Seychelles
7th century…..The Seychelles remained a well kept secret for many centuries. Separated from the earlier centres of civilisation by vast distances, the islands were largely untouched until the 7th century when the Arabs in the dhows began their southerly ventures down the east African and on to India.
Arabian input…Today the islands owe much to isolation for keeping their natural environment in tact. Al Mas “Udi, a great Arab historian and traveller chronicled the Maldives and the ‘high islands beyond’ in 915. What this referred to were probably the mountainous granite islands that make up the central Seychelles. Aldabra, the huge giant land tortoise atoll may have been named by the Arabs from the word Al-khadra meaning ‘the green’.
The Arabs who introduced the coconut along the eastern African coast could have done the same in the Seychelles as this palm was already abundant when the Europeans arrived and later turned the crop into an important export. The 16th century was a time of discovery for the Portuguese who made the earliest record of the islands in 1502 when Vasco da Gama discovered the Amirantes Islands on his way to India. In 1544 the archipelago first appeared on Portuguese maps under the name of ‘The seven sisters’ and ‘The Brothers’. In the 18th century French navigators took over the exploration of the archipelago. On his way to Mauritius, Lazare Picault spotted the island of Mahe in 1741. After he told ‘Mahe de Labourdonnais’ the governor of Mauritius of his discovery, he was sent back in 1742 and named it after the governor who had sent him.
French influence…In 1756, Nicholas Morphey took possession of Mahe and seven other islands in the archipelago in the name of the king of France. The first settlers of the Seychelles made up just over two dozen Europeans, Indians and slaves landed on St. Anne Island on August 27, 1770. A year later a second group of settlers started a spice plantation at Anse Royale but the cinnamon, clove nutmeg and other plants were deliberately destroyed by fire in 1780 to prevent them from falling into enemy hands after the colony’s administrator mistakenly thought that an approaching ship was British.
British influence…From 1794 for the next 13 years, the islands changed hands seven times between the French and the British. In 1811 after a series of naval battles, the British succeeded in occupying the Seychelles. The French administrator, Queau de Quinssy, was allowed to stay even after Seychelles became British. With this liberal attitude the colony maintained much of its French character.
19th century…During the 19th century the population was substantially increased when hundreds of slaves landed in Seychelles after they had been freed by the British navy and the abolition of slavery in 1835.
In the mid 19th Century the arrival of the Catholic Church brought considerable cultural changes and boosted the French culture further.
By 1900 the population stood at around 20,000. In 1903 the Seychelles acquired the status of a separate British crown colony with its own governor, Mr Sweet-Escott. A clock tower was erected in the centre of Victoria to commemorate him, modelled on the clock standing outside Victoria railway station in London.
By 1914, the population had risen to 24,000. In 1923 electricity first became available to Victoria. Eleven years later the Seychelles rupees became the official currency. In 1940 a taxpayers association was formed. Today we have a population of around 80,000.
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