THE LIFE AND WORKS OF ANTOINE NEW SENG SEEYAVE

His birth in Mahebourg

Antoine New Seng Seeyave was born on 25 July 1908, in Mahebourg. He is the third son of Joseph Seeyave, a baker of that town. His elder brothers are Michel-Ange Siong Sen and Andre Lan Sen.


It would be a mistake to look upon Antoine New Seng Seeyave’s birth in Mahebourg with the eyes of 2008. It would indeed be a big mistake since we are not at all sure that the Mahebourg and the Sino-Mauritian community of 1908 have anything in common with the Mahebourg of 2008 and the Sino-Mauritians of the early 21st century, who play a leading role in the country in spite of their numerical insignificance in the country’s total population (less than 40,000 out of 1,200,000 inhabitants). A hundred years after Antoine New Seng Seeyave’s birth, the notions of majority or minority ethnic groups and the setting-up of a business right in the middle of the main business centre or in a far-away district no longer have the same importance they had in those days. There are nowadays a truer sense of mauritianism and a greater openness towards people of different ethnic origins. Anybody, even a foreigner with few local connexions, can thrive and succeed even in the most advanced and innovative venture, if his business proposal meets people’s expectations and puts on local and foreign markets products and services they formerly lacked and indistinctly, even unconsciously, longed for.

Antoine New Seng Seeyave was born in a totally different context. If there were good fairies beside his cot (assuming he had one), they must surely have said to themselves: “What can we do to get our protégé out of this cul-de-sac that Mahebourg is?”

The reader must therefore not only cast his mind back to the situation of Mauritius in 1908 but also imagine the Mahebourg of that time, seen through the eyes of a baker of Chinese origin.