Aapravasi Ghat

The Aapravasi Ghat is a site classified World heritage by UNESCO the July 12th 2006. It is in the district of Port Louis, with Maurice, and precisely on the road of Fanfaron Hole. It was the place of unloading of the committed workers Indian in the island of November 1834 with 1910.

Vestiges

The only remaining vestiges of the site are the main door, the hospital, a cattle shed being able to shelter two horses, the kitchens, the rooms common, the toilets and the place where the immigrants washed themselves, the district of the sirdars.

History and origin of the name

Following the abolition of slavery in the island the 1835, there was a great lack of manpower to work in the fields of cane with sugar. The Britanniques decided to set up a new system aiming at providing the sugar establishments in hands-D' works. The site was known like the Coolie Ghat until during Années 1970. As of 1834, the growers Free-Mauritians and British organized the recruitment and the transport of Indian workers. This trade was known like the Coolie Trade and thereafter the immigrants were named the Coolies . The word coolie coming from the Tamilian kuli meaning wages , Coolie is a person who works for wages. The majority of the Indian immigrant first came from the Bihar of the east of the India. They resulted from the caste of the Dhangar , so known like the Hill Coolies , of or this name allotted by the colonists.

In the Years 1970, the name of the site was changed into Aapravasi Ghat, two words Hindi S, Ghat meaning temporary shelter. Aapravasi Ghat was the temporary shelter of those coming by far. The word coolie is not used any more because it has a connotation disparaging in the speech of the island. For its working life the site saw forwarding close to 400 000 Indian workers. The latter went either in the sugar establishments of the island, or worms of other destinations like the island of the Réunion, the Australia or the the Caribbean.

In December 2002 began the first archaeological excavations on the site. In parallel, research is led to the Public records of Maurice, to find all that had milked with the site. In May 2003, it accepted the visit of the International counsel of the monuments and sites (ICOMOS), consultative body of UNESCO. It is the beginning of the renovation project. The tender of the first report of the ICOMOS was made in July 2003. In September 2004 began the second phase from work having for goal to remove all cement added to the structure with the wire of time and to remake the roof in shingles.

In the island of the Meeting, the " coolie trade" is more known under the name " of engagisme". the important migratory movement that it generated towards this French colony, of years 1850 at the years 1880 mainly, is at the origin of the creation of a place of memory as important as the site Mauritian: lazarets of the Large Launch, place of insulation located in a steepsided valley of the solid mass of the Mountain, in the west of the chief town, Saint-Denis. A long time abandoned, the site of the lazarets is the subject of a very important restoration since 2004.

Aapravasti Ghat and Lazarets of the Large Launch constitute in Mascareignes of the important places of memory related to the new migrations which are set up in the Indian Ocean after abolitions of slavery in the old colonies of Reunion and Mauritius.

Selection

July 12th, 2006 Aapravasi Ghat is registered on the world list of the Inheritance of UNESCO.

The site is registered on the list of the cultural heritages taking into consideration the criteria C (VI) of the committee of the world heritage. If a country aspires to see one of its sites registered on the list of the world heritage, it must initially ratify Convention concerning the protection of the world heritage, cultural and natural adoptee by UNESCO in 1972.

External bond

Aapravasi Ghat - UNESCO World Heritage Centers
Aapravasi Ghat

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