Mauritius document photos online

In September 1847 the tiny British colony of Mauritius did something no other corner of the Empire had done: it printed its own adhesive postage stamps, beating even far larger colonies to the press. Lady Gomm, the governor's wife, reportedly wanted them to send out invitations to a ball. The engraver mistakenly cut 'Post Office' instead of 'Post Paid' on the plate, and those flawed orange-red and deep-blue stamps became the rarest in philately. In 1993 a Mauritian banking consortium paid roughly two million dollars to bring surviving examples home after almost 150 years abroad.

• Passport power In the 2025 Henley Passport Index the Mauritian passport ranked 29th globally with visa-free or visa-on-arrival access to around 150 destinations, making it the second-strongest passport in all of Africa after Seychelles.
• Documents first Mauritius was the first place in the entire British Empire outside Britain itself to issue adhesive postage stamps, in 1847 - an unexpected milestone in the history of official paper documents.
• Currency The Mauritian rupee was introduced in 1876-77, replacing the Indian rupee, the Mauritian dollar and British sterling all at once, largely because of mass Indian immigration to the island.
• Banknotes Since August 2013 some Mauritian rupee notes, starting with the 25 and 50 rupee denominations, have been printed on polymer with a transparent window instead of a paper watermark.
• Cent subunit Mauritius is one of only three rupee currencies in the world - alongside Sri Lanka and Seychelles - to divide its rupee into 100 'cents', a subunit normally tied to dollar currencies.
• Extinct icon The dodo, last seen alive around 1681, lived nowhere on Earth but Mauritius, and the flightless bird still appears on the national coat of arms and watermarks tied to the country's identity.
• No army Mauritius has had no standing army since independence in 1968; all military, security and coast-guard duties fall to a paramilitary police force under a single Commissioner of Police.
• Statehood Mauritius became independent on 12 March 1968 and then, exactly 24 years later on 12 March 1992, replaced Queen Elizabeth II with a homegrown president to become a republic.
• Demographics Indo-Mauritians make up about 68 percent of the population, and Mauritius is the only country in Africa where Hindus form the largest religious group.