Chagossians

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The Chagossians, also known as Chagos Islanders or Ilois (from the French îlois, "islanders"), are the people born in the Chagos Archipelago, in the central Indian Ocean, and their descendants. The community was formed in a dependency of colonial Mauritius. The archipelago, uninhabited until the 1780s, was settled from Mauritius, then the French colony of Île de France, by planters based there, and most of the enslaved Africans and Malagasy who formed its first population arrived from Mauritius. The plantations belonged to proprietors in Mauritius, and after emancipation their workforce was supplemented by labourers recruited there and, later, in Seychelles. From 1814 until 1965 the islands were governed from Port Louis as a dependency of the colony of Mauritius. By the end of the nineteenth century a distinct island society had formed, with its own Creole. Most islanders were Roman Catholics, and their form of séga, Sega tambour Chagos, was listed by UNESCO in 2019 as intangible cultural...

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