Agricultural heritage of Reunion island

Agriculture in Reunion has greatly influenced its populating process: at first, the cultivation of coffee was set up in 1714, involving a large workforce and leading to the institutionalization of slavery (mainly from Madagascar and the African continent). But an epidemic hit the coffee and left room for growing sugarcane. From the early nineteenth century, this new agriculture supplants that of coffee, but nevertheless continues to require many agricultural workers. With the abolition of slavery in 1848, they were thus fetched on the Asian continent: coolies or « indentured workers" from India and China, which now constitute two of the major communities in Reunion.