Satyendra Peerthum: 'Enslaved People Had Their Own History Too'

For too long, the history of slavery in Mauritius has been told through the eyes of colonisers and slave owners. Historian Satyendra Peerthum wants to change that. In a wide-ranging interview with Le Défi Media, Peerthum — one of Mauritius's foremost researchers on slavery and indentured labour — argued forcefully that enslaved people were not simply victims to be pitied or footnotes in colonial records. They had lives, identities, cultures, and histories that deserve to be studied, understood, and remembered in their own right. "Les esclavés avaient eux aussi une histoire" — "Enslaved people had their own history too" — is both the headline of the interview and the core of Peerthum's life's work. **Who Is Satyendra Peerthum?** Satyendra Peerthum is a senior researcher at the Aapravasi Ghat Trust Fund, the body that manages Mauritius's UNESCO World Heritage Site in Port Louis — the immigration depot through which hundreds of thousands of indentured labourers arrived after the abolition of slavery in 1835. He has written extensively on the history of slavery, resistance, and the African and Malagasy communities who were brought to Mauritius against their will during the period of French and British colonial rule. **Why This Matters** Mauritius abolished slavery on 1 February 1835, a date now commemorated annually as Abolition of Slavery Day — a national public holiday. The country's enslaved population came primarily from Madagascar, Mozambique, Senegal, and other parts of Africa, as well as from India. At its peak, the enslaved population of Mauritius numbered in the tens of thousands. Yet for generations, the historical narrative focused almost entirely on the plantation economy, the colonisers, and the mechanics of the slave trade — not on the enslaved people themselves as human beings with agency, spiritual lives, family bonds, and forms of resistance. Peerthum's research seeks to recover those hidden histories — drawing on colonial archives, oral traditions, and material culture to reconstruct who these people were, where they came from, and how they lived and resisted under conditions of extreme oppression. **What This Means** For Mauritians of African and Malagasy descent — and for the country as a whole — this kind of historical reclamation is significant. It challenges a hierarchy of historical memory that has often privileged certain communities over others, and it enriches the national story of a country built on the labour of people who were given no choice. Peerthum's work also has implications for how slavery history is taught in Mauritian schools and commemorated in public life — a conversation that continues to evolve as the country grapples with questions of heritage, identity, and historical justice. Source: Le Défi Media