Editing Tromelin Island (section)

==History==
[[File:Tromelin aerial photograph.JPG|thumb|Aerial view]]
The island was discovered by France in the 1720s.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://voices.nationalgeographic.org/2016/04/11/the-recovery-of-tromelin-island/ |title=The Recovery of Tromelin Island |first1=James |last1=Russell |date=11 April 2016 |website=National Geographic Society (blogs) |access-date=26 August 2017}}</ref><ref name="AgencyOffice2016">{{cite book |publisher=United States Central Intelligence Agency |department=Government Publications Office |title=The World Factbook 2016–2017 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=HfywxU2EnFwC&pg=PA269 |date=18 August 2016 |via=Government Printing Office |isbn=978-0-16-093327-1 |pages=269ff}}</ref> It was recorded by the French navigator Jean Marie Briand de la Feuillée and named ''Île de Sable'' ("Isle of Sand").<ref name="LRM">{{cite web |url=http://ifm.free.fr/htmlpages/pdf/2007/477-4-esclaves.pdf |title=La Revue Maritime N°&nbsp;477 |date=December 2006 |publisher=Institut Français de la Mer |place=Paris, FR |website=Ifm.free.fr |access-date=26 August 2017}}</ref>

===Wreck of the ship ''Utile''===
On 31&nbsp;July 1761{{sfnp|Guérout|2015|p=27}} the French ship ''Utile'' ("Useful"), a frigate of the [[French Indies Company|French East India Company]], chartered by [[Jean-Joseph de Laborde]] and commanded by Captain Jean de&nbsp;La Fargue, transporting slaves from [[Madagascar]] to [[Mauritius]] in contravention of Mauritian law, ran onto the reefs of the island.<ref name="economist">{{cite news |url=https://www.economist.com/news/christmas-specials/21683979-what-happened-when-slaves-and-free-men-were-shipwrecked-together-lu00e8se |title=Lèse humanité |newspaper=The Economist |date=16 December 2015 |access-date=26 August 2017}}</ref> The ship had departed [[Bayonne]] in France with 142&nbsp;men. After a stopover on Mauritius (then called the [[Isle de France (Mauritius)|Isle de France]]), the ship embarked 160&nbsp;Malagasy men, women, and children at [[Mahavelona|Foulpointe]], on the east coast of Madagascar, to bring them into slavery on Mauritius, despite the prohibition of trafficking decreed by the governor. A navigation error, due to the use of two conflicting charts, caused the vessel to wreck on the reefs of Tromelin Island (then called the ''Isle of Sand''). The ship was a frigate, not a slave ship, and thus was not equipped with the shackles and chains usually found on slave ships.<ref name=":0">{{cite book |title=Tromelin, l'île aux esclaves oubliés |author1=Guérout, Romon |author2=Max, Thomas |publisher=CNRS Editions |year=2015 |location=France}}</ref>

After the wreck, the crew and about 60&nbsp;Malagasy people managed to reach the island, but the rest of the slaves, locked in the hold, drowned. The crew retrieved various equipment, food and wood from the wreckage. They dug a well, providing drinking water, and fed on salvaged food, turtles, and seabirds.<ref name=":0"/>

Captain Jean de&nbsp;Lafargue lost his mind as a result of the wreck, and was replaced by his first lieutenant, second-in-command, Barthelemy Castellan du&nbsp;Vernet who lost his brother Leon in the shipwreck. Castellan built two camps, one for the crew and one for the slaves, a forge and an oven, and with the materials recovered from the wreckage, began construction of a boat.<ref name=":0"/> On 27&nbsp;September 1761, a contingent of 122&nbsp;French sailors (crew and officers) left Tromelin aboard the ''Providence''. They left the surviving slaves – 60&nbsp;[[Malagasy people|Malagasy]] men and women – on the desert island, promising to return and rescue them.<ref name="economist"/>

The sailors reached Madagascar in just over four days and, after a stopover in Foulpointe, where men died of tropical diseases, were transferred to Réunion Island (then named ''Bourbon Island''), and then to Mauritius (then called the ''Isle de&nbsp;France''). When the crew of the ship reached Mauritius, they requested that colonial authorities send a ship to rescue the Malagasy slaves on the island. However, they met with a categorical refusal from the governor, with the justification that France was fighting the [[Seven Years' War]] and thus no ship could be spared, the island of Mauritius being itself under threat of attack from [[Company rule in India|British India]].<ref name="independent">{{cite web |title=Shipwrecked and abandoned: The story of the slave Crusoes |date=5 February 2007 |website=Independent.co.uk |url=https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/shipwrecked-and-abandoned-the-story-of-the-slave-crusoes-435092.html |access-date=26 August 2017}}</ref>

Castellan left Mauritius (''Isle de&nbsp;France'') to return to France in 1762 and never gave up hope to one day return to the Isle of Sand to save the Malagasy people. The news of the castaway slaves got published and stirred the Parisian intellectual milieu; later, the episode was all but forgotten with the end of the Seven Years' War and the bankruptcy of the East India Company.<ref name=":0"/>

In 1773, a ship passing close to Tromelin Island located the slaves and reported them to the authorities of Isle de&nbsp;France. A boat was sent, but this first rescue failed, as the ship could not approach the island. A year later, a second ship, ''Sauterelle'', also failed to reach the island. During this second failed rescue, a sailor managed to swim to the island, but he had to be abandoned by the ship due to bad weather. This sailor remained on Tromelin Island and, some time later, probably around 1775, built a raft on which he embarked with three men and three women, but which disappeared at sea.<ref name=":0"/>

It was not until 29&nbsp;November 1776, 15 years after the sinking, that Ensign [[Jacques Marie Boudin de Tromelin de La Nuguy|Tromelin-Lanuguy]], captain of the corvette [[French corvette Dauphine (1773)|''Dauphine'']],<ref name=annexe2/> reached Tromelin Island and rescued the survivors – seven women and an eight-month-old child.<ref name="Marriner-2">{{cite journal |last1=Marriner |first1=Nick |last2=Guérout |first2=Max |last3=Romon |first3=Thomas |year=2010 |title=The forgotten slaves of Tromelin (Indian Ocean): New geoarchaeological data |journal=Journal of Archaeological Science |volume=37 |issue=6 |pages=1293–1304 |doi=10.1016/j.jas.2009.12.032|bibcode=2010JArSc..37.1293M }}</ref><ref name="independent"/> Upon arriving there, Tromelin-Lanuguy discovered that the survivors were dressed in plaited feather clothes and that they had managed, during all these years, to keep a fire lit (the island did not have a single tree). The Malagasy people, who had been left on the bleak little island, built a shed with coral stones, for most of the wood had been used in the construction of the raft for the crew. They also built a lookout on the highest point of the island in order not to miss the ship that would, they hoped, come to their rescue. They were all from the [[Central Highlands (Madagascar)|Central Highlands]] of Madagascar, and had no knowledge of how to produce food in the coastal environment. Most had died within the first few months on the island.<ref name="LRM"/> The survivors remained with Jacques Maillart, governor of Mauritius (''Isle de&nbsp;France''), who declared them free and offered to bring them back to Madagascar, which they refused.<ref name=":0"/> Maillart decided to baptize the child Jacques Moyse (Moses), on the day of his arrival in Port-Louis on 15&nbsp;December 1776, and to rename his mother Eve (her Malagasy name was Semiavou) and to do the same with the child's grandmother, whom he called Dauphine after the name of the corvette that rescued them.<ref name=":0"/> The trio was welcomed in the house of the intendant of Mauritius (''Isle de&nbsp;France''). Tromelin was the first to precisely describe the island that now bears his name.<ref name=":0"/>

In 1781 the [[Marquis de Condorcet]] recounted the tragedy of the castaways of Tromelin, to illustrate the inhumanity of the slave trade, in his book ''Reflections on the Slavery of Negroes'' advocating the abolition of slavery.<ref name=":0"/>

=== Expedition "Forgotten slaves" ===
An archeological expedition entitled "Forgotten Slaves", led by Max Guérout, a former French naval officer and director of operations of the Naval Archeology Research Group, and Thomas Romon, archaeologist at INRAP (National Institute for Preventive Archaeological Research), took place from October to November&nbsp;2006, under the patronage of UNESCO and the French Committee for the History and Remembrance of Slavery (CPMHE). The results of the research were made public on 17&nbsp;January 2007. The ten members of the expedition probed the wreck of ''Utile'', and searched the island for traces of shipwreck, in order to better understand the living conditions of the Malagasy people during these fifteen years.<ref name=":0"/>
According to Max Guérout, head of the mission, "In three days, a well 5 meters [16.5 feet] deep was dug. This represented a considerable effort. We found many bones of birds, turtles, and fish." One does not have the impression that these people were crushed by their condition. They tried to survive with order and method."<ref name=":0"/>

An anonymous logbook, attributed to a writer of the crew, was found. Basements made of beach sandstone and coral were also found (the survivors thus transgressed a Malagasy custom according to which stone constructions were reserved for tombs). There were also six copper bowls and a pebble used to sharpen knives. The fire was maintained for fifteen years, thanks to the wood from the wreck, the island being devoid of trees.<ref name=":0"/>

A second expedition, organized in November&nbsp;2008, did not reveal the burials observed in 1851 by an English naval officer. However, the remains of two bodies displaced during the digging of the foundations of a building of the weather station have been uncovered. Three buildings built with coral blocks have been discovered, including the kitchen, which was still equipped with kitchen utensils, and in particular copper containers that had been repaired several times, testifying to the Malagasy's determination to survive.<ref name=":0"/>

A third archaeological mission took place in November&nbsp;2010. It allowed the discovery of three new buildings and many objects, including two tinder lighters and flints, which elucidated the technique used by the castaways to rekindle the fire.<ref name=":0"/>

The fourth expedition took place in September–October&nbsp;2013. It lasted for 45&nbsp;days, and enabled the identification of many tools and shelters, as well as the layout of the site.<ref name=":0"/>

In 2016, an exhibition presenting the results of the various excavation campaigns, entitled "Tromelin, the island of forgotten slaves", was presented jointly in metropolitan France and in the DROM: At the Stella Matutina Museum in Saint-Leu (La&nbsp;Réunion), the castle of the Dukes of Brittany in Nantes, the House of Agglomeration of Lorient, the Aquitaine Museum in Bordeaux, the departmental museum of archeology and prehistory of Martinique in Fort-de-France, and finally to the Basque Museum of the History of Bayonne from June to November&nbsp;2017.

===Sovereignty claims===
Tromelin is administered as part of the [[French Southern and Antarctic Lands]], a [[Overseas territory (France)|French Overseas Territory]], but [[Mauritius]] claims sovereignty over the island despite its absence in the listing of the 8th article of the [[Treaty of Paris (1814)|1814 Treaty of Paris]].<ref>{{cite web |url=https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Paris_(1814)#ART.VIII |title=Treaty of Paris |date=1814 |at=Art.&nbsp;VIII |quote=«''His Britannic majesty stipulating for himself and his allies, engages to restore to his most Christian majesty, within the term which shall be hereafter fixed, the colonies, fisheries, factories, and establishments of every kind, which were possessed by France on the 1&nbsp;January 1792, in the seas and on the continents of America, Africa, and Asia, with the exception however of the islands of Tobago and St.&nbsp;Lucie, and of the Isle of France and its dependencies, especially Rodrigues and Les Sechelles, which several colonies and possessions his most Christian majesty cedes in full right and sovereignty to his Britannic majesty, and also the portion of St.&nbsp;Domingo ceded to France by the treaty of Basle, and which his most Christian majesty restores in full right and sovereignty to his Catholic majesty''»}}</ref> Indeed, the treaty does not specifically mention all the dependencies of Mauritius, which leads to uncertainty on the sovereignty of Tromelin, and the official text was that written in French. During the [[British Mauritius|British period of Mauritius]], France administered the island as a dependency of the [[regions of France|region]] of [[Réunion]] and built infrastructure without British protest. France and Mauritius have been negotiating for years in regard to the possible establishment of a [[Condominium (international law)|condominium]] over the island. In 2010, Mauritius and France reached an agreement on the co-management of Tromelin, without prejudice to the sovereignty of Mauritius over Tromelin.

The French claim to sovereignty dates from 29&nbsp;November 1776,<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.taaf.fr/spip/spip.php?article314 |title=Ce n'est que quinze ans plus tard, le 29&nbsp;novembre 1776, que le chevalier de Tromelin récupérera huit esclaves survivants : sept femmes et un enfant de huit mois. Le pavillon français fut planté sur l'île qui fut ainsi nommée Tromelin en hommage à ce chevalier |via=archive.org |access-date=2017-08-26 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120131101103/http://www.taaf.fr/spip/spip.php?article314 |archive-date=2012-01-31}}</ref> the date that the ship ''Dauphine'' arrived.

The Mauritian claim to sovereignty is based on the fact that the island must have been ceded to [[United Kingdom]] by the [[Treaty of Paris (1814)|treaty of Paris in 1814]] and should not continue to be administered by France as a dependency of [[Réunion]].

The [[United Nations]] never recognized the Mauritian sovereignty over Tromelin. In 1954, France constructed a meteorological station and a landing strip on the island.<ref>{{cite book |first1=Jonathan I. |last1=Charney |first2=David A. |last2=Colson |first3=Lewis M. |last3=Alexander |title=International Maritime Boundaries |year=2005 |page=3463 |publisher=Martinus Nijhoff Publishers |isbn=9004144617 }}</ref>

It is a matter of dispute whether the building agreement transferred sovereignty of Tromelin from one to the other, and Mauritius claims the island as part of its territory, on the grounds that France did not retain its sovereignty over the island in 1814, which was ''de facto'' part of the colony of Mauritius at the time of independence.<ref>{{cite book |first=Vivian Louis |last=Forbes |title=The maritime boundaries of the Indian Ocean region |year=1995 |page=110 |publisher=Singapore University Press |isbn=9971691892 }}</ref> Indeed, as early as 1959, even before independence, Mauritius informed the [[World Meteorological Organization]] that it considered Tromelin to be part of its territory.<ref>{{cite book |first1=Dennis |last1=Rumley |first2=Sanjay |last2=Chaturvedi |first3=Vijay |last3=Sakhuja |title=Fisheries Exploitation in the Indian Ocean: Threats and Opportunities |year=2010 |page=123 |publisher=Institute of Southeast Asian Studies |isbn=9789812309860 }}</ref> A co-management treaty was reached by France and Mauritius in 2010,<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.lequotidien.re/opinion/le-courrier-des-lecteurs/116747-tromelin-la-reunion-spectatrice-et-spoliee.html |title=Tromelin : La Réunion, spectatrice et spoliée |publisher=Lequotidien.re |access-date=15 December 2011 |archive-date=10 October 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171010191415/http://www.lequotidien.re/opinion/le-courrier-des-lecteurs/116747-tromelin-la-reunion-spectatrice-et-spoliee.html |url-status=dead }}</ref> but has not been ratified.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.diplomatie.gouv.fr/en/country-files/mauritius/|title = Mauritius}}</ref>

Tromelin has an [[Exclusive Economic Zone]] (EEZ) of {{convert|280,000|km2|sqmi|0|abbr=on}}, contiguous with that of [[Réunion]]. The island's autonomous [[weather station]], which warns of [[cyclone]]s, is still operated by France and is supported by personnel from the French Southern and Antarctic Lands (TAAF). Staff are rotated every three months through resupply missions mounted from Réunion.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.defense.gouv.fr/marine/actualites/lastrolabe-assure-soutien-releve-tromelin |title=L'Astrolabe assure le soutien et la relève de Tromelin |website=Marine Nationale |date=24 June 2024 |access-date=26 June 2024 }}</ref>