Population - A population rainbow, Reunion

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Who are Réunionnais? In this island much more than elsewhere, it is difficult to cut out the population in sections, to classify it of categories. Under the tropic of Capricorn, the coldness of the statistics is definitively overcome by the feelings, which right from the start led the inhabitants of the island to be linked, briskly facing the borders of the colors of skin. A thing is sure:la Réunion counts 700 000 inhabitants in the various beginnings and often multiples.

The come first were of the adventurous, accompanied French more or less voluntary men and Malagasy women. Quickly, from the Portuguese Indies, the first contributions come from the vast sub-continent. The first decades of the history of Bourbon are permissive, the authority of the king and of the clergy is hardly marked there. Very quickly initial population mongrel with the liking of the first unions, the first births.

But the introduction of the colony by the Company of the Indies, as of the end of the XVIIčme century, will upset the ways of life. The recourse to slavery becomes systematic. The slave ships unload on the coasts of Bourbon of the thousands of men and women bought by the traffickers on the coasts of Madagascar and of Africa. The black population, become largely majority, makes the prosperity of the colony while suffering under the chains. It will be definitively removed to him only in 1848.

After the abolition of slavery, the fields of canes claim always more arm and the colonists call:celles upon another population of the "volunteers" come under contract from the south-eastern coasts from India. A voyage without return for the majority of these Tamouls, which brings in the French colony their way of life and their religion, hindouism. Later, other voluntary emigrations will touch the:celle island of the Moslem Indians, come from Goujrat, and the Chinese.

The mixed marriages will be increasingly more numerous with the wire of time. The faces of réunionnais of today are of milk or ebony, but more often betray the bloods mixed with the ancestors. The beauty of the interbreeding appears in all its diversity, with each corner of street of the island. More or less familiar terms remain all the same to indicate the respective origins:"cafre" for the Blacks with the African features, "malbar" for the Indians, "zarab" for the Moslem Indians, "yab" for the white of modest condition Tops of the island...

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