Mauritius

Another card from a swap with Tasneem in Mauritius. This one came in an envelope with a bunch of other great postcards, but I chose this one to post here as I really like map cards. :)



Mauritius is an island nation off the southeast coast of the African continent in the southwest Indian Ocean, about 900 kilometres east of Madagascar. Uninhabited by humans until the 17th century, the island was ruled first by the Dutch and then by the French after the former abandoned it. The British took control during the Napoleonic Wars and Mauritius became independent from the UK in 1968. Mauritius's area is 2040 km2 with Port Louis for capital.

The main languages spoken in Mauritius are Mauritian Creole, French and English. English is the only official language but the lingua franca is Mauritian Creole and the newspapers and television programmes are usually in French. Ethnically, the majority of the estimated 1,300,000 people are of Indian descent but there are also many people of African descent on the island. There are also European and Chinese minorities. It is the only African nation where the majority religion is Hinduism although Christianity and Islam also have significant populations. The island of Mauritius is renowned for having been the only known home of the dodo.