Isle de France (Mauritius) in the context of "Agaléga"

Robert Surcouf (French pronunciation: [ʁɔbɛʁ syʁkuf]; 12 December 1773 – 8 July 1827) was a French privateer, businessman and slave trader who operated in the Indian Ocean from 1789 to 1808 during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. Capturing over 40 prizes, he later amassed a large fortune from a variety of commercial activities, such as ship-owning, privateering, slave trading and owning land.

Surcouf started his maritime career as an officer on the ships Aurore, Courrier d'Afrique and Navigateur. Having risen to the rank of captain, he illegally engaged in slave trading onboard the slave ship Créole. Surcouf then captained the merchantman Émilie, on which he engaged in commerce raiding despite lacking a letter of marque. He preyed on British shipping, capturing several merchantmen including the East Indiaman Triton, before returning to the Isle de France where his prizes were confiscated. Surcouf then returned to France, where he obtained prize money from the government. Returning to the Indian Ocean, Surcouf captained the privateers Clarisse and Confiance, raiding British, American, and Portuguese shipping. He captured the East Indiaman Kent on 7 October 1800. Returning to France, Surcouf was awarded the Legion of Honour and settled down as a businessman.

The Chagos Archipelago (/ˈtʃɑːɡəs, -ɡoʊs/, also UK: /ˈtʃeɪɡɒs/) or Chagos Islands (formerly Bassas de Chagas, and later the Oil Islands) is a group of seven atolls comprising more than 60 islands in the Indian Ocean about 500 kilometres (310 mi) south of the Maldives archipelago. This chain of islands is the southernmost archipelago of the Chagos–Laccadive Ridge, a long submarine mountain range in the Indian Ocean. In its north are the Salomon Islands, Nelsons Island and Peros Banhos; towards its south-west are the Three Brothers, Eagle Islands, Egmont Islands and Danger Island; southeast of these is Diego Garcia, by far the largest island. All are low-lying atolls, save for a few extremely small instances, set around lagoons.

From 1715 to 1810, the Chagos Islands were part of France's Indian Ocean possessions, administered through Isle de France – which was a colony of France (later renamed as Mauritius). Under the Treaty of Paris in 1814, France ceded Isle de France and the Chagos Islands to the United Kingdom.

Mauritius, officially the Republic of Mauritius, is an island country in the Indian Ocean, about 2,000 kilometres (1,100 nautical miles) off the southeastern coast of East Africa, east of Madagascar. It includes the main island (also called Mauritius), as well as Rodrigues, Agaléga, St. Brandon (Cargados Carajos shoals) and the Chagos Archipelagos. The islands of Mauritius and Rodrigues, along with nearby Réunion (a French overseas department), are part of the Mascarene Islands. The main island of Mauritius, where the population is concentrated, hosts the capital and largest city, Port Louis. The country spans 2,040 square kilometres (790 sq mi) and has an exclusive economic zone covering approximately 2,000,000 square kilometres (580,000 square nautical miles).

The 1502 Portuguese Cantino planisphere has led some historians to speculate that Arab sailors were the first to discover the uninhabited island around 975, naming it Dina Arobi. Called Ilha do Cirne or Ilha do Cerne on early Portuguese maps, the island was visited by Portuguese sailors in 1507. A Dutch fleet, under the command of Admiral Van Warwyck, landed at what is now the Grand Port District and took possession of the island in 1598, renaming it after Maurice, Prince of Orange. Short-lived Dutch attempts at permanent settlement took place over a century aimed at exploiting the local ebony forests, establishing sugar and arrack production using cane plant cuttings from Java together with over three hundred Malagasy slaves, all in vain. When French colonisation began in 1715, the island was renamed "Isle de France". In 1810, the United Kingdom seized the island and under the Treaty of Paris, France ceded Mauritius and its dependencies to the United Kingdom. The British colony of Mauritius now included Rodrigues, Agaléga, St. Brandon, the Chagos Archipelago, and, until 1906, the Seychelles. Mauritius and France dispute sovereignty over the island of Tromelin, the treaty failing to mention it specifically. Mauritius became the British Empire's main sugar-producing colony and remained a primarily sugar-dominated plantation-based colony until independence, in 1968. In 1992, the country abolished the monarchy, replacing it with the president.

The Mauritius campaign of 1809–1811 was a minor military campaign of the Napoleonic Wars fought between British and French forces over France's Indian Ocean colonies of Isle de France and Isle Bonaparte. Lasting from the spring of 1809 to the spring of 1811, the campaign saw the British and French navies deploy substantial frigate squadrons to either protect or disrupt British-flagged shipping in the region. In a war in which the Royal Navy was almost universally dominant at sea, the campaign is especially notable for the local superiority enjoyed by the French Navy in autumn 1810 following their victory at the Battle of Grand Port, the British navy's most significant defeat in the entire conflict.

British commanders had been planning an operation against Isle de France since occupying the Dutch Cape Colony in 1806 and destroying the Dutch squadron in Java in 1807, but acted earlier than planned following the arrival from France of a powerful frigate squadron under Commodore Jacques Félix Emmanuel Hamelin in late 1808. Hamelin's squadron captured several British East Indiamen and disrupted Britain's trade routes across the Indian Ocean by raiding the convoys in which its merchantmen travelled. Forced to confront this threat, Admiral Albemarle Bertie at the Cape Colony ordered Commodore Josias Rowley to blockade the French colonies and prevent their use use as raiding bases.

The invasion of Isle de France was a complicated but successful British amphibious operation in the Indian Ocean, launched in November 1810 during the Napoleonic Wars. During the operation, a substantial military force was landed by the Royal Navy at Grand Baie, on the French colony of Isle de France (now Mauritius). Marching inland against weak French opposition, the British force was able to overwhelm the defenders in a series of minor engagements, culminating in the capture of the island's capital Port Napoleon and the surrender of Governor Charles Mathieu Isidore Decaen. The surrender eliminated the last French territory in the Indian Ocean and among the military equipment captured were five French Imperial Navy frigates and 209 heavy cannon. Isle de France was retained by Britain at the end of the war under the name of Mauritius and remained part of the British Empire until 1968.

The operation was the culmination of two years of conflict over the island and the neighbouring Isle Bourbon between frigate squadrons commanded by Josias Rowley and Jacques Hamelin. Hamelin repeatedly raided British trade convoys and Rowley responded with amphibious assaults on French harbours, but neither had gained ascendancy by the time Rowley sent most of his force to attack the port of Grand Port on Isle de France in August 1810. At the ensuing battle at Grand Port the British squadron was destroyed and Hamelin began to blockade Rowley on Isle Bourbon. As British reinforcements were urgently dispatched, several actions were fought between recently arrived British ships and the more numerous French forces. At the last of these on 18 September, Hamelin was defeated and captured by Rowley. This allowed Rowley to build his forces over the next two months until they were sufficient for a successful invasion, which was led by the recently arrived Admiral Albemarle Bertie.

Mahé is the largest island of Seychelles, with an area of 157.3 square kilometres (60.7 sq mi), lying in the northeast of the Seychellois nation in the Somali Sea part of the Indian Ocean. The population of Mahé was 77,000, as of the 2010 census. It contains the capital city of Victoria and accommodates 86% of the country's total population. The island was named after Bertrand-François Mahé de La Bourdonnais, a French governor of Isle de France (modern-day Mauritius).

Captain Matthew Flinders (16 March 1774 – 19 July 1814) was a Royal Navy officer, navigator and cartographer who led the first inshore circumnavigation of mainland Australia, then called New Holland. He is also credited as being the first person to utilise the name Australia to describe the entirety of that continent including Van Diemen's Land (now Tasmania), a title he regarded as being "more agreeable to the ear" than previous names such as Terra Australis.

Flinders was involved in several voyages of discovery between 1791 and 1803, the most famous of which are the circumnavigation of Australia and an earlier expedition when he and George Bass confirmed that Van Diemen's Land was an island. While returning to Britain in 1803, Flinders was arrested by the French at the colony of Isle de France. Although Britain and France were at war, Flinders thought the scientific nature of his work would ensure safe passage, but he remained under arrest for more than six years. In captivity, he recorded details of his voyages for future publication, and put forward his rationale for naming the new continent Australia, as an umbrella term for New Holland and New South Wales – a suggestion taken up later by Governor Macquarie.

The Battle of Grand Port was a naval battle fought on 20–27 August 1810 between squadrons of frigates from the French Navy and the British Royal Navy over possession of the harbour of Grand Port on Isle de France (now Mauritius), as part of the Mauritius campaign during the Napoleonic Wars. A British squadron of four frigates sought to blockade the port to prevent its use by the French through the capture of the fortified Île de la Passe at its entrance. This position was seized by a British landing party on 13 August and, when a French squadron under Captain Guy-Victor Duperré approached the bay nine days later, the British commander, Captain Samuel Pym, decided to lure them into coastal waters where his forces could ambush them.

Four of the five French ships managed to break past the British blockade, taking shelter in the protected anchorage, which was only accessible through a series of complicated routes between reefs and sandbanks that were impassable without an experienced harbour pilot. When Pym ordered his frigates to attack the anchored French on 22 and 23 August, his ships became trapped in the narrow channels of the bay: two were irretrievably grounded; a third, outnumbered by the combined French squadron, was defeated; and a fourth was unable to close to within effective gun range. Although the French ships were also badly damaged, the battle was a disaster for the British: one ship was captured after suffering irreparable damage, the grounded ships were set on fire to prevent their capture by French boarding parties, and the remaining vessel was seized as it left the harbour by the main French squadron from Port Napoleon under Commodore Jacques Hamelin.