ABSTRACT
The remarkable thing about Seychellois grands blancs was that despite an initial British colonial political structure that favoured them as whites, they never seriously attempted a political evolution that resembled that of the white communities in pre-1965 Rhodesia or South Africa. It could be argued that the party put its toe in the water in the early 1960s to explore a political dispensation that might evolve towards a southern African-style white-dominated state. A notable feature of the 1977 coup against Mancham was the equanimity with which it was received by a section of otherwise conservative Seychellois opinion. France-Albert René was born in November 1935 into a white colonial family with a father employed in a remote outlier of an isolated colony. The Renés were one of the grands blancs landed families, and Price René, France-Albert's father, worked as a plantation manager. The broader family seems to have been of modest financial circumstances but educated and well enough connected.
