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The island group was uninhabited until the 16th century, when it was occupied by a small Dutch force that named it after Prince
Maurice of Nassau. It was abandoned in 1710 and then re-occupied five years later by the French who imported African slaves
to work on the sugar plantations. Mauritius and its neighbouring islands were captured by the British in 1810 and formally
ceded by the 1814 Treaty of Paris. After the abolition of slavery in the 1830s, Indian labourers were imported and their descendants
now comprise more than two-thirds of the population. Incorporated into the British Empire, Mauritius remained a colony until
1957, when it was granted internal self-government with an electoral system based on the Westminster model.
Dr (later Sir) Seewoosagur Ramgoolam’s Labour Party came to power. Full independence was granted in 1968, but the British
kept a number of smaller islands, which were hived off as the British Indian Ocean Territory. These included Diego Garcia,
part of the Chagos archipelago, which has been leased to the USA and now hosts a large naval and air force facility which
played a key role in both the 1991 Gulf War and the 2001 Afghanistan conflict. The maltreatment of the former inhabitants
of Chagos, known as Ilois, who were expelled to make way for the new base, has been the subject of legal actions in the English
courts. Irrespective of the fact that the Ilois won a formal victory against the British government in November 2000, it seems
unlikely that the Ilois will be able to return to their former homeland. A final settlement is still under negotiation.
Post-independence Mauritian politics have been dominated by Ramgoolam, and then by the two principal figures of the Mauritian
Left, Paul Bérenger and (later Sir) Anerood Jugnauth. The charismatic Bérenger made a dramatic contrast to the cautious, pragmatic
Jugnauth, and the focus of the Mauritian political scene has often been the personal and political clash between the two.
Both rose to prominence in the Mouvement Militant Mauricien (MMM), which emerged as the principal opposition to Ramgoolam’s coalition Governments of the late 1960s and 1970s. These administrations
were dominated by Ramgoolam’s own Mauritian Labour Party (MLP) and the Parti Mauricien Social Démocratique (PMSD) led by Gaetan Duval. The MMM eventually came to power in 1982 following a landslide general election victory. However,
the administration was fraught with policy disagreements and personality clashes. Jugnauth then left the MMM to form the Mouvement Socialiste Mauricien (MSM) and fought the 1987 election campaign in alliance with the Labour Party and the Social Democrats. This three-party alliance
won the poll.
The Governments of the 1990s were a series of coalitions between the MMM and either Jugnauth’s Socialist Movement or – for
a two-year period – the Labour party. The latter was now led by Navin Ramgoolam, son of Sir Seewoosagur, while Jugnauth and
Bérenger continued to dominate their respective parties. In 1992, Jugnauth had achieved a key political objective by converting
Mauritius into a republic within the Commonwealth with a President, elected by the national assembly, as Head of State in
what is a largely ceremonial post. In the 2000 election, the MSM and the MMM, under Jugnauth’s leadership, won all but eight
of the National Assembly’s 62 seats. Shortly afterwards, Mauritius achieved a welcome boost to its international profile by
narrowly defeating Sudan to secure for the first time a seat on the United Nations Security Council.
Jugnauth withdrew from politics in 2003. He handed the Premiership over to Bérenger (who thus became the first non-Hindu to
hold the post), and the leadership of the Socialists to his son, Pravind. In the most recent election in 2005, Navin Ramgoolam
won his second, non-consecutive term.
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Overview 
