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Situated some 900 km east of Madagascar, the island of Mauritius was a tantalizingly ideal port for medieval European explorers en route to India and the East Indies. It was also unpopulated but for animals, including the dodo bird. First came the Dutch: Wybrant van Warwijk claimed the island of Mauritius for Holland on Sept. 20, 1598. They abandoned it until 1638 when the Dutch East India Company (VOC) returned to stake their claim on the island; it remained colonized by the Netherlands until 1710. The French East India Company then claimed the island in 1721; it held Mauritius as a colony until the British seized it in 1810. Mauritius finally gained independence in 1968.