Réunion

Réunion had no indigenous population. Arab and European sailors knew the uninhabited island, and France took possession in the 1640s, naming it Île Bourbon. Settlers established coffee and later sugar plantations worked by enslaved people brought from Madagascar, East Africa, and India. Renamed Réunion during the Revolution, it was briefly held by Britain in the Napoleonic Wars.

Slavery was abolished in 1848 — commemorated on 20 December as "Fèt Kaf" — and the plantations then recruited indentured labourers, overwhelmingly Tamil-speaking Hindus from South India (the Malbars), along with Muslims from Gujarat (the Zarabes) and Chinese traders, adding the strands that make up Réunion's population today.

In 1946 Réunion became an overseas department of France, later part of the European Union, with French law, the euro, and social benefits. State transfers and EU funds transformed infrastructure and living standards, but structural unemployment — especially among the young — remains very high, and the cost of living and inequality have driven periodic protest, including major road blockades in 2018–19.

Réunion is a genuinely creolised society, often held up as a model of vivre ensemble: within a single extended family there may be Catholic, Hindu, Muslim, and Chinese-temple traditions, and the calendar accommodates all of them, from the Tamil fire-walking ceremonies and Dipavali to Guan Di celebrations, Eid, and the Catholic saints' days.

The music is maloya — the drum-and-chant music created by enslaved workers, long suppressed, now a proud symbol and a UNESCO-listed heritage — alongside the lighter séga. Creole is spoken everywhere informally, French in official life, and there is ongoing debate about the language's place in schools and public life.

Hiking is close to a national pastime, with a dense network of trails and mountain gîtes, and the island's calendar peaks with the Grand Raid, a brutal ultramarathon across the cirques. Family, the Sunday pique-nique under the varangue or by the lagoon, and the kabar (a maloya gathering) organise social life.

About 870,000 people live in Réunion, the most populous French overseas territory, concentrated on the coastal plain around Saint-Denis in the north and Saint-Pierre in the south; the interior cirques hold only small, dispersed populations. The population is young and still growing, unlike the Antilles.

The economy rests on the public sector, tourism, EU and state transfers, and agriculture — sugar cane and rum, along with the island's prized geranium and vetiver essential oils, vanilla, and lentils from Cilaos. Unemployment is around a fifth of the workforce and much higher among the young, and many Réunionnais move to mainland France for work and study.

Daily life is French in framework and Creole in texture, lived between the busy, hot coast and the cool, green mountains behind it, and shaped by the cyclone season and the shark ban on the sea.

Réunionnais cooking is Creole with African, Indian, Chinese, and French threads. The everyday meal is a cari (curry) — chicken, pork, fish, or octopus (cari zourite) — served with rice, grains (lentils or beans), rougail (a fresh or cooked tomato-and-chilli relish), and a fiery chilli paste (piment). Rougail saucisses (smoked sausages in tomato) and cari poulet are the classics.

Achards (pickled vegetables), samoussas and bonbons piment (chilli fritters) as snacks, gratin de chouchou (chayote), and civet de cerf (venison stew) show the range, and bouchons (steamed pork dumplings) and fried noodles reflect the Chinese heritage. Cilaos lentils and the local palmiste heart of palm are speciality ingredients.

Rum is the island spirit, drunk as a rhum arrangé — infused for months with fruit, spices, or vanilla. Dodo, the local lager, sirop de fraise, and strong coffee (Bourbon pointu, a rare varietal, has been revived) are the other drinks.

The Piton de la Fournaise, one of the world's most active volcanoes, sits inside a huge caldera reached across the Plaine des Sables, a red, lunar expanse; when it is quiet the crater can be hiked, and when it erupts — effusively and often without danger to visitors — the lava flows are watched from viewpoints.

The three cirques are the island's other great landscape, all part of the "Pitons, cirques and remparts" UNESCO World Heritage Site. Cilaos, reached by a famously twisting mountain road, has thermal baths, lentils, wine, and hiking to the Piton des Neiges, the highest point in the Indian Ocean at 3,071 metres. Salazie is greener and wetter, with waterfalls including the Voile de la Mariée and the pretty village of Hell-Bourg. Mafate has no road at all — its scattered hamlets are supplied by helicopter and reached only on foot, making it a bucket-list multi-day trek.

Elsewhere, the Trou de Fer is a rainforest canyon of stacked waterfalls best seen by helicopter; the west coast has the calm, reef-protected lagoon beaches of L'Hermitage, Saint-Gilles, and Saint-Leu (the only safe swimming on the island) plus surf breaks and the Kélonia turtle centre; and the Maïdo viewpoint looks straight down into Mafate at dawn.