Seychelles Global Citizen: The Autobiography of the Founding President
Growing competition for power and influence in the Indian Ocean, the world's primary energy and trade seaway, placed the Seychelles, a small peaceful archipelago nation, at the center of superpower rivalry during the Cold War.No one is better qualified to tell this story than Sir James R. Mancham, a lawyer who became the first President of the  island nation east of Africa when Britain gave up its rule of the idyllic islands in 1976. Overthrown less than a year later in a violent Marxist coup, Mancham was fortunate to survive the turbulent times that enabled unscrupulous men to seize power by force throughout the post-colonial world. Sir James prospered in his forced exile, and when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, he returned as "an apostle of reconciliation" to work for his nation alongside the regime that deposed him.Mancham's autobiography is about the resilience of the human spirit in the midst of the sweeping changes to the world after World War II. Globalization has not left even the remotest islands untouched. However, his story is more than a political treatise about the conflict for power in the Indian Ocean and about Seychelles' internal political turmoil, it is also the story of a colorful human being who has been dubbed "The Trudeau of the East" and "The Ernest Hemmingway of the Indian Ocean."