An excellent copy of a work that hardly ever appears for sale. This copy is signed and presented by Vicars to “The Mauritius Reading Room” and bears a couple of corrections in his hand. This copy also has the ms. annotations and signature of Mauritian-born artist Prosper d’Epinay (1836-1914), son of Adrien d’Epinay (1794-1839), a Mauritian lawyer and politician who carried out several missions to London (1830-1832 and 1833-1835) to negotiate the terms of abolition of slavery on the island, under conditions acceptable to the planters.
In the dedication to Lord Mount-Sandford, Vicars’ describes this work as an “attempt to promote the best interests of the negro slaves in the Mauritius.”
At the time of writing, Vicars states that there were “about 1294 Government Slaves and 2010 Apprentices” in Mauritius who “are fed and clothed by Government, ans, in sickness, they receive humane attention in the hospital.” He notes that children of enslaved workers are apprenticed between the ages and seven and fourteen after which “their services cease to be gratuitous.” And adds that the quality of work suffers the moment workers were no longer compelled by force to complete their duties. and while Vicars grudgingly accepts the importance of the abolition of the slave trade, he considered emancipation little more than a licence to idleness.
Vicars’ solution to this is through religious education (with the introduction of a French-speaking missionary) as well improved conditions for the enslaved. His tone is alternately entitled and patronising and underpinned by the racism typical of the era, he goes so far as to argue “[m]uch of the mortality of the slave population is occasioned by their own excesses, and a carelessness and reckless improvidence that almost defies control.”
Richard Vicars (1794-1839) was a captain in the Royal Engineers and stationed in Mauritius since 1824. He was largely in favour of the French settlers on the island and the way they treated their slaves. As such copies were sought out by the Anti-Slavery League to be destroyed, and few have survived. Indeed, the book was rare at the time, with d’Epinay noting “J’ai acheté cette brochure à Paris, en 1904, après l’avoir cherchée toute ma vie inutilement” [I bought this in Paris in 1904 after looking for it unsuccesfully my whole life].
Mauritius was something of a rogue colony, even for the French. When slavery was abolished thouroughout France and its colonies in 1794, that decree was not only ignored but not even registered in the local parliament. Mauritius became an English colony in 1810 and was formally annexed it in 1814. The 1807 Abolition Act was essentially unheard of at the time. Slavery was formally abolished in Mauritius in 1835, after which time it was replaced by a system of indentured servants who were drawn largely from India.
Not in Ryckebusch; Srinivasan, P., “Slavery in Mauritius and the Moresby Treaty of 1822” in Proceedings of the Indian History Congress, Vol. 60 Diamond Jubilee (1999), pp.1011-1017.
