Isles of France and of Bourbon Currency & Banknote Values

About Isles of France and of Bourbon

The Isles of France and of Bourbon, located in the Indian Ocean about 500 miles east of Madagascar, were at one time administered by France as a single colony. After the Dutch abandoned the island of Mauritius, in September 1715 it became a French colony named Isle de France (Île de France in modern French) administered by the Compagnie des Indes (French East India Company). In the Treaty of Paris of 1814, France ceded to the United Kingdom the Isle de France and its territories, including Agaléga, Chagos Archipelago, Cargados Carajos, Rodrigues, Seychelles, and Tromelin. The island then reverted to its former name, Mauritius. A previously uninhabited island about 500 miles east of Madagascar in the Indian Ocean was visited by Portuguese explorers in the early 1500s, then colonized by the French in the mid-1600s. In 1649, the French named it Isle de Bourbon (Isle of Bourbon) after the French royal House of Bourbon. During the French Revolution, on 19 March 1793, the Isle de Bourbon was renamed Isle de Réunion, presumably in honor of the meeting of the fédérés of Marseilles and the Paris National Guards that preceded the insurrection of 10 August 1792. On 26 September 1806, the island was renamed Isle de Bonaparte, in honor of Napoleon Bonaparte. During the Napoleonic wars, the Isle de Bonaparte (nee Réunion and Bourbon) was captured by British forces on 9 July 1809. When the island was restored to France by the Congress of Vienna in 1815, it reverted to the name of Isle de Bourbon. This continued until the fall of the restored Bourbons during the French Revolution of 1848, when the island was once again given the name Isle de Réunion. It subsequently became an overseas department of France in 1946.