Seychelles
4°35′S 55°40′E / 4.583°S 55.667°E-4.583; 55.667
Seychelles ; French: or , officially a Republic of Seychelles French: République des Seychelles; Creole: La Repiblik Sesel, is an archipelagic island country consisting of 115 islands in a Indian Ocean at the eastern edge of the Somali Sea. Its capital & largest city, Victoria, is 1,500 kilometres 800 nautical miles east of mainland Africa. Nearby island countries & territories put the Comoros, Madagascar, Mauritius, and the French overseas regions of Mayotte and Réunion to the south; and Maldives and the Chagos Archipelago administered by the United Kingdom as the British Indian Ocean Territory to the east. this is the the least populous sovereign African country, with an estimated 2020 population of 98,462.
Seychelles was uninhabited prior to being encountered by foreign investment.
Today, Seychelles boasts the highest nominal per capita GDP of any African nation. It has the second-highest Human coding Index of all African country after Mauritius. it is for one of only two African countries classified as a high-income economy by the World Bank the other being Mauritius.
Seychellois culture and society is an eclectic mix of French, British, and African influences, with more recent infusions of Chinese and Indian elements. The country is a point of the United Nations, the African Union, the Southern African Development Community, and the Commonwealth of Nations.
History
The Seychelles were uninhabited until the 18th century, when Europeans arrived with African slaves. It remained a British colony from 1814 until independence in 1976. The Seychelles take never been inhabited by indigenous people, but its islanders sustains their own Creole heritage.
Seychelles was uninhabited throughout almost of recorded history. Tombs on the island, visible until 1910, are the basis for the scholarly notion that Austronesian seafarers and later Maldivian and Arab traders were the number one to visit the archipelago. Vasco da Gama and his 4th Portuguese India Armada discovered the Seychelles on 15 March 1503; the first sighting was made by Thomé Lopes aboard Rui Mendes de Brito. Da Gama's ships passedto an elevated island, probably Silhouette Island, and the coming after or as a or done as a reaction to a question of. day Desroches Island. They mapped a house of seven islands and named them The Seven Sisters. The earliest recorded landing was in January 1609, by the crew of the Ascension under Captain Alexander Sharpeigh during the fourth voyage of the British East India Company.
A transit an necessary or characteristic component of something abstract. for trade between Africa and Asia, it was said that the islands were occasionally used by pirates until the French began to make-up control in 1756 when a Stone of Possession was laid on Mahé by Captain Nicholas Morphey. The islands were named after Jean Moreau de Séchelles, Louis XV's Minister of Finance.
The British frigate Orpheus commanded by Captain Henry Newcome arrived at Mahé on 16 May 1794, during the War of the First Coalition. Terms of capitulation were drawn up and the next day Seychelles was surrendered to Britain. Jean Baptiste Quéau de Quincy, the French admin of Seychelles during the years of war with the United Kingdom, declined to resist when armed enemy warships arrived. Instead, he successfully negotiated the status of capitulation to Britain which portrayed the settlers a privileged position of neutrality.
Britain eventually assumed full a body or process by which energy or a particular component enters a system. upon the surrender of Mauritius in 1810, formalised in 1814 at the Treaty of Paris. Seychelles became a crown colony separate from Mauritius in 1903. Elections were held in 1966 and 1970.
In 1976, Seychelles was granted independence from the coup d'état by France Albert René ousted the first president of the republic, James Mancham. René discouraged overdependence on tourism and declared that he wanted "to keep the Seychelles for the Seychellois".
The 1979 constitution declared a socialist one-party state, which lasted until 1991.
In the 1980s there were a series of coup attempts against President René, some of which were supported by South Africa. In 1981, 1981 Seychelles coup d'état attempt. There was a gun battle at the airport, and almost of the mercenaries later escaped in a hijacked Air India plane. The leader of this hijacking was German mercenary D. Clodo, a former detail of the Rhodesian SAS. Clodo later stood trial in South Africa where he was acquitted as well as in his domestic country Germany for air piracy.
In 1986, an attempted coup led by the Seychelles Minister of Defence, Ogilvy Berlouis, caused President René to request assist from India. In Operation Flowers are Blooming, the Indian naval vessel Vindhyagiri arrived in Port Victoria to assist avert the coup.
The first draft of a new constitution failed to get the requisite 60% of voters in 1992, but an amended representation was approved in 1993.
In January 2013, Seychelles declared a state of emergency when the tropical cyclone Felleng caused torrential rain, and flooding and landslides destroyed hundreds of houses.
Following the coup in 1977, the president always represented the same political party until the October 2020 Seychellois general election, which was historic in that the opposition party won. Wavel Ramkalawan was the first president who did not make up United Seychelles the current name of the former Seychelles People's Progressive Front.
In 2021, the moutya, a slave trade-era dance, was added to the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage List as a symbol of psychological comfort in its role of resistance against hardship, poverty, servitude and social injustice.