Review of African Political Economy Vol. 39, No. 133, September 2012, 465–478 Probing the historical sources of the Mauritian miracle: sugar exporters and state building in colonial Mauritius Ryan Saylor∗ Department of Political Science, University of Tulsa, Oklahoma, United States Scholars increasingly agree that the ‘Mauritian Miracle’ was enabled by the country’s significant level of state capacity. This article probes Mauritius’s state-building past to identify the early sources of Mauritian state capacity. Specifically, I find that the close collaboration between the island’s export-oriented sugar planters, known as the Franco-Mauritians, and colonial officials accounts for the growth of Mauritian state capacity during the nineteenth century. Following the island’s first major commodity boom, in 1825, sugar planters pressed colonial officials to ‘regulate’ the island’s labour supply, improve its transportation infrastructure, and undertake research and development initiatives. These efforts collectively promoted the growth of state capacity and laid the groundwork for the country’s relatively capable state. The influence of Mauritius’s export-oriented coalition on state building may shed light on the country’s comparative success to other African countries, where export-oriented coalitions have been rare both historically and in the contemporary era. Keywords: Mauritius; sugar exports; commodity booms; coalitions; state building; political development [Sonder les sources historiques du miracle mauricien: les exportateurs de sucre et la construction des baˆtiments dans les colonies de l’Etat de l’ıˆle Maurice.] De plus en plus, les chercheurs s’accordent a` dire que le « miracle mauricien » a e´te´ active´ par le niveau important du pays par sa capacite´ d’E´ tat. Cet article fait un bilan du domaine de construction dans le passe´ par l’E´ tat Mauricien afin d’identifier les sources pre´alables de capacite´ pour l’E´ tat mauricien. Plus pre´cise´ment, je trouve que la collaboration e´troite entre les planteurs de canne a` sucre de l’ıˆle oriente´s vers l’exportation, lesquels e´taient connus sous la de´signation de Franco-Mauriciens et des fonctionnaires coloniaux, compte pour la croissance de la capacite´ de l’E´ tat mauricien au cours du dix-neuvie`me sie`cle. A la suite de l’explosion de la principale marchandise en 1825, les planteurs de sucre ont fait pression sur les autorite´s coloniales de « re´gulariser » les conditions de la main d’œuvre sur l’ıˆle, d’ame´liorer ses infrastructures de transport, et d’entreprendre des initiatives de recherche et de´veloppement. Ces efforts ont collectivement contribue´ a` promouvoir la croissance de la capacite´ de l’E´ tat et jete´ les bases d’e´tat relativement capables pour le pays. L’influence de la coalition d’exportation de l’ıˆle Maurice sur l’e´dification de l’E´ tat peut apporter de la lumie`re sur le succe`s comparatif du pays par rapport a` d’autres pays africains, ou` des coalitions axe´es sur l’exportation ont e´te´ rares a` la fois historiquement et a` l’e´poque contemporaine. Mots-cle´s: L’ıˆle Maurice ; les exportations de sucre ; l’explosion des matie`res premie`res ; les coalitions ; l’e´dification de l’E´ tat;lede´veloppement politique ∗Email: [email protected] ISSN 0305-6244 print/ISSN 1740-1720 online # 2012 ROAPE Publications Ltd http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03056244.2012.710835 http://www.tandfonline.com 466 R. Saylor Mauritius is an African success story. Today, it is one of Africa’s few Upper Middle Income countries, with a per capita gross domestic product (GDP) six times its regional average. In the last quarter of the twentieth century, Mauritius had annual per capita GDP growth similar to that of Hong Kong, Malaysia, and Singapore. Mauritius’s Human Development Index is similar to theirs as well. It is a democratic and well-governed country. Mauritius is one of only five African countries to have earned a positive ‘stateness’ measure from the World Bank, an index used to represent its political stability, governmental capabilities, and rule of law (Bratton and Chang 2006, Appendix 2, Lange 2003, p. 402, Subramanian and Roy 2001, pp. 6–9). Mauritius is, by all accounts, extraordinary by African standards. Explicating the causes of the ‘Mauritian Miracle’ has attracted considerable attention from economists and political scientists in recent years. They have found that, like many of the East Asian ‘Tigers’, Mauritius achieved its impressive economic growth since 1970 without strict adherence to the orthodox economic policies of the Washington Consensus (see Subramanian and Roy 2001). Instead, the strength of Mauritian state insti- tutions seems to be at the core of its developmental success (e.g., Meinsenhelder 1997, Minogue 1992, Subramanian and Roy 2001). Mauritius has been successful because it possesses significant levels of what political scientists call ‘state capacity’. State capacity refers to the ability of government officials to implement their decrees – whether to collect taxes, regulate the economy, or provide public goods such as roads and schools (Mann 1984). In Mauritius, bureaucrats are recruited according to meritocratic criteria, helping to render the state relatively immune from rent seeking and corruption, particularly when compared to many African states. These rationalised bureaucratic precepts, and the existence of state capacity more generally, have played a central role in forging the Mauritian Miracle. Yet this assessment of the Mauritian state begs the prior question: what were the sources of Mauritian state capacity which laid the groundwork for the country’s developmental success after 1970? Recent studies point to some historical sources of Mauritius’s contem- porary accomplishments. For instance, Lange (2003, 2009) contends that the ‘directness’ of British rule in Mauritius, something brought about by labour unrest in the 1930s and 1940s, promoted the island’s distinctive trajectory. Bra¨utigam (2008), alternatively, maintains that haggling between colonial officials and sugar planters over taxation positioned Mauritius for success, though she too emphasises developments in the twentieth century. While I agree that the colonial era helped Mauritius embark on a trajectory unlike that of most African countries, I accentuate factors that lie even further in the island’s colonial past. In this article, I highlight how Mauritian sugar planters and colonial officials collaborated to encourage sugar exports in the nineteenth century and how their efforts promoted the growth of state capacity. This reservoir of state capacity almost certainly played an impor- tant long-term role in Mauritian economic and political development, given that scholars largely regard state building as a path-dependent phenomenon which centrally influences economic development (Evans 1995, Kohli 2004). At the core of Mauritius’s state-building projects was an export-oriented coalition between the island’s sugar-exporting elite and the British colonial government. A narrow stratum of sugar planters, known as the ‘Franco-Mauritians’, dominated politics when the island’s first major commodity boom, in sugar, began in 1825. This article depicts how the Franco-Mauritians lobbied British officials to assist export production, which pro- pelled a tenfold increase in annual sugar exports from the island. Export growth revealed a number of economic bottlenecks, including an insufficient labour supply, rising transport costs, and problems with the island’s undiversified sugarcane stock. Sugar elites organised Review of African Political Economy 467 themselves through groups such as the Chamber of Agriculture and pressed the state for help resolving these barriers to expanded export production. The state repeatedly aided the Franco-Mauritians by promoting immigration, ‘regulating’ the island’s labour supply, building railways, and undertaking research and development initiatives. Collectively, these endeavours enhanced the capabilities of the Mauritian state as the century progressed. The influence of this export-oriented coalition may help explain why Mauritius has been able to transcend pitfalls that have bedevilled other African countries, many of which seemed better poised for economic and political development than a far-flung island east of Madagascar. Indeed, although Mauritius exhibits some manifest differences from other African states, they share something fundamental: they were integrated into the world economy as colonial dependencies and thus relied heavily on primary commodity exporting, which should have sensitised them to export opportunities. Yet many post-war African governments undermined the vitality of their export sectors in the midst of unpre- cedented commodity booms. Others similarly failed to deepen nascent capitalist industries that seemed poised for success. Scholars from different perspectives suggest that coalitional politics affected these economic perplexities. Ruling political coalitions in Africa have typi- cally not been led by groups with deep connections to economic production (e.g., Bates 1981, Boone 1992, pp. 4, 20–23). Whereas exporters were marginalised politically in many African countries, the opposite was true in Mauritius. The export-oriented nature of Mauritius’s ruling coalition was central to why the colonial state eagerly assisted export producers via state building when they requested it. Yet although Mauritian state building eventually had beneficial ramifications, it also had serious and brutal consequences. Mauritius’s state building