Editing Réunion (section)

===Isle Bourbon (1642–1793)===
[[File:MaheDeLaBourdonnais 2.JPG|thumb|Statue of [[Mahé de La Bourdonnais]] in [[Saint-Denis, Réunion|Saint-Denis]]]]

By the early 1600s, nominal Portuguese rule had left Santa Apolónia virtually untouched.<ref name=Hydro269/> The island was then occupied by France and administered from [[Port Louis]], Mauritius. Although the first French claims date from 1638, when {{ill|François Cauche|fr}} and Salomon Goubert visited in June 1638,<ref>{{Cite web |title=&#124; Journal de l'île de la Réunion |url=http://www.clicanoo.re/index.php?page=imprimer&id_article=97540 |access-date=12 March 2013 |publisher=Clicanoo.re |archive-date=23 September 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150923222240/http://www.clicanoo.re/index.php?page=imprimer&id_article=97540 |url-status=live }}</ref> the island was officially claimed by {{ill|Jacques Pronis|fr}} of France in 1642, when he deported a dozen French [[mutiny|mutineers]] to the island from [[Madagascar]]. 
The convicts were returned to France several years later, and in 1649, the island was named Île Bourbon after the [[House of Bourbon]]. Colonisation started in 1665, when the [[Louis XIV's East India Company|French East India Company]] sent the first settlers.<ref name=Hydro269/>

The French colonists developed a plantation economy founded on the cultivation of coffee and sugar by use of slave labor. 
From the 17th to the 19th centuries, French colonisation, supplemented by importing Africans, Chinese, and Indians as workers, contributed to ethnic diversity in the population. From 1690, most of the non-Europeans on the island were enslaved. 
Of the 80,000 slaves imported to Réunion and Mauritius between 1769 and 1793, 45% was provided by slave traders of the [[Sakalava people]] in North West Madagascar, who raided East Africa and the Comoros for slaves, and the rest was provided by Arab slave traders who bought slaves from [[Portuguese Mozambique]] and transported them to Réunion via Madagascar.<ref name="Slavery. 1980, p. 75–76">Asian and African Systems of Slavery.&nbsp;(1980).&nbsp;Storbritannien:&nbsp;University of California Press. p. 75–76</ref>