exploited, except for the mineral springs which yield waters highly esteemed. Almost all the products of the island are exported, so that the import trade is very varied. Cattle are imported from Madagascar; rice, the chief article of food, from Saigon and India; petroleum, largely used in manufactories, from America and Russia; almost everything else comes from France, to which country go the great majority of the exports. Over 75% of the shipping is under the French flag.
Commerce.—The total trade amounted in 1860 to the value of £4,464,000 (the highest during the century); in 1900, to £1,533,240. In 1905 the imports were valued at £727,000 and the exports at £428,000. Of the imports £500,000 were from France or French colonies of the exports £388,000 went to France or French colonies. The currency consists of notes of the Banquede la Réunion (guaranteed by Lhe government) and nickel token money. Neither the notes nor the nickel money have any currency outside Réunion; the rate of exchange varies from 5 to 20%.
Administration and Revenue.—Réunion is regarded practically as a department of France. It sends two deputies and one senator to the French legislature, and is governed by laws passed by that body. All inhabitants, not being aliens, enjoy the franchise, no distinction being made between whites, negroes or mulattoes, all of whom are citizens. At thehead of the local administration is a governor who is assisted by a secretary-general, a procureur général, a privy council and a council-general elected by the suffrages of all citizens. The governor has the right of direct communication and negotiation with the government of South Africa and all states east of the Cape. The council-general has wide powers, including the fixing of the budget. For administrative purposes the island is divided into two arrondissements, the Windward, with five cantons and nine communes, and the Leeward, with four cantons and seven communes. The towns are subject to the French municipal law. The revenue, largely dependent on the prosperity of the sugar trade, declined from an average of £163,765 in the five years 1895-99 to an average of £147,225 in the five years 1900–4. For the same periods the average colonial expenditure, which includes the loss incurred in maintaining the harbour and railway, increased from £224,508 to £225,088. Deficits are made good by grants from France.
History.—Réunion is usually said to have been first discovered in April 1513 by the Portuguese navigator Pedro Mascarenhas, and his name, or that of Mascarene Islands, is still applied to the archipelago of which it forms a part; but it seems probable that it must be identified with the island of Santa Apollonia discovered by Diego Fernandes Pereira on the 9th of February 1507. It was visited by the Dutch towards the close of the 16th century, and by the English early in the 17th century. When in 1638 the island was taken possession of by Captain Gaubert, or Gobert, of Dieppe, it was still uninhabited; a more formal annexation in the name of Louis XIII. was effected in 1643 by Jacques Pronis, agent of the Compagnie des Indes in Madagascar; and in 1649 Étienne de Flacourt, Pronis’s more eminent successor, repeated the ceremony at a spot which he named La Possession. He also changed the name of the island from Mascarenhas to Bourbon. By decree of the Convention in 1793, Bourbon in turn gave place to Réunion, and, though during the empire this was discarded in favour of Ile Bonaparte, and at the Restoration people naturally went back to Bourbon, Réunion has been the official designation since 1848.
The first inhabitants were a dozen mutineers deported from Madagascar by Pronis, but they remained only three years (1646–49). Other colonists went thither of their own will in 1654 and 1662. In 1664 the Compagnie des Indes orientales de Madagascar, to whom a concession of the island was granted, initiated a regular colonization scheme. Their first commandant was Étienne Régnault, who in 1689 received from the French crown the title of governor. The growth of the colony was very slow, and in 1717 there were only some 2000 inhabitants. It is recorded that they lived on excellent terms with the pirates, who from 1684 onward infested the neighbouring seas for many years. In 1735 Bourbon was placed under the governor of the Île de France (Mauritius). at that time the illustrious Mahé de Labourdonnais. The Compagnie des Indes orientales gave up its concession in 1767, and under direct administration of the crown liberty of trade was granted. The French Revolution effected little change in the island and occasioned no bloodshed; the colonists successfully resisted the attempts of the Convention to abolish slavery, which continued until 1848 (when over 60,000 negroes were freed), the slave trade being, however, abolished in 1817. During the Napoleonic wars Réunion, like Mauritius, served the French corsairs as a rallying place from which attacks on Indian merchantmen could be directed. In 1809 the British attacked the island, and the French were forced to capitulate on the 8th of July 1810; the island remained in the possession of Great Britain until April 1815, when it was restored to France. From that period the island has had no exterior troubles. The negro population, upon whom in 1870 the Third Republic conferred the full rights of French citizenship including the vote, being unwilling to labour in the plantations, the immigration of coolies began in 1860, but in 1882 the government of India prohibited the further emigration of labourers from that country, in consequence of the inconsiderate treatment of the coolies by the colonists. Réunion has also suffered from the disastrous effects of cyclones. A particularly destructive storm swept over the island in March 1879, and in 1904 another cyclone destroyed fully half of the sugar crop and 75% of the vanilla crop.
See A. G. Garsault, Notice sur la Réunion (Paris, 1900), a monograph prepared for the Paris exhibition of that year; E. Jacob de Cordemoy, Étude sur l’île de la Réunion, geographies, richesses naturelles, &c. (Marseilles, 1905); W. D. Oliver, Crags and Craters; Rambles in the island of Réunion (London, 1896); C. Keller, Natur und Volksleben der Insel Réunion (Basel, 1888); J. D. Brunet, Histoire de l’association générale des francs créoles de l’île Bourbon (St Denis, Réunion, 1885); Trouette, L’Île Bourbon pendant la période révolutionnaire (Paris, 1888). Of earlier works consult Demanet, Nouv. Hist. de l’Afrique française (1767); P. U. Thomas, Essai de statistique de l’île Bourbon (1828); Dejean de la Batie, Notice sur l’île Bourbon (1847); J. Mauran, Impressions dans un voy. de Paris à Bourbon (1850); Maillard, Notes sur l’île de la Réunion (1862); Azéma, Hist. de l’île Bourbon (1862). The geology and volcanoes of Réunion were the object of elaborate study by Bory de St Vincent in 1801 and 1802 (Voyages dans les quatre principales îles des mers d’Afrique, Paris, 1804), and have since been examined by R. von Drasche (see Die Insel Réunion, &c., Vienna, 1878, and C. Vélain, Descriptions géologique de . . . l’île de la Réunion Paris, 1878). The best map is Pau Lépervanche’s Carte de la Réunion 1·100,000 (Paris, 1906).
REUS, a city of N.E. Spain, in the province of Tarragona,
on the Saragossa-Tarragona railway, 4 m. N. of Salou, its port
on the Mediterranean. Pop. (1900) 26,681. Reus consists of
two parts, the old and the new, separated by the Calle Arrabal,
which occupies the site of the old city wall. The old town
centres in the Plaza del Mercado, from which narrow and
tortuous lanes radiate in various directions; the new one dates
from about the middle of the 18th century, and its streets are
wide and straight. There is an active trade in the agricultural
products of the fertile region around the city. The local
industries developed considerably between 1875 and 1905, and
the city has important flour, wine and fruit export houses.
There is a model farm belonging to the municipality in the
suburbs. Reus has excellent primary, normal and higher grade
state schools, many private schools, an academy of fine
arts and a public library. The hospitals and foundling refuge,
the institute and the town hall are handsome modern buildings.
The earliest records of Reus date from about the middle of
the 13th century. Its modern prosperity is traced to about
the year 1750, when a colony of English settled here and established
a trade in woollens, leather, wine and spirits. The
principal incidents in its political history arose out of the
occurrences of 1843 (see Spain, History), in connexion with
which the town received the title of city, and Generals Zurbano
and Prim were made counts of Reus. The city was the birthplace
of General Prim (1814–1870) and of the painter Mariano
Fortuny (1839–1874).
REUSCH, FRANZ HEINRICH (1823–1900), Old Catholic
theologian, was born at Brilon, in Westphalia, on 4th December
1823. He studied general literature at Paderborn, and theology
at Bonn, Tübingen and Munich. The friend and pupil of
Döllinger, he took his degree of Doctor in Theology at Munich,
the university of which Döllinger was so long an ornament.
He was ordained priest in 1849, and was immediately afterwards
made chaplain at Cologne. In 1854, he became Privatdozent
in the exegesis of the Old Testament in the Catholic
Theological Faculty at Bonn; in 1858 he was made extraordinary,
and in 1861 ordinary, professor of theology in the
same university. From 1866 to 1877 he was editor of the
Bonner Theologisches Literaturblatt. In the controversies on
the Infallibility of the Pope, Reusch attached himself to Döllinger’s party, and he and his colleagues Hilgers, Knoodt and Langen were interdicted by the archbishop of Cologne in 1871 from pursuing their courses of lectures. In 1872 he was excommunicated. For many years after this he held the post of Old Catholic curé of Bonn, as well as the position of vicar general to the Old Catholic Bishop Reinkens, but resigned both in 1878, when, with Döllinger, he disapproved of the permission to marry granted by the Old Catholic Church in Germany to its clergy. From that time he retired into lay communion,
