Réunion Island

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Country Name

Réunion Island or officialy Département d’Outre-Mer de la Réunion (Department of Réunion).

Location

Is an overseas department and region of the French Republic and an Indian Ocean island in East Africa, east of Madagascar and 175 km southwest of Mauritius.

Capital

Saint-Denis.

Reason for naming the country

"Île de la Réunion" was the name given to the island in 1793 by a decree of the Convention Nationale (the elected revolutionary constituent assembly) with the fall of the House of Bourbon in France, and the name commemorates the union of revolutionaries from Marseille with the National Guard in Paris, which took place on 10 August 1792. In 1801, the island was renamed "Île Bonaparte", after First Consul Napoleon Bonaparte.

During the Napoleonic Wars, the island was invaded by a Royal Navy squadron led by Commodore Josias Rowley in 1810, who used the old name of "Bourbon". When it was restored to France by the Congress of Vienna in 1815, the island retained the name "Bourbon" until the fall of the restored Bourbons during the French Revolution of 1848, when the island was once again given the name "Île de la Réunion".

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