ABSTRACT
Mariners and cartographers recognized most of the islands sprinkled over wide portions of relatively uninteresting sea. Seychelles acquired independence as rustic city-state, a dispersion of scanty human and natural resources that had served little purpose in the colonial world. Minuscule and vulnerable, Seychelles must play the international repertoire of needs and options, grievances and priorities, nonpartisan high politics and obligatory economics. Stagnation in agriculture and the resources put to it has magnified the vulnerability of the islands to world conditions over which they can have no influence. Unlike pluralistic Mauritius and ambivalent Reunion, Seychellois miscegenation has produced a coherent nation, diminutive but self-aware. Relying almost exclusively upon external public capital committed on concessionary terms, Seychelles faces a rising public indebtedness and a period of adjustment to rapidly mounting demands of its urbanizing population.
