Franco-Mauritian

Changes to political and economic dominance

The Franco-Mauritian group was conceptualized as a dominant minority by French political analyst Catherine Boudet. According to the researcher, the Franco-Mauritians minority sought to legitimize its dominant position and maintain its identity threatened under the challenge of decolonisation, by resorting to emigration to South Africa. The designation of the group as « Franco-Mauritian » indicates a plurality of social meanings and reveals the ambivalent positioning of the group within the multiethnic society of Mauritius after the shattering of the colonial order by independence. Dominant ethnicity in Mauritius traces its roots in the system of slavery of the 18th century which conferred to the minority of French descent a structural dominant position based on race in the colonial society. The economic and political hegemony of the group was further strengthened by its acquisition of the monopoly over the sugar industry throughout the 19th century. As a French colony until the early 1800s the application of the decree Code Noir on the island limited activities of free people of color, forced conversion of slaves to Catholicism, and it defined the various forms of punishments meted out by Franco-Mauritians. However, group identification shifted from a racially-based to an ethnically based following the massive introduction of Indian immigrants. The Franco-Mauritian domination was eventually challenged by the rise of economic and political elites within the other groups of the Mauritian plural society, and by the independence granted in 1968 when the political power went to the Hindu majority. Emigration to South Africa then appeared as the ultimate strategy for many Franco-Mauritians to allow them retain their dominant position and identity.