Cap sur Maurice Destination Immobilier - Edition 2019 Edition 2019 | Page 27

MAURITIUS ISLAND DISCOVERY
History
Mauritius was fi rst discovered
by Arab sailors, probably in
the Middle Ages. At the time, it
was a densely forested unin-
habited island. The latter did
not settle on the island, much
like the Portuguese who stop-
ped over in 1513. The fi rst to
colonise Mauritius were the
Dutch, in 1598.
The Dutch Period (1598 – 1710)
In 1598, a Dutch squadron, under
the orders of Admiral Wybrand Van
Warwyck, landed in Grand Port and
named the island « Mauritius », in
honour of Prince Maurice Van Nassau,
« Stadthouder » of the Netherlands.
However, it was in 1638 that the
Dutch made a fi rst settlement attempt
(around this same time the famous
Dutch explorer Tasman set out to
discover the West coast of Australia).
The fi rst Dutch settlement lasted
some twenty years. Several more
development attempts were made after
that but fi nancial returns were poor,
and this fi nally led to the departure of
the Dutch from Mauritius in 1710. From
the Dutch period, the island inherited
sugar cane, domestic animals, the Java
deer, wild pigs and rats.
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