Anse aux Anglais or English Bay is a small coastal village located in the north of the Mauritian

Mauritius

Mauritius , officially the Republic of Mauritius is an island nation off the southeast coast of the African continent in the southwest Indian Ocean, about east of Madagascar...

 island of Rodrigues

Rodrigues (island)

Rodrigues , sometimes spelled Rodriguez but named after the Portuguese explorer Diogo Rodrigues, is the smallest of the Mascarene Islands and a dependency of Mauritius...

 in the Indian Ocean

Indian Ocean

The Indian Ocean is the third largest of the world's oceanic divisions, covering approximately 20% of the water on the Earth's surface. It is bounded on the north by the Indian Subcontinent and Arabian Peninsula ; on the west by eastern Africa; on the east by Indochina, the Sunda Islands, and...

. Its name, French

French language

French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...

 for "English Bay," is apparently linked with the fact that English troops landed on its beach in 1809 during the Napoleonic Wars

Napoleonic Wars

The Napoleonic Wars were a series of wars declared against Napoleon's French Empire by opposing coalitions that ran from 1803 to 1815. As a continuation of the wars sparked by the French Revolution of 1789, they revolutionised European armies and played out on an unprecedented scale, mainly due to...

 between France and Great Britain.

French writer of Mauritian origin, J. M. G. Le Clézio situated the plot of his book Le Chercheur d’or in this village.

The village is about 2 km from the main location, Port Mathurin

Port Mathurin

The village of Port Mathurin serves as the capital of the island of Rodrigues, a dependency of Mauritius. It lies on the north coast of the Indian-Ocean island and functions as the administrative, judicial and economic centre of Rodrigues. As the name suggests, it also operates the main harbour of...

. The main economic activities are tourism and fishing.