ABSTRACT
The Seychelles archipelago to the north of Madagascar lies between four and ten degrees below the equator. It spreads north-east to south-west across 1100 kilometres of ocean comprising perhaps 110 islands depending on how many low-lying features are classified. Seychelles’ society was shaped by its colonial dispensation. The archipelago was uninhabited when the Portuguese navigator Vasco da Gama discovered it in 1503, although Arab sailors almost certainly knew earlier of the islands. It was from subsequent Portuguese voyagers the islands acquired their early names of the Seven Sisters and the Amirantes – the latter retained as a reference to the numerous western coral atolls in the archipelago. The French purpose was strategic. The government in Paris, in a long period of repeated wars with the British, was concerned to retain sea access to India. The British seizure of Seychelles was to eliminate the use of the islands as a haven for French privateers.
