reunion island
volcano Piton de la Fournaise erupted but did not threaten any of
the population.
(SFC, 3/14/98, p.C1)
1999 Feb 18, A popular reggae
singer was arrested for smoking pot at a rally to legalize
marijuana. He died 3 days later under police custody and riots
ensued across the island.
(SFEC, 3/7/99, p.T14)
1999 Nov, It was reported that
the worst draught in 95 years forced authorities to limit water in
Port Louis, the capital, to 6 hours per day. The remaining 1.2
million residents of the island nation were limited to one hour a
day for water.
(SFC, 11/6/99, p.A24)
2001 Mauritius textile worker
wages reached $1.47 cents an hour compared with 37 cents in
Madagascar.
(WSJ, 1/2/02, p.A4)
2002 Mauritius President Cassam
Uteem resigned because he disagreed with a draft bill on fighting
terrorism.
(AFP, 3/30/12)
2003 Sep 30, Mauritius PM
Anerood Jugnauth resigned and was replaced by his deputy, Paul
Berenger. Jugnauth took up the ceremonial roll of president a few
days later.
(Econ, 9/27/03, p.46)
2003 Oct 7, Anerood Jugnauth
(b.1930) became president of Mauritius.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anerood_Jugnauth)
2005 Jan 1, The 1974
Multi-Fiber Arrangement (MFA), which had restricted Chinese textile
exports, ended. This forced Cambodia to face fierce competition from
rival exporters. This led to the loss of some 30,000 jobs in
Mauritius.
(www.ers.usda.gov/AmberWaves/February06/Features/feature2.htm)(Econ,
2/19/05, p.42)(Econ, 10/18/08, p.58)
2005 Mar 31, India's PM said
India and Mauritius are moving toward a free trade agreement to
boost the island's threatened trade portfolio and help India tap
into African markets.
(AP, 3/31/05)
2005 Jun 19, Mauritius expected
that by year's end, or soon afterward, to become the world's first
nation with coast-to-coast wireless Internet coverage, the first
country to become one big "hot spot."
(CT, 6/19/05)
2005 Jul 4, Mauritius'
opposition Social Alliance claimed victory as counting from the
Indian Ocean island's weekend election neared an end.
(AP, 7/4/05)
2008 Apr 20,
In Mauritius a conference of the 14-nation Southern African
Development Community (SADC) opened for talks on poverty and food
prices.
(AFP, 4/19/08)
2009 Feb 16, China’s Pres. Hu
Jintao arrived in Mauritius to sign deals worth more than 270
million dollars to fund infrastructure projects on the Indian Ocean
island. The next day he pledged continued aid to Africa
despite his country's economic downturn, and wrapped up a
four-nation visit to the continent.
(AFP, 2/17/09)
2009 Aug 29, The EU signed a
temporary trade pact with Mauritius, Seychelles, Zimbabwe and
Madagascar calling for tariffs on European goods to be removed over
the next 15 years.
(AP, 8/29/09)
2010 Sep 21, A new report,
"Mauritius: The trade in primates for research," said wild
long-tailed monkeys sustain broken limbs and other injuries when
trappers catch the primates and transfer them to breeding farms on
the island nation of Mauritius. The report said Mauritius justifies
the catching of wild monkeys on the grounds that the long-tailed
macaque is not native, is a pest and is not deserving of
conservation concerns.
(AP, 9/21/10)
2010 In Mauritius Navinchandra
Ramgoolam became prime minister following elections.
(AFP, 3/30/12)
2011 Jan 10, In Mauritius
Michaela McAreavey (27), an Irish beauty queen and daughter of a
high-profile Gaelic football manager, was found strangled to death
at the five-star Legends hotel on her honeymoon. Three hotel
employees were soon charged with her murder. On Jan 18 a 4th
suspect, security guard Dassen Narainen (26), was arrested.
(AFP, 1/11/11)(AP, 1/12/11)(AFP, 1/19/11)
2012 Mar 30, Mauritius
President Anerood Jugnauth, who has been in open conflict with PM
Navinchandra Ramgoolam, said he was resigning to join the
opposition. Jugnauth will be replaced by Vice President Monique
Ohsan Bellepeau, who is in the same party as the PM.
(AFP, 3/30/12)
2013 Mar 30, In Mauritius
rivers of water rose swiftly in a pedestrian underpass leading to
the waterfront and an underground car park in Port Louis. At least
11 people were killed in the flash flooding. The next day PM
Navinchandra Ramgoolam blamed climate change for the floods.
(AP, 4/1/13)
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