ABSTRACT
All contemporary normative and legal traditions are hybrid creations, an on-going mix of nominally native elements and borrowed features. In this sense, none are islands, all are intersections in-between rippling waves of influence that may be mastered but cannot merely be manufactured. Legal hybridity is obvious in Seychelles. The laws and legal institutions of the Seychellois micro-jurisdiction very clearly reflect the diffusion of Europe’s most influential imperial legal traditions. The chapter explores the complex history and changing legal and normative hybridity of Seychelles. Properly contextualising the legal and normative hybridity of Seychelles requires, as a preliminary matter, a discussion of the concepts used to analyse its dynamic legal tradition and present legal system. The movement towards legal unity and centralisation quickened with the revolutions which rocked the intellectual and institutional foundations of Europe’s old regimes from the late eighteenth century.
