#O45
1857-1867
First Edition. Folio.The original ordinances are printed on beige and blue paper. Period brown gilt tooled half calf with marbled boards and a recent black gilt label. Recent rebacked in style, otherwise a very good collection of ordinances.
A collection of very rare early Mauritius printings. The collection includes ordinances which cover topics like Indian immigrants, rivers and canals, asylums, sugar exports, marriage, paper currency, public roads, vacant estates, taxes, police force, health care, postage and postal service, courts, royal college and schools, transfer of land, harbours and ports, railways, custom duties, warehouses, poor relief, banks, prisoners, tobacco, quarantine, vagrants, bankruptcy, hospitals, distilling liquor, opium, death sentences, introduction of dogs etc.., "Mauritius was captured on 3 December 1810 by the British under Commodore Josias Rowley. Their possession of the island was confirmed four years later by the Treaty of Paris (1814). French institutions, including the Napoleonic Code of law, were maintained. The French language was at that moment still used more widely than English.
The British administration, which began with Robert Townsend Farquhar as governor, was followed by rapid social and economic changes. One of the most important events was the abolition of slavery on 1 February 1835. The planters received a compensation of two million pounds sterling for the loss of their slaves which had been imported from Africa and Madagascar during the French occupation"(Wikipedia).
