Port Louis, open to free trade after the demise of the French East India Company, sees a major increase in shipping, especially from Europe and North America.

For example, from 1786 to 1810 almost six hundred ships from the United States call on Mauritius, and the United States establishes a consulate in Port Louis in 1794.

Privateering is an even greater boon to the economy.

News of the French Revolution reaches Mauritius in 1790, prompting settlers unhappy with royal administration to establish more representative forms of government: a colonial assembly and municipal councils.

When a squadron arrives three years later, however, to enforce the new French government's abolition of slavery, the settlers turn the squadron back.

Napoleon sends a new governor to the island in 1803, resulting in the dissolution of the assembly and councils.

The waning of French hegemony in the region permits a British force of ten thousand, carried from the Indian subcontinent by a fleet of seventy ships, to land on Mauritius in 1810.

The French capitulate to the British, but the British agree to leave in place existing legal and administrative structures.

The 1814 Treaty of Paris awards the island, together with the Seychelles and Rodrigues islands, to Britain.

English becomes the official language, but French and Creole dominate.

Few British immigrants come to the colony.