Crown colony to self-government, 1903 to 1976

In 1903 Seychelles finally stopped being an appendage of Mauritius and became a British Crown Colony in its own right, with its own governor, the first being Sir Ernest Bickham Sweet-Escott. On paper it was a promotion. In practice the colony remained poor, dependent on the price of copra and cinnamon, and its people had almost no say in their own government. The twentieth century arrived slowly here.

The first crack of democratic light came in 1948, when a Legislative Council with a handful of elected members was created. The franchise was tiny, restricted to literate property owners, which meant about two thousand voters in a population of more than thirty-six thousand. It was representation for the planter class, not the people. Yet it was a start, and figures like Dr Marie Hilda Stevenson-Delhomme began to build a political tradition.

Real politics arrived in 1964, and it arrived as a choice between two futures, personified by two London-trained lawyers. France-Albert René founded the Seychelles People's United Party, the SPUP, which argued for autonomy, socialism and a break from Britain. James Mancham founded the Seychelles Democratic Party, the SDP, which wanted closer integration with Britain and staked its hopes on tourism. The rivalry between these two men would shape the country for the next forty years.

The franchise widened at last. Britain agreed to universal adult suffrage, and the first elections on that basis were held in December 1967. They were remarkably close, the two parties winning three seats each, and for the first time the government of Seychelles genuinely rested on the votes of its people. By 1970 there was an elected Legislative Assembly and a Council of Ministers, with Mancham as Chief Minister. The international airport opened in 1971 and tourists began to arrive, transforming the economy almost overnight. A constitutional conference in London then set the course, and a coalition of the two parties agreed to lead the country to independence, which was fixed for the middle of 1976.