When Britain seized the Indian Ocean islands of Mauritius and Bourbon and the later-settled satellite of Seychelles (collectively known as the Mascareignes) during the Napoleonic War, after outlawing the slave trade itself, it became a question whether the British anti-slave-trade statutes should be applied in the former French island. Enduring questions arose as to whether the new British administrators of Mauritius and Seychelles, who often became slave and plantation owners themselves, winked at the illegal slave trade and whether they were permitted to do so by the British government. This book is an in-depth study of slave plantations, law courts, and the illegal slave trade in the Southwest Indian Ocean.