Abstract

This article examines an overview of the French colonial policy in Asia and Africa, particularly concerning the assimilation policy and how they attempted to justify it under a euphemistic term, called the civilizing mission. How the colonial master organised migration under Government regulation for the colonies, and in the end, assimilated them into their fold. The article will be divided into two sections.

The first section will interrogate and contextualise various theories on the French colonial policy in the continent in general and Réunion Island in particular, and further, an attempt to synchronise the theory and practice of colonialism and its White man’s burden on the European colonies will be presented. The arrival of European settlers and the subsequent establishment of sugar plantations that immensely benefitted the colonial master eventually led to the importation of indentured labour from French India and British India.

The second section will trace the genesis of Indian descent on the Island and analyze how the assimilation theory was successfully applied to the descendants of the Indian indentured Diaspora. It will look into the working and living conditions of indentured diaspora resistance and political assimilation after the introduction of Department D’Outré Mer (DOM). This section will also examine how Indian diaspora policy could relate to the Francophone Indian diaspora in Réunion Island and the Indian indentured Diaspora’s relentless efforts to revive their cultural identity.