It is impossible to write ancient history
because we do not have enough sources,
and impossible to write modern history
because we have far too many.
-Charles Péguy-


CHAGOS - The Permanency of Temporality

It is almost arrogant of me - a first time visiting yachtie - to write about the history of Chagos. With limited resources (Encyclopaedia Britannica, Microsoft Encarta Encyclopaedia, long term yachties, personal observations, limited internet and a book by Richard Edis; Peak of Limuria (ISBN 1-901607-04-6, try Amazon.com), I have done my best to lay out a version of Chagos' history. A version? Yep.

A brief collection of notes about the History of Chagos


Geography

Chagos Archipelago, with its 50 or so islands and large shallow sandbanks and reefs, is a peak of a mountain, rising from depths of 3km or more in the central Indian Ocean. Some 20 000 years ago, which is a hell of a long time, the sea level was apparently 130 metres lower than today... Hmm...maybe I'm starting from too far in the past. Anyway, today the islands are pile-ups of coral sand which over thousands of years have been vegetated into stable low-lying tropical islands, much like the Maldives.

Early Sightings

Lying outside the trade wind routes (5 to 7 degrees south of Equator), Chagos is a hard-to-find location when one reads tales of early discoveries. Portugese seem to have been the first people around and many Portugese names still stick to the islands. The boys out at sea in those days weren't really interested in lying on the beach, and the natural resources in Chagos were limited. So they carried on with their explorations, leaving Chagos alone with the crabs and birds as its only inhabitants.

1700 - 1800

The attempt by Europeans to claim every rock and every sandbank in every ocean started already in the 16th century. By the early 18th century, the Dutch, the French and the English were all busy claiming the Indian Ocean. In 1770 Captain Cook was cruising the east coast of Australia and reached the world record of claiming the biggest chunk of land available. At the same time the French had put their flags on Mauritius, Seychelles and Reunion.

The French were already camping in Chagos when the Brits landed there in 1786. The Englishmen decided that the French must have been just visiting temporarily and chased them off. But the poms got sunburnt or maybe they got bored. Later the same year they buggered off, leaving it for the French to make their move. According to the history books, there were no indigenous people settled on the islands at this time.

The French returned and started to exploit the archipelago's coconuts for oil and copra. They "admistered" Chagos from Mauritius, then known as Ile de France. Thus began the industry which would populate the islands for the next 170 years or so.

1800 - 1900

The Frogs and the Poms were at war, again. Perhaps the French were too busy drinking their fine wine while the Brits must have given their tea breaks a miss as Rodriguez, Reunion and Mauritius all fell to the Brits in 1810. The treaty of Paris in 1814 confirmed Mauritius, including Chagos as its dependency, to the Brits. (Mauritius, uninhabited until the French arrived, was by this time prospering with exporting sugar. The population there comprised from imported slaves from Africa and later, paid labour from India)

The coconut business in Chagos, started under French rule, was now well established and the Brits continued with it. In 1826, the population of Diego Garcia (the largest island in the group) was 275. Europeans only made up six of them, the rest being 37 lepers (did I forget to mention the lepers being brought in from Mauritius?) and slaves brought from Mozambique and Madagascar.


A group of Chagosians in Ile Boddam, late 1960's. The cross still stands today. The box-shaped water tank, visible next to the the large building right of the cross, still collects drinkable rain water for visiting yachts from the remains of the building's roof. The whole area is covered in large coconut palms with a few narrow walking tracks. Some parts of the railway track are still visible, leading to a derelict rock jetty once used for loading coconut oil and copra to visiting cargo vessels.

Somewhere around this time the term "human rights" was invented and finally in 1834 the Brits decided that calling the workers "apprentices" and giving them a penny a month would sound much better. Slowly the slaves in Chagos signed contracts and become paid labour for the coconut oil "factories". The life of the workers is reported to have been relatively easy and their weekly quota of coconuts was often reached in three or four days, leaving the rest of the week for fishing and providing for their families. Yet, the concept of freedom is a hard one to apply, as these men and women had no real choice of employment or residence. (There was only one employer and no travel agent to book your trip off the islands)

After the abolition of slavery, labour was brought in, as needed, more and more people coming in on fixed-term contracts. Toward the end of the century, the "factories" were privately run. The British officials visited occasionally, probing into the affairs of the islands and by orders of the Governor of Mauritius, made sure no person had been brought in or was kept in Chagos against their will and that no workers were mistreated. It appears that human rights were quite well honoured in Chagos.

Palm oil mills were also operating in Peros Banhos and Salomon atoll. In the last decade of the 19th century, Diego Garcia also acted as a coaling station, "fueling up" steamships en route to and from Australia.


The Manager's house at Ile Boddam after evacuation. Check out the Photo Gallery for a picture of it in 2005.

1900 - 2000

Only about 20% of the Chagos population was women and the birth rate was rather small. Yet, by the mid 1930's about 60% of the islanders were born and bred in Chagos, known as Ilois ("children of the islands"). WW1 and WWII saw visiting warships and a few Gin and Tonics but it wasn't until in the 1950's that Chagos was seriously surveyed with a military base in mind.

In the meantime, the palm oil industry was complemented by some export of hardwood (Takamaka), growing of corn and exporting of guano as fertilizer. Diego Garcia had a population of 680 people plus a similar amount of pigs, chicken, ducks, dogs, cats, horses and donkeys. By now, a lot of creole speaking fellas were visiting their parents' and grand parents' graves, having their roots firmly in their "home land" in Chagos.

1950's and 60's

The cold war was raging and the Western Allies were eyeing out strategic locations in the still neutral Indian Ocean. Chagos was considered. The Yanks thought Diego would be a great spot and started hassling the Brits for a rental deal. The Brits and the Americans had a good look at Chagos in the 1950's.

Colonial times were changing too and the independence of Mauritius was becoming inevitable. But the Brits didn't want Chagos to go with it and in 1965 they separated Chagos from Mauritius and called it BIOT - British Indian Ocean Territory. Mauritius gained independence three years later, without its former Chagos extension.

in 1966 the Americans had convinced the Brits to sign a rental agreement for 50 years, apparently extendable indefinitely unless one or the other gives heaps of notice, employs a professional carpet cleaner for the officer's club and hands in the keys with rent fully paid. Or something like that.

Well, the Americans didn't want to share the place with the people already living there. The Brits went back to their history books and noticed a precedence 180 years earlier, when they declared the French as temporary visitors and chased them out. Surely the same trick would work again. By this time, all workers in Chagos were under contract and many of them recent arrivals from Seychelles, on fixed term stays. But a good couple of hundred were listed as "Ilois", people who would not know any other home "country" than Chagos. For the Governments of UK and USA the issue was hardly worth a sleepless night. After all they could all fit all Chagosians in the same ship. So they did, in 1968, and the rental property was ready for the new tenants.

The plantations in the northern atolls, Peros Banhos and Salomon, continued to run a little longer but by the end of 1973, Chagos no longer had a civilian population. Imagine telling all Australians that they really are just temporary visitors and must now return to wherever their ancestors came from! The analogy is perhaps not the best one, but at the time of the Chagos evacuation, white Australian population had no more local history in Australia than the Ilois had in Chagos. The "Children of the islands", some with nearly 170 years of family history in Chagos, weren't all happy chappies.

The Americans came in enthusiastically, building more and more, blasting away coral in the lagoon and extending and re-extending the air-strips, bringing in ever larger ships and planes. In recent times Chagos has proved a good investment for the Yanks and one not likely to be given away.


"Pack your bags, boys and girls! You're not from here and must go back home now..."


2000 - 3000

In the year 2000, the English High Court ruled the eviction of the Chagosian Ilois illegal and non valid. The small group of people who called Chagos home for several generations, continue to be a thorn in Tony Blair's ass and a real pain in the ass for the British High Commission in Mauritius, where most of the Ilois now live. While their grandparents' graves are overgrowing with jungle some 1600 km away, some of the old Ilois keep fighting. Will they ever return to their place of birth? Are they indigenous to Chagos? Do they have landrights? Do they have human rights? Are they entitled to go back to the little atolls that once was their home? Do they really want to go back? Can the little islands sustain a population? Will Diego Garcia ever be vacated? What's right? What's wrong?





The discussion about the rights of the Chagosians rarely lifts its political head among the yachties. Us floating bare-footed hippies don't like getting political. It's a bit of a mess really and one should always attempt to see both sides of the story. The Diego Garcia military base is growing and its tenants are not likely to get evicted. The islands in Peros Banhos and Salomon are hardly able to support a permanent settlement without any economy. Apparently Club Med has been interested. Maybe the only way for a Chagosian to re-settle is to get a green card and join the US Navy.

Finally, some food for thought regarding the accurate and truthful presentation of facts and the difficulty of doing so.

Encyclopaedia Britannica (CD Rom 2002 version) states:
The UK's High Court rules that the involuntary exile of the indigenous population of the Chagos Archipelago...

And on another article in the same CD Rom:

...the island's transient population was relocated to Mauritius and the Seychelles

What do you make of that?? As the final food for thought, now that you've read this far, the definitions for Native, Indigenous and Aboriginal according to the Oxford Dictionary.

Estimated number of refugees on our home planet today: 19 000 000
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