All About Seychelles

Seychelles is an island nation spanning an archipelago in the Indian Ocean. It lies northeast of Madagascar and about 1,500 km east of the mainland of Africa. Its island neighbors include and Réunion and Mauritius to the south, Mayotte and Comoros to the southwest, and Zanzibar to the west.

The country is officially known as Republic of Seychelles or as the République des Seychelles in French, and the Repiblik Sesel in Creole. It is the smallest African state in terms of population at 95,601 thousand (2019).

History

Arab traders and Austronesian seafarers first visited the uninhabited islands. Portuguese Admiral Vasco de Gama was the first European to record sighting the area in 1502 when he passed through the Amirantes (islands of the Admiral), which he named after himself. In 1609 the crew of the English East Indiaman Ascension were the first to record the accounts of the landing on the islands.

The islands were a point for trade between Africa and Asia and also used by pirates. This changed in 1756 when a Stone of Possession was laid by Captain Nicholas Morphey and the French began to take control. The islands’ namesake was Louis XV’s Minister of Finance, Jean Moreau de Séchelles.

Between 1794 and 1810 the British contested control over the islands.

The French administrator of Seychelles, Jean Baptiste Quéau de Quincy, capitulated to the British during the war years when armed warships arrived. Through negotiation he was able to give the settlers a successful position of neutrality.

In 1810 upon the surrender of Mauritius, Britain assumed full control of Seychelles. The Treaty of Paris formalized this arrangement in 1814. In 1903 the islands became their own crown colony, which was separate from Mauritius. In 1966 and 1970, elections were held and in 1976 they obtained independence as a republic within the Commonwealth. In 1977, James Mancham, the first president of the republic, was ousted in a coup d’état and replaced by France Albert René. From 1979 to 1991 it was declared a socialist one-party state. A new constitution was drafted in 1992 and while that version failed to achieve the 60 percent of voters needed, in 1993 the amended version was approved.