{"id":20401,"date":"2018-07-30T05:31:16","date_gmt":"2018-07-30T09:31:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.escapeartist.com\/?p=20401"},"modified":"2021-04-19T11:18:29","modified_gmt":"2021-04-19T16:18:29","slug":"the-french-ocean","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.escapeartist.com\/blog\/the-french-ocean\/","title":{"rendered":"The French Ocean"},"content":{"rendered":"

Saint-Denis, R\u00e9union, France, Indian Ocean.<\/em>\u00a0The Indian Ocean is the world’s third-largest (after the Pacific and Atlantic, larger than the fourth, the Arctic) and far less known than its two big brothers. Eighteen countries currently border it, with the ancient land of India so predominant that the ocean itself is named after it.<\/p>\n

Yet there is another country that has, for centuries, dominated the ocean far more than India ever did – a country that doesn’t border it but lies thousands of miles away in Europe: France. So much so that it should be more appropriately labeled the French Ocean.<\/p>\n

Most people think that Western colonialism and imperialism ended in the three decades following World War II; that the term “Western colonial power” is a quaint anachronism. This is not true of France, which has maintained its worldwide colonial empire by direct or devious means right through to today.<\/p>\n

From St. Pierre & Miquelon off Newfoundland, Canada;\u00a0to St. Martin, St. Bart’s, Martinique, and Guadeloupe in the Caribbean; to French Guiana in South America;\u00a0to Corsica in the Mediterranean;\u00a0to New Caledonia, Wallis & Futuna (between Fiji and Samoa), Tahiti & French Polynesia, and Clipperton off the south coast of Mexico in the Pacific – the sun never sets on the French Empire.<\/p>\n

(These are outright colonies owned by France \u2013 the list doesn’t include the countries of Francophone Africa, over which France still exercises various yet substantial degrees of control:\u00a0 e.g., Brazzaville Congo, Central African Republic, Gabon, Cameroun, Benin, Burkina Faso, Ivory Coast, Mali, Niger, Guinea, and Senegal.)<\/p>\n

Yet, it is in the Indian Ocean that French colonial influence most clearly dominates an entire region.<\/p>\n

There are other players, of course.\u00a0Australia owns the small isolated islands of Cocos-Keeling and Christmas, as well as the uninhabited sub-antarctic islands of\u00a0McDonald-Heard.<\/p>\n

India owns the Andaman and Nicobar Islands in the Bay of Bengal, and the Laccadive (or Lakshadweep) Islands off its west coast.<\/p>\n

South Africa owns the uninhabited sub-antarctic islands of Marion and Prince Edward, the site of a suspected nuclear weapons test explosion performed for Israel on September 22, 1979 (called the Vela Flash, after the name of the U.S. satellite that detected it).<\/p>\n

Great Britain owns the Chagos Archipelago, a group of tiny atolls and one main island, Diego Garcia, which it leases to the U.S. for a significant military air and naval base.<\/p>\n

The Maldive Islands form an independent Islamic “Republic” \u2013 the scare quotes because the same families have ruled the place for centuries.\u00a0Being a British Protectorate from 1887 to 1965 had little or nil impact. It’s composed of dozens of small atolls, many of which have been converted into scuba-diving resorts.<\/p>\n

So now let us turn to France’s portion. Before we take a closer look, note (see the map above) this includes the largest of the sub-Antarctic islands, Crozet and Kerguelen, plus the smaller islets of Amsterdam and St. Paul.\u00a0These are all uninhabited and are so remote that, although Crozet and Kerguelen contain more birdlife than any other place on earth, National Geographic has never had an article on them.<\/p>\n

Here is the Western Indian Ocean:<\/p>\n

\"TheMauritius and the Seychelles were given independence (1968 and 1975, respectively) after being British crown colonies since Waterloo. Prior to 1815, they had been French possessions \u2013 and weirdly, the Brits made no effort to supplant French culture and language with their own.<\/p>\n

European explorers found the islands uninhabited.\u00a0The Dutch named Mauritius (mo-<\/em>rish<\/em>-ee-us<\/em>) after Prince Maurits of Nassau in 1598, but abandoned their settlement by 1710 after they had exterminated a large bird unique to the island, the Dodo.<\/p>\n

By the 1730s, the French colonized it, followed by the Seychelles (say<\/em>-shulls<\/em>) in the 1750s \u2013 naming them after Jean Moreau de S\u00e9chelles, Louis XV’s Minister of Finance who financed the colonization.<\/p>\n

They proceeded to populate them with Black African slaves.\u00a0When the Brits took over, they freed the slaves and imported thousands of indentured laborers from India and China, especially to Mauritius where there were large sugar cane plantations.\u00a0They made little effort to teach them English.<\/p>\n

So even though the French ruled Mauritius for 80 years and the Seychelles for 60, followed by over 120 years of British rule for each, the folks there still prefer to speak French. How did those imperialist guys in Paris do this?<\/p>\n

One word:\u00a0R\u00e9union<\/em>.\u00a0It’s pronounced\u00a0ray-yoon-yawn.\u00a0It’s an island the size of Rhode Island (about a thousand square miles) between Mauritius and Madagascar, which the French don’t consider a territory or colony but an integral part of France, like Brittany or Provence.\u00a0Or what Hawaii is for the U.S.\u00a0Except it’s 6,000 miles away on the other side of the world.<\/p>\n

The Portuguese were the first to discover it in 1513, finding it uninhabited, naming it Santa Apollonia (after Apollonia, the Catholic patron saint of dentistry, which is a little odd), and kept on sailing east.<\/p>\n

The French showed up in 1638, and by 1649 the descriptions of the island’s untouched beauty persuaded Anne of Austria, mother of and regent for Louis XIV (who was then 11 years old), to officially claim it with the new name Ile Bourbon (the name of the French Royal Family).<\/p>\n

When the French East India Company started growing coffee there after 1715, African slaves were brought in by the shipload, along with laborers from Madagascar, India, Malaya, and China.\u00a0During the French Revolution in 1793, the folks operating the guillotines decided to dump the hated Bourbon name and call it R\u00e9union after the joining of the Marseilles revolutionaries with those of Paris a few months earlier (which enabled the revolution’s success).<\/p>\n

By the Treaty of Paris in 1815, the French had to cede Mauritius and the Seychelles to the Brits, but in a fit of English magnanimity were allowed to keep R\u00e9union.\u00a0They spent the rest of the 19th\u00a0century using it as their base to reconstruct the French Ocean.<\/p>\n

Their first move, immediately after the Treaty of Paris, was to claim the 200-acre sandbank of\u00a0Tromelin<\/em>\u00a0(after the chevalier de Tromelin, a French naval captain from the 1770s) to the north of R\u00e9union.<\/p>\n

They progressively colonized the Comoros starting in the 1840s.\u00a0Then they targeted British Madagascar. By 1883, they got the Brits to sell out the Great Red Island.<\/p>\n

They then proceeded to encircle Madagascar with tiny colonial possessions. Look at the Western Indian Ocean map again.<\/p>\n

They nabbed the\u00a0Gloriosos<\/em>\u00a0(two small coral islands and three rocks within a reef) in 1892,\u00a0Juan de Nova<\/em>\u00a0<\/em>(less than two square miles, named after a Portuguese explorer who first saw it in 1501),\u00a0Bassas<\/em>\u00a0(Portuguese for shoal)\u00a0da India<\/em>\u00a0<\/em>(ten rocks inside a reef washed over at high tide), and\u00a0Europa<\/em>\u00a0(ten square miles, after a British ship in 1774) – all three in 1897.<\/p>\n

These four, together with Tromelin, are called the\u00a0Iles Eparses<\/em>, the Scattered Islands, and remain France’s colonial possessions today.<\/p>\n

All during this, they made every effort to worm their way back into the culture and economy of the Seychelles and Mauritius \u2013 establishing Catholic schools which taught French, providing scholarships for study in France, subsidizing French businessmen, and underwriting French banks.<\/p>\n

It went on unceasing decade after decade, an amazing attempt of imperialist perseverance in a region the rest of the world cared and knew little about.\u00a0And it was all run through R\u00e9union.<\/p>\n

The island is unique \u2013 not just in the Indian Ocean, but the world.\u00a0It has no native culture, like Tahiti and French Polynesia.\u00a0The population is a polyglot mix, with everyone coming from somewhere else and never developing a culture of their own.<\/p>\n

The Seychellois and Mauritians have done so, but not the R\u00e9unionnais, as the people call themselves.\u00a0They are\u00a0French<\/em>, the place is just France-in-the-tropics, with bistros and baguettes and a million Renaults causing enormous traffic jams.\u00a0The difference is the stunning physical gorgeousness.<\/p>\n

It is a volcanic island studded with deep extinct craters covered in lush foliage and a myriad of waterfalls pouring wispily down their walls.\u00a0A very active volcano, the Piton de la Fournaise (The Furnace), erupts frequently and spectacularly, with giant streams of lava flowing into the ocean. The last eruption started just this last April and is continuing. This photo was taken on July 13:<\/p>\n

\"TheMuch of the island is like a huge botanical garden.\u00a0One third is covered by preserved native forest. Everywhere you look is a profusion of flowers \u2013 orchids, hibiscus, heliconia, bright red poinciana flame trees, purple jacaranda trees, yellow trumpet lilies, frangipani, and bougainvillea.\u00a0Everyone’s home is surrounded by them.<\/p>\n

The beaches are magnificent, with waves that attract surfers from all over the world. The breezes that sweep up the hills above the beaches attract paragliders worldwide, as do the lagoons offshore for scuba divers.\u00a0Then there’s the deep-sea fishing and mountain canyoneering.<\/p>\n

Which makes me think of two people I met, Jean-Francois and Petra.<\/p>\n

Jean-Francois hails from a small town south of Paris, is a flight attendant for a regional airline called Air Austral, and as such has been living in R\u00e9union for six years.\u00a0Every opportunity he gets, he treks into one of the “cirques,” or crater amphitheaters, and explores.<\/p>\n

“There are forests in some of the deep ravines that have never been touched by man,” he says.\u00a0 “There is always something new to experience.\u00a0In six years, I have not seen all the island.”\u00a0Then again, there’s also para-penting (paragliding) at St. Leu, the endless parties with the beach bunnies at St. Gilles-les-Bains, the charming mountain towns like Hellbourg, the thermal baths of Cilaos (see-la<\/em>-oos) up in the high plains of the interior. Jean-Francois is never bored in R\u00e9union.\"Consumer<\/a><\/b><\/span><\/p>\n

Petra always is.\u00a0She’s from Vienna, Austria, married to a Frenchman, and all she can think of is Washington, D.C.\u00a0For four years, her husband was the bodyguard for the French Ambassador to the U.S.\u00a0It was non-stop receptions and soirees and diplomatic events, constant mingling with the Washington power elite and the cream of the ambassadorial community in the world’s most important city.<\/p>\n

It’s all she can talk about.\u00a0All she can think about is how much she wishes she were there again and how bored, terminally bored, she is here with her husband now assigned in R\u00e9union.\u00a0She’s a very nice and attractive lady \u2013 she’s the manager of the small hotel where my son Jackson and I are staying in R\u00e9union’s capital of St. Denis \u2013 and it’s all so pointlessly sad.<\/p>\n

There was just no way to rescue Petra from her determination to be unhappy in a real paradise.<\/p>\n

For that’s what R\u00e9union is.\u00a0A French-made, French-preserved, totally French paradise.\u00a0You’ve got to hand it to them. You’ve also got to admit, sometimes imperialism and colonialism work.<\/p>\n

This is a marvelous and entrancing place on our planet, yet so little known. You owe it to yourself as an Escape Artist to consider exploring it. Here\u2019s more enticement. [Note: I took these pictures.]<\/p>\n

R\u00e9union is renowned for its waterfalls:<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

\"TheThe homes always are be-flowered:<\/p>\n

\"TheThe beach at St. Gilles-les-Bains is always busy (but never crowded):<\/p>\n

\"TheAnd lava from The Furnace is always flowing or threatening to.\u00a0Here’s the BBC news photo of the eruption last April:<\/p>\n

\"TheAnd here’s Jackson on an earlier flow from 2002:<\/p>\n

\"TheSee why I think you should escape there yourself?<\/p>\n

Upcoming Wheeler Expeditions \u2013 click for details on each:<\/p>\n

September 13-October 2: Hidden Central Asia<\/a><\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

October 8-October 18: Hidden Holy Land<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

November 3-November 10 & November 10-November 17: Himalaya Helicopter Expedition<\/a><\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

Click here to get advance notice of expeditions you can join & stunning photos of Once-in-a-Lifetime Adventures<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Jack Wheeler is the founder of\u00a0Wheeler Expeditions<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

This article was published in the Escape Artist Weekly Newsletter on July 30, 2018. If you would like to\u00a0subscribe\u00a0to the newsletter, please click here.<\/a><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Saint-Denis, R\u00e9union, France, Indian Ocean.\u00a0The Indian Ocean is the world’s third-largest (after the Pacific and Atlantic, larger than the fourth, the Arctic) and far less known than its two big brothers. Eighteen countries currently border it, with the ancient land of India so predominant that the ocean itself is named after it. Yet there is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":366,"featured_media":20402,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"content-type":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"footnotes":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[19894,25224,8899,5138,8902,8903,8890,2476,2079,8896,8901,8900,8898,3221,8897,25222,8894,25223,8895,3778],"acf":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.escapeartist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/image1-5.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.escapeartist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20401"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.escapeartist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.escapeartist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.escapeartist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/366"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.escapeartist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20401"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.escapeartist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20401\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44630,"href":"https:\/\/www.escapeartist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20401\/revisions\/44630"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.escapeartist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20402"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.escapeartist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20401"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.escapeartist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20401"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.escapeartist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20401"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.escapeartist.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=20401"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}