Travel to Aapravasi Ghat – World Heritage Site of Mauritius
Located at Trou Fanfaron on the waterfront in Port Louis, the Aapravasi Ghat Immigration Depot was proclaimed a World Heritage Site in July 2006. It is the only surviving remains of an immigration depot from the later years of the 19th century, built to welcome labour immigrants.
In the district of Port Louis, is the 1,640 square metre site where the modern indentured labour diaspora began. In 1834, the British Government selected the island of Mauritius to be the first site for what it called “the great experiment” in the use of “free” labour to replace slaves. Between 1834 and 1920, almost half a million indentured labourers arrived from India at Aapravasi Ghat to work in the sugar plantations of Mauritius, or to be transferred to Reunion Island, Australia, southern and eastern Africa or the Caribbean. The buildings of Aapravasi Ghat are among the earliest explicit manifestations of what was to become a global economic system and one of the greatest migrations in history.