It was the Dutch pirates who were the first to be frequent in the warm seas of the Indian Ocean and establish bases in Madagascar. In the 1630s, they were already attacking the convoys of the VOC (Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie) which left Bantamou in Manila. These convoys of the Dutch East India Company, laden with spices, silver and the famous fine porcelain from China, often stopped in Madagascar, then at the Cape of Good Hope, on their way to Amsterdam or Rotterdam.
The English ships of the East India Company were also the object of covetousness and it was the Royal Navy which, thanks to its energetic action and its firepower, discouraged and eliminated the Dutch pirates from the region. In the Caribbean, at the end of the 17th century, the English naval forces and Spanish harassed many English and American pirates who, feeling seriously threatened, gradually came to settle in the Indian Ocean. They made their first appearance there around 1685 and settled in the bays of northern Madagascar. Pursued relentlessly by the British Navy and the French Navy, their number dwindled from 1718, and it can be considered that from 1730, the Indian Ocean was almost entirely rid of this scourge. For half a century, a certain security prevailed on the seas of this region of the world. But in the 1780s, shortly after the start of the American Revolutionary War, the first French privateers began their activities in the Indian Ocean with their official status as belligerent auxiliaries. France was then at war against "the perfidious Albion" and its national navy found itself weakened by the turbulence of the Revolution. The French government then encouraged private individuals and shipowners to launch into the "war of race" according to the laws seafaring that existed at that time. Very quickly the corsairs will establish their base in Isle de France (currently Mauritius) and they will be nearly a hundred to harass the convoys of the famous East India Company.
The repeated attacks and captures of English merchant ships reached such a number that Her Majesty's authorities decided to put an end to this "nest of privateers" so detrimental to the economy and to the power of England. The English therefore gathered all their maritime forces in the region and successively took possession of Rodrigues Island, Bonaparte Island (Reunion, returned to France at the Treaty of Paris in 1815) then, on December 2, 1810, they brought their numerous and powerful troops north of Isle de France. The French regiment offers a stubborn but vain resistance. With the "honorable surrender" signed by its last French governor, the island is now English territory. Thus ends the privateering in the Indian Ocean.
Written By Denis Piat
