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Comoros
Three islands voted 95 percent for independence in December 1974 while Mayotte voted to stay French; rather than accept an island-by-island count, Ahmed Abdallah's assembly declared the whole archipelago independent on 6 July 1975.
- Independence
- July 6, 1975
- Before
- Territory of the Comoros (French overseas territory)
- Metropole
- France
- Leader
- Ahmed Abdallah
- Transition
- Negotiated
- Movement
- Ahmed Abdallah's Union Démocratique des Comores (Parti Vert) and the pro-independence coalition of 1972–75; Molinaco in exile from 1962
Four Sultanates, One French Colony
France took Mayotte by a treaty of April 1841 with its Sakalava sultan, placed Mohéli and then Grande Comore under protection in 1886, unified the four islands administratively in 1908 and made them a single colony in 1912, governed from Madagascar. The islands became an overseas territory in 1946 and gained internal autonomy in 1961. Politics in the 1960s was dominated by a conservative, pro-French elite descended from the sultanates: the Parti Vert of Said Mohamed Cheikh, who led the Governing Council until his death in March 1970, and the Parti Blanc of Prince Said Ibrahim.
A 'Regrettable Necessity'
The independence movement began abroad, with Molinaco founded by Comorian exiles in Tanzania in 1962, and reached the islands only in the late 1960s alongside a student-based socialist party. Ahmed Abdallah, a wealthy Anjouan planter who succeeded Cheikh as head of the Governing Council, came to see independence as a 'regrettable necessity' given thin French support and a radicalised younger generation. In 1972 the two established parties agreed to press for it, and a Common Declaration with France on 15 June 1973 set out a path to independence within five years after a consultation of the population.
The Referendum and the Break
In the referendum of 22 December 1974 about 95 percent of voters chose independence, but in Mayotte roughly 64 percent voted to remain French. When the French parliament moved toward counting the islands separately, the Comorian Chamber of Deputies declared the whole archipelago independent on 6 July 1975 with Abdallah as head of state. France recognised the independence of only three islands and kept Mayotte, confirming its status by a further vote there in February 1976. The United Nations admitted the Comoros on 12 November 1975 as one state of four islands.
Chronology
- April 1841 — France acquires Mayotte by treaty
- 1912 — The four islands become a single French colony
- 1961 — Internal autonomy granted
- 15 June 1973 — Common Declaration with France on the road to independence
- 22 December 1974 — Referendum: about 95% for independence; Mayotte votes to stay French
- 6 July 1975 — Chamber of Deputies declares the archipelago independent
- 3 August 1975 — Abdallah overthrown in a coup aided by the mercenary Bob Denard
- 12 November 1975 — Admitted to the United Nations
- 13 May 1978 — Denard's mercenaries overthrow Ali Soilih and restore Abdallah
Aftermath
Twenty-eight days after independence, on 3 August 1975, a coalition led by Ali Soilih overthrew Abdallah with help from the French mercenary Bob Denard. Soilih's revolutionary regime burned the colonial archives and dismissed 3,500 civil servants before Denard's fifty mercenaries deposed him on 13 May 1978; he was shot dead a fortnight later. Abdallah returned as president, ruling with Denard's presidential guard until his own assassination on 26 November 1989. Coups and secession attempts by Anjouan and Mohéli in 1997 followed, and a 2001 constitution created the Union of the Comoros. Mayotte, still claimed by Moroni, became a French department in 2011.
Legacy
A unilateral break that left the archipelago divided: the Comoros became independent as a four-island state in the eyes of the United Nations but a three-island one in practice, and the instability of the first decades was fed by France's retention of Mayotte and by mercenary intervention.