aapravasi ghat Heritage Site

Aapravasi Ghat is a district of port louis. This was the first site chosen by the British government in 1834 for the ‘great experiment' in the use of indentured, instead of slave labour.

Between 1834 and 1920, almost half a million indentured labourers arrived from India at Aapravasi Ghat to work in the sugar plantations of mauritius. The buildings of Aapravasi Ghat are among the earliest explicit manifestations of what was to become a global economic system and one of the greatest migrations in history.

Aapravasi Ghat is the remains of an immigration depot which was built in 1849 to receive indentured labourers from India, Eastern Africa, Madagascar, china and Southeast Asia to work on the island's sugar estates.  Other colonial powers adopted system of indentured labour in place of slavery. This  resulted in a world-wide migration of more than two million indentured labourers, of which Mauritius received almost half a million.

At present, only half of the Immigration Depot area as it existed in 1865, remains. The rest of the complex was lost due to unchecked infrastructural development in the mid-20th century. However, original structural key components still stand. These include the remains of the sheds for the housing of the immigrants, kitchens, lavatories, a building used as a hospital block and a highly symbolic flight of 14 steps upon which all immigrants had to lay foot before entering the immigration depot.
 
The Aapravasi Ghat site is now owned by the Ministry of Arts and Culture. The property is protected as National Heritage under the national heritage fund act 2003 and the Aapravasi Ghat Trust Fund Act 2001.
 

 UNESCO declared Aapravasi Ghat as a World Heritage Site in 2006. It is one of two World Heritage Sites in Mauritius, along with le morne brabant.
 
 Aapravasi is the Hindi word for “immigrant”, while ghat literally means “interface” , symbolically marking a transition between the old life and the new for the arriving indentured immigrants.