About the Author

Sydney Selvon was the editor of the French newspaper Le Mauriticien and editor in the Rural Press Group, Australia, and of three other English language newspapers in the Bowes Publishers/Sun Media Corporation/Quebecor in Alberta and Saskatchewan in Canada. He was the High Commissioner of Mauritius to Australlia in 1995-96 and has served in government committees on history, one of which decided on the date for a public holiday commemorating the abolition of indentured labour. He presented his research on the genesis of the village system at the International Seminar on Slavery in the Southwest Indian Ocean in 1984, and was hailed in the 1970s and 1980s as one of the founding members of the so-called "New Historians" comprising also Dr Satteeanun d Peerthum and Muslim Iumeer, who have initiated an entirely new reading and writing of Mauritian history, free from the traditionally ethnocentrist historiography that has plagued most history books until well after independence. Following that, a new generation of Mauritian historians comprising Jocelyn Chan Low, Vijaya Teelock and several others have emerged.