"It would be madness to think of independence," announced a leading Seychelles nationalist in 1961. "We're just too small."
Indeed, so small are the Seychelles, a British crown colony of 92 tropical islands 1,000 miles off the coast of East Africa, that they were forever getting lost. The Arabians of the 10th century thought that the islands were where Sindbad the Sailor discovered the mystical, magnetic mountain in the Sea of Zanj. Portuguese navigators found them in 1501, only to lose track of them again. British General Charles ("Chinese") Gordon, who landed...
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