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Mauritius was first officially discovered by the Portuguese as corroborated by Portuguese maps. This is evident in the earliest existing historical evidence of the island on the Cantino Planisphere which was purloined by the Italian diplomat/spy Alberto Cantino from Portugal in 1502. [1]
It has been frequently hypothesized that Mauritius was first discovered by the Arabs, who named the island Dina Arobi. The first historical evidence of the existence of an island now known as Mauritius is on a map produced by the Italian cartographer Alberto Cantino in 1502. [2]
The island of Mauritius was uninhabited before its first recorded visit by Arab sailors in the end of the 10th century. Its name Dina Arobi has been associated with Arab sailors who first discovered the island. Pedro Mascarenhas, Viceroy of Portuguese India and namesake of the Mascarene Islands.
It was the first human settlement in Mauritius. The Vieux Grand Port Historic Site is a National Heritage site, which contains the ruins of Fort Frederik Henrik, named after Frederik Henrik, Prince of Orange. The Dutch discovered Mauritius in 1598, and built the fort in 1638. When the Dutch abandoned Mauritius in 1710, they destroyed the fort.
Rodrigues was first discovered by the Arabs but named after Portuguese navigator Diogo Rodrigues. It was under Dutch control in 1601 and settled by the French in 1691. Britain took possession of Rodrigues in 1809. When Mauritius gained independence in 1968, Rodrigues was forcefully joined to it.
He then proceeded east to discover the island of Mauritius, which he named ilha do Cirne (the name of his ship). From there Fernandes went further east and discovered the island he named as ilha de Diogo Fernandes, Domigo Friz or Domingo Frias (the latter two probably are cartographic transcriptions or abbreviations of 'Diogo Fernandes').
The Chagos were governed from Mauritius, which was by that time also a British colony. [27] In 1793, when the first successful colony was founded on Diego Garcia, the largest island, coconut plantations were established on many of the atolls and isolated islands of the archipelago. The workers were enslaved by the British and not freed until ...
Later, in the Indian Ocean, one of Cabral's ships reached Madagascar (1501), which was partly explored by Tristão da Cunha in 1507; Mauritius was discovered in 1507, Socotra occupied in 1506. In the same year Lourenço de Almeida landed in Sri Lanka , the eastern island named " Taprobane " in remote accounts of Alexander the Great 's and 4th ...