Réunion
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
For other uses, see Reunion (disambiguation).
| La Réunion | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Overseas region & department of France | |||
| |||
.svg) | |||
| Country |  France | ||
| Prefecture | Saint-Denis | ||
| Departments | 1 | ||
| Government | |||
| • President of Regional Council | Didier Robert | ||
| Area | |||
| • Total | 2,511 km2(970 sq mi) | ||
| Population (Jan. 2013)[1] | |||
| • Total | 844,994 | ||
| • Density | 340/km2(870/sq mi) | ||
| Time zone | RET (UTC+04) | ||
| ISO 3166 code | RE | ||
| GDP (2013)[2] | Ranked | ||
| Total | €16.7 billion (US$22.2 bn) | ||
| Per capita | €19,854 (US$26,369) | ||
| NUTS Region | FRA | ||
| Website | Prefecture Regional Council Departmental Council | ||
Réunion (French: La Réunion, IPA: [la ʁeynjɔ̃] (
listen); previously Île Bourbon) is a French island with a population of 844,994 inhabitants (as of January 2014[1]) located in the Indian Ocean, east of Madagascar, about 175 kilometres (109 mi) southwest of Mauritius, the nearest island.
listen); previously Île Bourbon) is a French island with a population of 844,994 inhabitants (as of January 2014[1]) located in the Indian Ocean, east of Madagascar, about 175 kilometres (109 mi) southwest of Mauritius, the nearest island.
Administratively, Réunion is one of the overseas departments of France. Like the other four overseas departments, Réunion is also one of the 27 regions of France, with the modified status of overseas regions, and an integral part of the Republic with the same status as those situated on the European mainland.
Réunion is an outermost region of the European Union and, as an overseas department of France, a part of the Eurozone.[3]
Contents
[hide]History[edit]
Before the arrival of the Portuguese in the early sixteenth century, there is little European knowledge of Réunion's history.[4]Arab traders were familiar with it by the name Dina Morgabin.[5] The island is possibly featured on a map from 1153 AD by Al Sharif el-Edrisi.[6] The island may also have been visited by Swahili or Malay sailors.[4]
The first European discovery of the area was made around 1507 by Portuguese explorers, but the specifics are unclear. The uninhabited island may have been first sighted by the expedition led by Dom Pedro Mascarenhas, who gave his name to the island group around Réunion, the Mascarenes.[7] Réunion itself was dubbed Santa Apolónia after a favorite saint,[5] which suggests that the date of the Portuguese discovery may have been February 9, her saint day. Diogo Lopes de Sequeira is said to have landed on the islands of Reunion and Rodrigues in 1509.[6]
Over a century later, nominal Portuguese rule had left Santa Apolónia virtually untouched.[7] The island was then occupied by France and administered from Port Louis,Mauritius. Although the first French claims date from 1638, when François Cauche and Salomon Goubert visited in June 1638,[8] the island was officially claimed by Jacques Pronis of France in 1642, when he deported a dozen French mutineers to the island from Madagascar. The convicts were returned to France several years later, and in 1649, the island was named Île Bourbon after the House of Bourbon. Colonization started in 1665, when the French East India Company sent the first 20 settlers.
"Réunion" was the name given to the island in 1793 by a decree of the Convention with the fall of the House of Bourbon in France, and the name commemorates the union of revolutionaries from Marseille with the National Guard in Paris, which took place on 10 August 1792. In 1801, the island was renamed "Île Bonaparte", after Napoleon Bonaparte. The island was invaded by a Royal Navy squadron led by Commodore Josias Rowley in 1810, who used the old name of “Bourbon”. When it was restored to France by the Congress of Vienna in 1815, the island retained the name of "Bourbon" until the fall of the restored Bourbons during theFrench Revolution of 1848, when the island was once again given the name “Réunion”.
From the 17th to the 19th centuries, French colonization, supplemented by importing Africans, Chinese, and Indians as workers contributed to a range of ethnicities. Starting from 1690, most of the non-Europeans were enslaved. The colony abolished slavery on 20 December 1848. Afterwards, many of the foreign workers came as indentured workers. The opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 reduced the importance of the island as a stopover on the East Indies trade route.
During the Second World War, Réunion was under the authority of the Vichy Regime until 30 November 1942, when Free French forces took over the island with the destroyerLéopard. Réunion became a département d'outre-mer (overseas départment) of France on 19 March 1946. Its département code is 974.
For over a decade in the late twentieth century (1968–1982), 1,630 children from Réunion were relocated to rural areas of metropolitan France, particularly to Creuse, ostensibly for education and work opportunities. Many were abused or disadvantaged by the families with whom they were placed. The fate of these children, known as les enfants de la Creuse, was brought to light in 2002. Réunion exile Jean-Jacques Martial filed a suit against influential Gaullist politician Michel Debré (who had been a MP for Réunion at the time and was the chief mover behind the program) for "kidnapping of a minor, roundup and deportation".[9] In 2005, a similar case was brought against the French government by the Association of Réunion of Creuse.[10]
In 2005 and 2006, Réunion was hit by a crippling epidemic of chikungunya, a disease spread by mosquitoes. According to the BBC News, 255,000 people on Réunion had contracted the disease as of 26 April 2006.[11] The neighboring islands of Mauritius and Madagascar also suffered epidemics of this disease during the same year.[12][13] A few cases also appeared in mainland France, carried by people traveling by airline. The French government of Dominique de Villepin sent an emergency aid package worth 36 million Euro ($57.6M U.S. dollars) and deployed approximately five hundred French troops in an effort to eradicate mosquitoes on the island.
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