Mauritius

An empty island remade by every ocean that touched it

Mauritius had no native human population: it was known to Arab and Malay sailors and visited by the Portuguese before the Dutch settled it in 1598, naming it for Maurice of Nassau and hunting its flightless dodo to extinction. France built a sugar-and-slavery colony, the Isle de France, around the port it founded at Port Louis; Britain seized the island in 1810 and kept it as 'Mauritius'. After slavery was abolished in 1835, the British imported nearly half a million Indian indentured labourers, reshaping the island's people. Independent since 12 March 1968 and a republic since 1992, Mauritius became a diversified, multi-ethnic democracy frequently cited as an African success story, while pressing a long sovereignty claim over the Chagos Archipelago.