Dedicated to my loving wife Lila

[…] At one of these hard-fought battles between the French and English when the French were victorious, they captured a British ship and its captain was taken on board the ship of the victorious French commander. As he handed over his sword the British captain said to the French captain, "You French fight for plunder; we English fight for honour." "Yes," replied the Frenchman, "we each of us fight for what we have not got!"
    This exchange between the French and the British would seem to encapsulate the amical relationship that characterises the links between the original French settlers and the English. Of course, Mauritius was caught up in the maelstrom of rival European powers expanding across the globe, enticed by the riches of Asia. The island was an essential cog in this worldwide expansion, especially when one considers that three powers all had their share of Île de France, as Mauritius was called.
    And yet, the country has retained the name given to it by the earlier "owners” of the island, namely the Dutch who took possession of it in 1589, many years before they established a foothold at the Cape. The Dutch named it Mauritius in honour of Prince Maurice of Nassau. In 1638 they established a settlement on the island and thus began a rapacious campaign that saw virtually all the fauna disappearing along with the forests. Unsurprisingly the famed dodo bird also became extinct, the last one having been seen in the1680s.
    Without developing Mauritius in any way, the Dutch abandoned it in 1710. The French then took over the island in 1715, described by no less a personage than Charles Darwin who reputedly referred to it as the Garden of Eden. After being bounced back and forth between the French and the British, in the midst of the French Revolution of 1789 and the Napoleonic Wars, Britain finally took possession of the island and restored the original Dutch name. Upon the abolition of slavery in 1835 throughout the British Empire, immigration from India was actively sought and Mauritius has prospered ever since.
Günther Komnick has lovingly brought the rich natural and cultural blessings of this enchanted island alive through a keen, indeed poetic mastery of the lens, showing too how a spirit of harmony seems to flourish effortlessly in this ethnic kaleidoscope of a country.