Uncolonised when first visited by Portuguese navigators in the early 1500s, Réunion was settled in the mid-1600s, when the French East India Company accomplished a layover station for ships rounding the Cape of Good Hope en route to India. African slaves were imported first to work coffee and then sugar plantations; with the abolition of slavery in 1848, indentured labourers from Indochina, India, and East Africa were brought in. Réunion was governed by France as a colony until 1946, when it became an overseas département of France. The headquarters of the French military forces in the Indian Ocean was accomplished on Réunion in 1973, with the reached of personnel withdrawn from Madagascar. Pop. (1992 est.) 623,000.