L'última colònia

On April 27, 1973, Liseby Elysé, then twenty years old and four months pregnant, boarded the ship leaving the small island of Peros Banhos, in the Chagos Archipelago, in the Indian Ocean. Traveling with her were the rest of the local inhabitants, who were going to be relocated to the island of Mauritius. The alternative was to stay and starve. The explanation for this forced exodus lies in the Cold War. For strategic reasons, in the sixties the Americans decided to install a military base in the archipelago, specifically on the island of Diego García, and they did not want the native population on the nearby islands. The British had offered the place, because it was their colonial possession and in 1965 they separated it from Mauritius and turned it into the so-called British Indian Ocean Territory. So, when Mauritius became independent in 1968, she did so without that archipelago, and then began litigating in court to try to get it back. In 2018 the case reached the International Court in The Hague. Philippe Sands was involved in that trial as the plaintiff's lawyer, and the star testimony he presented was that of Liseby Elysé, who told her personal tragedy before her court. This is the little-known story that this overwhelming book tells about the last colony. A book about the shames of the past and about a native population torn from their homeland and deported to another place because of geostrategy. A book about colonialism and its legacies, but also about the small stories that lurk behind history in capital letters. After his two fundamental works on Nazism -East-West Street and Escape Route-, Philippe Sands offers us another anthological piece, which brilliantly mixes narrative, essay, historical facts and personal tragedies.