A history of Praslin and La Digue

Were Praslin and La Digue inhabited before Europeans arrived?

No. Seychelles had no indigenous population, and the first settlers did not land until 1770 (Tourism Seychelles; Seychelles Nation).

Tourism Seychelles says some historians believe Arab sailors knew of the islands by the 12th century, pointing to Arab manuscripts that mention "high islands" beyond the Maldives, and that 16th-century Portuguese navigators referred to a group of islands as the "seven sisters". The first recorded landing was by an English expedition in 1609, which found the islands uninhabited.

The coco de mer was known before the islands were. Historian Tony Mathiot, writing in Seychelles Nation, notes that the nuts were first seen floating in the Indian Ocean, giving rise to what he calls the absurd theory that they came from trees submerged when the Maldives separated from the Indian subcontinent; hence the name Lodoicea maldivica.

Lazare Picault and the French expeditions of the 1740s to 1770s

French interest came from Ile de France (Mauritius). Lazare Picault landed at Anse Boileau on Mahé in 1742 and returned in 1744; France took formal possession of Seychelles in 1756.

The expedition that shaped Praslin and La Digue was fitted out by Marc Joseph Marion Dufresne in 1768. It had two ships, La Digue under Duchemin and La Curieuse under Lamperaire, sent to cut timber on Mahé and collect tortoises. The sources differ on its length: Mathiot dates it 17 September 1768 to 31 January 1769, while Tourism Seychelles says the ships spent October to December 1768 among the islands. They also differ on the enslaved men who escaped during the voyage: Tourism Seychelles names five, starting with Françoise and La Violette from La Digue; Mathiot says four escaped to hide on Mahé.

How did Praslin and La Digue get their names?

Praslin is named after César Gabriel de Choiseul, Duc de Praslin, the French minister responsible for the navy. La Digue takes its name from the ship La Digue, and Curieuse from its sister ship.

Picault had called Praslin Ile de Palmes in 1744; it was later renamed Ile Moras, after a French finance official. On 20 November 1768 La Curieuse anchored off what is now Anse Possession, Lamperaire raised the French flag and renamed the island Praslin, and a plaque claiming it for the French crown was placed at the base of the flagstaff. The expedition left goats on the island to breed.

When was the coco de mer found on Praslin?

In 1768. Mathiot writes that the Marion Dufresne expedition found coco de mer palms and nuts on Praslin, the island it renamed that year.

The Seychelles Islands Foundation (SIF) sets out what followed: General Gordon called the Vallée de Mai the "Garden of Eden" in 1881; a 1908 report recommended buying its ravines to protect the palm; France Jumeau named it Vallée de Mai in 1928 after buying the land in May; it became a nature reserve in 1966, opened to visitors in 1972 and was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1983. Tourism Seychelles dates coco de mer protection to 1895, when the government bought Fond Ferdinand.

Early settlers on La Digue and Praslin

The first 28 settlers came ashore on Ste Anne, off Mahé, on 27 August 1770. La Digue was first inhabited in 1798 by a group of white deportees from Ile Bourbon (Réunion), according to Mathiot. On Praslin, a Catholic parish was founded at Baie Sainte Anne in 1853.

The 1770 party comprised 15 white men, five Indians, seven African men and one African woman; the Indians and Africans were enslaved (Seychelles Nation). Tourism Seychelles instead describes the party as 27 men and one woman, seven of them slaves. The Malavois Laws of 1787 promised 108 acres to new settlers, drawing families from Ile de France and Bourbon who brought slaves with them.

In October 1853 Father Théophile Pollar landed by pirogue at Anse Dumont on Praslin and founded the parish of St Anne at Baie Sainte Anne. La Digue's parish dates from the same year and its church of Our Lady of the Assumption at Anse Réunion dates from 1898 (Seychelles Nation, 2023).

British rule, slavery and emancipation

Seychelles first capitulated to the British in 1794, came under British control in 1811 and was ceded to Britain by the Treaty of Paris in 1814. Slavery was abolished on 1 February 1835.

Tourism Seychelles says more than 85% of the population was enslaved by 1790. Mathiot puts the number freed in 1835 at 6,521 out of 7,500 inhabitants, who then had to work for their former owners under an apprenticeship scheme until 1839. Owners were compensated; the freed were not, and many stayed on plantations as labourers or squatted on unused land. Between 1861 and 1874 close to 3,000 Africans rescued by the Royal Navy from slave dhows were landed in Seychelles; one Mathiot article gives the total as 2,816. The country now marks 1 February as Abolition of Slavery Day.

Coconuts, copra, vanilla and cinnamon: the plantation years

Coconut estates and copra carried the islands' economy under British rule, with cinnamon added in the 20th century. On La Digue, coconut and vanilla plantations were the backbone of the island's economy, and L'Union Estate still shows how the work was done.

Seychelles Nation, reporting a talk by Mathiot, lists coconut, food crops, cotton and sugar cane as the produce of the estates set up in the early years of British rule, and Mathiot describes copra as the mainstay of the economy in 1958. Seychelles shipped its first cargo of cinnamon in 1908. By 1921, Mathiot writes in one article, all crown land on Mahé and Praslin was leased for cinnamon; in another he says most. In 1975 copra and cinnamon bark made up 90% of domestic exports.

On Praslin, SIF records that the Vallée de Mai stayed largely untouched until the 1930s, when clearing and exotic planting began; in 1942 an entomologist wrote that clearing had turned its palm groves into a "semi-cultivated plantation".

L'Union Estate on La Digue produced copra and vanilla; Tourism Seychelles dates its plantation house, Gran Kaz, to 1818. Coconut oil production was once the heart of La Digue's economy (L'Union Estate).

Independence in 1976

Seychelles became an independent republic on 29 June 1976, with James Mancham as President and France Albert René as Prime Minister.

René entered the Legislative Council as member for Praslin and La Digue through a by-election in 1966, three years after Mancham's election. David Joubert, described as "the strongman of Praslin island politics", became the country's first tourism minister in 1975 and kept the post after independence.

How did tourism reach Praslin and La Digue?

Tourism took off after Seychelles International Airport opened in 1971. On Praslin a guest house became a small hotel in 1970, and on La Digue the forerunner of La Digue Island Lodge opened in 1972.

The first commercial jet, a BOAC Super VC10, landed on 4 July 1971, and Seychelles received 3,175 visitors that year; by 1975 arrivals had reached some 37,000. Eddy Johnson, recalling a childhood visit to Praslin in 1951, wrote that there was then not a single hotel on the island and that the ferry Paulette took four hours from Mahé.

On Praslin, Daniel Payet ran the Britania Guest House by 1963, and four rooms added in 1970 made it a small hotel. On La Digue, Grégoire Payet, one of the island's first hotel owners, opened Gregoire's Island Lodge in 1972 with ten A-frame chalets and met guests at the jetty with ox carts; it is now La Digue Island Lodge. The St Ange family's Cabanes des Anges was the island's second hotel.

How many people live on Praslin and La Digue today?

The 2022 census counted 7,882 people on Praslin and 3,133 on La Digue.

Praslin's population fell from 8,603 in 2010, and is split between Baie Sainte Anne (4,272) and Grand Anse Praslin (3,610). La Digue is counted within the La Digue and Inner Islands district, which also covers Silhouette, North, Denis, Frégate and Bird; the census report gives that district 3,624 people in one table and 3,537 in another (National Bureau of Statistics).

Where to see this history on Praslin, La Digue and nearby islands

L'Union Estate on La Digue, the Vallée de Mai and Fond Ferdinand on Praslin, and the Curieuse leprosarium ruins hold most of the visible history. Entry fees are on each place's own page on this site.

• L'Union Estate, Anse Réunion, La Digue: the plantation house, the Old Pier and La Digue's oldest cemetery, where the first settlers are buried, are recognised national monuments. You can also see the copra kiln, the coconut mill and the vanilla plantation.
• La Digue heritage sites: a National Heritage Research Section inventory lists copra kilns, oil mills, wells and an old ox-cart route at L'Union, Anse Patate, Anse Gros Roche and La Passe.
• Anse Possession, Praslin: the bay where the crew of La Curieuse raised the French flag in 1768.
• Vallée de Mai and Fond Ferdinand, Praslin: the two coco de mer reserves; the government bought Fond Ferdinand in 1895. The palm is protected under national law.
• Praslin Museum, near Côte d'Or: traditional tools, crafts and cooking methods, and musical instruments made from coco de mer shells.
• Churches: the Anse Boudin chapel on Praslin's north-east coast, blessed in 1973 and now a national monument, and Our Lady of the Assumption at Anse Réunion, La Digue.
• Curieuse: a leper colony from 1829 (Seychelles Nation); its ruins stand at Anse José. The Doctor's House, built in 1873, is closed for renovation (Seychelles Parks and Gardens Authority).