France's policy of integration in Reunion

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Periodical article

Title:	France's policy of integration in Reunion
Author:	Mohanty, Hrudananda
Year:	1999
Periodical:	African Currents
Volume:	16
Issue:	28
Pages:	46-55
Language:	English
Geographic terms:	Réunion France
Subjects:	overseas territories foreign policy
Abstract:	This article attempts to answer the question of why France did not decolonize Reunion as it did with its other colonial territories in the western part of the Indian Ocean, but integrated Reunion in the metropolitan State as an overseas department (1946). The analysis places the French role in Reunion in the context of the changing geopolitical and geostrategic scenario of the Indian Ocean Region (IOR). France's policy of departmentalisation in Reunion was intended to secure its presence in the IOR. Reunion's creolized society and plantation economy, together with the absence of any indigenous political organization until the announcement of this policy, made Reunion suitable for this status. Implementation of the departmentalisation process was slow, however, and it was only as a result of growing pressures for decolonization that the French Fifth Republic made a sustained effort to transform the island into an integral part of France. Massive developmental activities were undertaken and the political institutions in the island were reformed in order to weaken the influence of the communists. Since the late 1970s, demands for autonomy have begun to subside. Notes, ref.