Chinois (Réunion)
| Total population | |
|---|---|
| 25,000 (1999) | |
| Languages | |
| French, Réunion Creole; Chinese (predominantly Hakka and Cantonese) spoken only by members of older generations | |
| Religion | |
| Roman Catholicism · Mahayana Buddhism | |
| Related ethnic groups | |
| Sino-Mauritians |
Chinois, also referred to by the Réunion Creole name Sinwa or Sinoi, are ethnic Chinese residing in Réunion, a French overseas department in the Indian Ocean. As of 1999, roughly 25,000 lived on the island, making them one of Africa's largest Chinese communities along with Chinese South Africans, Chinese people in Madagascar, and Sino-Mauritians.
Despite their French citizenship, the Chinois form a group with origins distinct from the Chinese in metropolitan France. The first Chinese to arrive in Réunion came not directly from China, but rather were indentured labourers drawn from among the population of Chinese in Malaya, who arrived on the island in 1844 to work in grain production and levee-building. They violently resisted the slave-like manner in which they were treated, and as a result, the colonial government put a stop to the immigration of Chinese indentured labourers just two years later.
Beginning in the 1850s, Cantonese-speakers began to arrive from Mauritius. It was common for a Sino-Mauritian to bring his relatives over from China to Mauritius for a period of apprenticeship in his business; after they had gained sufficient familiarity with commercial practises and life in a colonial society, he would send them onwards with letters of introduction, lending them his own capital to start up businesses in neighbouring regions, including Réunion.Hakka-speakers, from Mauritius came as well in this manner starting only in the late 1880s.
However, re-migration from Mauritius was not the only source of free Chinese migration to Réunion. In 1862, Réunion's government liberalised their immigration laws, allowing any foreigner to take up employment. Each year, a few hundred Cantonese-speaking migrants from Guangdong took advantage of this law and arrived in Réunion. Hakkas from Meixian and French Indochina began to arrive around the same time as those from Mauritius, in the late 1880s. As in other overseas Chinese communities, conflict between Cantonese- and Hakka-speakers was a common feature of social life, and the two groups tried to avoid contact with each other; the Hakka migrants settled in the south of the island, especially at Saint-Pierre and Le Tampon. Re-migration from Mauritius to Réunion continued in this manner until around 1940. Migrants were almost all male; until the late 1930s or early 1940s, fewer than one thousand had arrived on the island.
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