– Many of these urban slaves/apprentices used the money from these illegal activities to purchase their freedom and that of their loved ones
SATYENDRA PEERTHUM
Historian, Lecturer, & Writer
This year as we are commemorating the 187th anniversary of the abolition of slavery, it is imperative to remember that in colonial Mauritius of the mid-19th century, the most common acts of individual and collective slave resistance were maroonage, theft, burglary, and manumission. During the last years of slavery and the apprenticeship period, these acts of resistance gradually intensified.
This was particularly the case in Port Louis, during the 1830s, where there was an increase in maroonage, theft, burglary, and other activities which were considered to be illegal by the colony’s British administrators and the Franco-Mauritian ruling elite. These determined acts of resistance of the urban slaves and apprentices became so widespread that it led to a partial breakdown in law and order. This fact is not surprising because, as Professor Megan Vaughan formerly from Oxford University accurately points out, slavery itself was the source of the law and order problem in colonial Mauritius.
Crime in Port Louis
During the 1830s, John Finiss, the police chief of Mauritius, reported that smuggling, theft, and gambling were rampant in Port-Louis and almost 2,000 rix-dollars (or 500 pounds sterling), which was a considerable amount of money in those days, changed hands everyday between the slaves/apprentices and the free coloureds. However, Finiss even admitted that police intelligence about these illicit activities was extremely limited. It is evident that the urban slaves/apprentices, in collaboration with a number of free coloureds, were involved in numerous clandestine activities which the colonial police knew very little about.
During the last years of slavery and the apprenticeship period, hundreds of slaves and apprentices were employed in the activities of Port Louis harbour. In 1828, according to the Commissioners of Eastern Inquiry, there were scores of government slaves who were employed as “caulkers, divers, and boatmen attached to the Port Department”. Six years later, it was reported that there were 929 urban slaves who worked on the wharfs and in the shipping activities of Port-Louis harbour.
In 1838, John Finiss reported that throughout the 1830s, many of these slaves/apprentices had been suspected of stealing merchandise which were being landed on the docks of that colonial port. The colony’s police chief explained, with a great deal of certitude: “The individuals employed on the wharfs, and in the boats for shipping, are for the most part of bad character and connected with a considerable number of persons of the same class, who aid them in removing their plunder, establishing themselves in the neighborhood of the Bazaar and wharfs, near which, there are a number of small lodgings, where they easily deposit their plunder, which I think might be materially checked by the ‘Bazaar Post’ and the ‘Marine Police’”.
Therefore, during the 1830s, these urban slaves/apprentices formed part of a network of smugglers who secretly removed these stolen goods from Port-Louis harbour and stored them in near-by private lodgings. These lodgings were located close to the Port-Louis marketplace where they were able to easily sell their contraband goods.
Theft & Burglary
Between 1829 and 1830, according to the records of the Protector of Slaves, most of the slaves who were prosecuted on charges of theft and burglary were found in Port Louis. It is evident that during the 1830s, burglaries and thefts, by the slaves and later the apprentices, were becoming very rampant in that colonial town. Many of these urban slaves/apprentices used the money from these illegal activities to purchase their freedom and that of their loved ones.
In 1838, the colony’s chief of police eloquently explained: “There is also a feeling amongst the apprentices in Port-Louis that it will be a dishonour to them if they do not effect their own emancipation before the period of general freedom arrives, there is consequently a great increase in domestic thefts and robberies which will increase rather than diminish”. Thus, it is obvious that these slaves and apprentices were using this money for the noble cause of freedom.
During this period, in Port-Louis, activities such as thefts, burglaries, gambling, and the smuggling of contraband goods were carried out, both by individuals and by networks of individuals which included the urban slaves/apprentices and the free coloureds. It is clear that there was a lot of close cooperation between these two segments of the colonial population, as partners in crime, which formed part of an informal urban black economy.
However, these types of clandestine activities were not only limited to Port-Louis because they were also very common in the rural districts. In general, however, the records of the Protector of Slaves clearly indicate that this type of socio-economic interaction between the enslaved and the free coloureds as well as their informal black economy was more widespread in Port Louis than in the rural districts of the island.