Réunion is an Indian Ocean island in East Africa, east of Madagascar and 175 km southwest of Mauritius. As of January 2020, it had a population of 859,959. Administratively, Réunion is one of the overseas departments of France. It is also one of 18 regions of France, with the modified status of overseas region.
About Réunion in brief
Réunion is an Indian Ocean island in East Africa, east of Madagascar and 175 km southwest of Mauritius. As of January 2020, it had a population of 859,959. Administratively, Réunion is one of the overseas departments of France. It is also one of 18 regions of France, with the modified status of overseas region, and an integral part of the republic with the same status as Metropolitan France. As in metropolitan France, the official language is French. In addition, the majority of the region’s population speaks Réunion Creole. The island has been inhabited since the 16th century, when people from France and Madagascar settled there. From the 17th to 19th centuries, French colonisation, supplemented by importing Africans, Chinese and Indians as workers, contributed to ethnic diversity in the island. The colony was abolished on 20 December 1848, when the French Second Republic abolished slavery in the French colonies. 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, the island was under the authority of the Free French forces with the destroyer Léopard. Réunion became a département d’outre-mer of France on 19 March 1946. It became an overseas department of France in 1946, and a region of the French Republic in 1982. The name Réunion was given to the island in 1793 by a decree of the Convention Nationale 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.
It was also known as ‘Île Bonaparte’ during the Napoleonic Wars, when it 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, it retained the name of ‘Bourbons’ until the fall of the restored Bourbons during the French Revolution of 1848. In 1801, the Island was once again given the name ‘Íle de la Réunion’ by the French government. The first European discovery of the area was made around 1507 by Portuguese explorer Diogo Fernandes Pereira, but the specifics are unclear. The uninhabited island might have been first sighted by the expedition led by Dom Pedro Mascarenhas, who gave his name to the Island group around Réunion, the Mascarenes. By the early 1600s, nominal Portuguese rule had left Santa Apolónia virtually untouched. The Island was then occupied by France and administered from Port Louis, Mauritius, The island was then named ‘Santa Apolánia’ by French settlers. In 1649, the island was named Île Bourbon after the French royal House of Bourbon. The French East India Company sent the first settlers to Réunion in 1665.
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This page is based on the article Réunion published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 24, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
