ABSTRACT
Few coups d’etat have been led by a London-trained barrister. This is a distinction reserved to Seychelles. Indeed, the last revolutionaries to wear wigs had probably been the Jacobins. Instead, most coups in Africa have been led by not overly educated military figures, a few of whom have been functionally illiterate. Coups in small insular states are rare and unusual. There has only been one in the anglophone Caribbean and in only one state in the Pacific. After Rene's coup Hoffman returned to Seychelles and was best man at the wedding of Guy Sinon's brother Andre. Why Mancham and his key supporters remained oblivious to the plans for the coup is difficult to explain. For all his worldliness, Mancham was not security minded. It seems US intelligence personnel and State Department officials thought a coup was on the cards but had insufficient grounds to intervene with Mancham more forcefully.
