Seychelles and Tuvalu Claim Independence from Empire

The Seychelles achieved internal self-government while the Ellice Islands split from the Gilbert Islands to become Tuvalu, both asserting sovereignty on October 1, 1975, in a single day of decolonization across two oceans. The Seychelles, an archipelago in the Indian Ocean east of Kenya, had been a British crown colony since 1903 and before that a dependency of Mauritius. Internal self-government gave the islands control over their own affairs while Britain retained responsibility for defense and foreign policy. Full independence followed on June 29, 1976. James Mancham became the first president, though he was overthrown in a coup a year later by France-Albert Rene, who established a one-party socialist state that lasted until multiparty elections in 1993. The Ellice Islands separated from the Gilbert Islands after a referendum in which ninety-two percent of voters chose to split from a colony whose two island groups shared almost nothing beyond a colonial administrator. The Ellice islanders were Polynesian; the Gilbert islanders were Micronesian. They spoke different languages, practiced different customs, and had distinct kinship systems. The colonial grouping had been a British administrative convenience since 1916. The Ellice Islands became Tuvalu, one of the smallest and most remote nations on earth, with a land area of ten square miles and a population of roughly six thousand. The Gilbert Islands became the independent nation of Kiribati in 1979. Both nations now face existential threats from rising sea levels caused by climate change, a grim irony for countries whose carbon emissions are negligible but whose very existence depends on the behavior of the industrialized world.