RéunionLa Réunion

Réunion sits above a hotspot in the Earth's mantle. Piton des Neiges, now extinct, built most of the island over about 3 million years; when its summit collapsed and eroded, it left three huge amphitheatres — the cirques of Cilaos, Salazie and Mafate — enclosed by walls up to a kilometre high.

Piton de la Fournaise in the south-east is one of the world's most active volcanoes, erupting on average every year or so. Most eruptions pour lava inside the Enclos, a collapse caldera open to the sea, so lava flows cross the coastal road rather than threatening towns. The 2007 eruption added new land to the coast.

Steep relief and trade winds give Réunion extreme rainfall records on the windward side and a dry leeward west. The island's peaks, cirques and ramparts, with forests found nowhere else, were listed by UNESCO in 2010, and around 40 per cent of the land is national park.

Portuguese sailors knew the island, but it had no inhabitants until France claimed it in the 1640s and sent the first settlers in 1663. Named Île Bourbon after the royal family, it was run by the French East India Company and became a coffee colony in the 18th century, worked by enslaved people brought from Madagascar, East Africa and India.

Escaped enslaved people, called marrons, fled into the cirques. Many of the island's peaks and places carry the names of maroon leaders, such as Cimendef and Dimitile, and Mafate itself is said to be named after one.

After the French Revolution the island was renamed La Réunion; it went back to Bourbon, then briefly to Britain from 1810 to 1815. In the 19th century sugar replaced coffee. Slavery was abolished on 20 December 1848, now the Fèt Kaf holiday, and planters then recruited indentured labourers, mainly Tamils from south India, along with workers from Africa, Madagascar and China.

In 1946 Réunion became a French overseas department, like Martinique, Guadeloupe and French Guiana. The law brought French social security, schools and roads, and later EU funds, but also a long dependence on the mainland. From the 1960s to 1980s the state moved thousands of Réunionese children to rural France to repopulate villages, a scandal later acknowledged by the French parliament.

Today about 890,000 people live on the island, mostly along the coast. Living standards are far above neighbouring countries but below mainland France, and unemployment, especially among the young, stays high. The cost of living, with import-dependent prices, has sparked protests, notably the 'gilets jaunes' blockades of 2018.

Politics is local and national at once: Réunion elects deputies and senators to Paris, and a regional council and departmental council govern at home. The island is an EU 'outermost region', inside the EU customs union but with its own tax on imports, the octroi de mer.

Most Réunionese are Catholic, but the Tamil community keeps Hindu temples and rituals, including fire-walking ceremonies in which devotees cross beds of embers. Muslims of Gujarati origin, known locally as Zarabes, built the Noor-e-Islam mosque in Saint-Denis, one of the oldest in France. Chinese families keep temples in Saint-Denis and Saint-Pierre.

Many families practise more than one tradition: a Catholic mass and a Tamil offering, or a visit to the tomb of Sitarane, a 20th-century criminal whose grave attracts offerings. Popular saints such as Saint Expédit, patron of urgent causes, have red roadside shrines across the island.

Ethnic labels are common in daily speech — Kaf, Malbar, Zarab, Sinwa, Zoreil (people from mainland France), Yab (poor white highlanders) — but intermarriage is widespread, and the shared identity is Creole.

Maloya is the music of enslaved people and their descendants: call-and-response singing over the roulèr drum, the kayamb rattle and the bobre musical bow. It was long associated with Tamil and African rituals and, in the 1970s, with the autonomist Communist Party, and was discouraged by authorities. Now it is celebrated, and UNESCO listed it as intangible heritage in 2009.

Séga, lighter and dance-oriented, shares roots with Mauritian sega. Singers such as Danyèl Waro and Firmin Viry kept maloya alive; newer artists mix it with electronic music and reggae.

Réunion Creole, based on French with Malagasy, Tamil and other words, is spoken by nearly everyone. It is taught in some schools and has its own literature, but French remains the language of administration.

The daily meal is a cari: meat, fish or vegetables browned with onion, garlic, ginger, turmeric (safran péi) and thyme, then simmered and served with rice, beans or lentils and a sharp rougail of tomato or pickled lime. It is cooked in a heavy pot, ideally over wood.

Each community added dishes: Tamil massalé of goat, Chinese bouchons and noodles, Indian samoussas, French gratins and pastries. Sunday picnics in forest kiosks, with a cari pot carried up at dawn, are a local institution.

Bourbon vanilla came from Réunion: in 1841 a 12-year-old enslaved boy, Edmond Albius, discovered how to hand-pollinate the vanilla orchid, a method still used worldwide. Vanilla, rum and the lentils and wine of Cilaos are the island's signature products.