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1771
French navigator, Charles Ogier, comes ashore on the east side of the island at Anse La Passe. He names the island “Silhouette” after Etienne de Silhouette, the Controller-General of France between March and November 1759.
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1772 - 1810
For decades, Silhouette is home to short-term settlements only. Arab sailors and traders anchor to rest and replenish their water.
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1813
Even notorious pirate, Jean-François Hodoul, is unable to make a permanent home on the island and settles on Mahe after only a few years on Silhouette.
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1814
The Treaty of Paris makes the Seychelles a colony of the British Empire after the Napoleonic Wars.
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1830
French emigrant families acquire property on Silhouette and establish coconut plantations. Slaves are sent to clear the land and work on the plantations.
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1850
Thanks to The Emancipation Act some freed slaves became owners of many of the properties on Silhouette.
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1860
The trajectory of Silhouette Island changes when 36-year-old Frenchman, Auguste Dauban, arrives from Mauritius with his wife, Catherine Young.
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1866
Auguste Dauban uses his inheritance to buy all the properties on Silhouette. By that fact, becomes the owner of the entire island.
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1905
Auguste Dauban dies aged 79. He’s entombed in the family mausoleum which was specially constructed for his two-year-old daughter, Marie-Louise Eva, who died in 1864.
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1900s
Silhouette cements itself as an agricultural exportation empire thanks to the entrepreneurship of the Dauban family and the toil of liberated slaves and their descendants.
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1900s
English etymologist, Hugh Scott, discovers the Portesia pectinata, an endemic large white moth, on the summit of Mount Dauban.
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1900s
Edmee Aglaé and Gilbert Ernesta are the last couple to reside on Silhouette and harvest cinnamon for IDC (Island Development Company).
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1970
William Dubignon lives on the island for most of the 1970s, a time when a Dauban family descendant, Henry, is contemplating the sale of his island.
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1976
An independence vote and new constitution mean the Seychelles are now an independent republic within the Commonwealth.
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1980
IDC, the government parastatal, acquire the island. The uninhabited properties of past owners dot the landscape as a reminder of times gone by.
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2011 - present
The only resort on the island, Hilton Seychelles Labriz Resort & Spa officially opens. Our tropical hideaway and takes proud position in Silhouette Island’s history.