History of Madagascar
See also : MadagascarThe written
history of
Madagascar began in the seventh century A.D., when
Arabs established trading posts along the northwest coast. It is very likely, however, that the first people who came to Madagascar were from
Southeast Asia. This explains the range of
Malagasy phenotypic features, which are a mixture of Asian (
Austronesian) and African, as well as of the Arabs, Indians and Europeans who came later. British and French imperialists contested for Madagascar in the 17th through 20th Centuries, with the island becoming a French colony in 1890. Madagascar gained its independence from France in 1958.
In Malagasy
mythology, the island was inhabited first by a tribe of pale
dwarf-like people called the
Vazimba. Some Malagasy believe that these original inhabitants still live in the deepest recesses of the forest. In an island whose inhabitants practice
ancestor worship, the Vazimba are venerated as the most ancient of ancestors. The kings of some Malagasy tribes claim a blood kinship to the Vazimba.
Archeologists place the arrival of humans on the island to the years between
200 and
500 C.E., when the first inhabitants of Madagascar, seafarers from southeast Asia, probably
Borneo or the southern
Celebes, arrived in their
outrigger canoes. These original Malagasies were
Southeast Asians who came to the island as part of the great
Austronesian expansion, the movement of people that populated the
Malay Peninsula,
Java,
Sumatra,
New Zealand, and all of
Polynesia and
Micronesia, as well as
Hawaii and the
Easter Islands. No evidence of Indonesians colonizing the east coast of Africa has ever been found. It appears that the first inhabitants of Madagascar came directly across the
Indian Ocean from
Indonesia, a journey of 3,700 miles, by following the
trade winds and the
equatorial east-west current. Along with New Zealand, Madagascar was the last landmass to be occupied by humans. The anthropologist
Jared Diamond has written about the Austronesian expansion to Madagascar:
Medieval
Arab navigators and geographers may have known about Madagascar. The very island off the southern coast of Ophir (Africa) was known by various names: Phebol, Cernea, Menuthias, Medruthis, Sherbezat, Camarcada, and the Island of the Moon.
Madagascar gets its name from
Marco Polo, the fourteenth-century Italian explorer, who described an African island of untold wealth called Madeigascar in his memoirs. Polo heard about the island second-hand during his travels in Asia. Most scholars believe that he was writing about
Mogadishu, the port located in present-day
Somalia. Nevertheless, the name Madagascar was attached to the island by Italian cartographers during the Renaissance.
Bantu settlers probably crossed the
Mozambique Channel to Madagascar at the same time as or shortly after the Indonesians arrived. Although the majority of words in the Malagasy language are of Malayan-Polynesian origin, a smattering of Bantu words is spoken as well. From this evidence, some anthropologists believe that Indonesian and Bantu settlers intermixed early in the island's history.
The Bantus brought with them the gourd-like jejolava and multi-stringed valiha, the musical instruments on which Malagasy music is played. The Bantus also brought a cultural trait that is peculiar to East Africa -- an obsession with cattle. Especially on the southern savannahs of Madagascar where African influences are strongest, wealth and social status are measured in cattle, and the
zebu outnumber the inhabitants by two or three to one.
According to the traditions of some Malagasy peoples, the first Arabs to settle
Madagascar were refugees from the
civil wars that followed the death of
Mohammed in
632[Sigmund Edland, Tantaran'ny Fiangonana Loterana Malagasy]. Beginning in the tenth or eleventh century,
Arabic and
Zanzibari slave traders working their way down the east coast of Africa in their
dhows and established settlements on the west coast of Madagascar. The most noteworthy of these were the Zafiraminia, traditional ancestors of the
Antemoro,
Antanosy and other east coast ethnicities. The last wave of Arab immigrants would be the Antalaotra who immigrated from eastern African colonies. They settled the north-west of the island (
Majunga area) and were the first to actually bring
Islam to the island
[Sigmund Edland, Tantaran'ny Fiangonana Loterana Malagasy]. Arab immigrants were few in number compared to the Indonesians and Bantus, but they left a lasting impression. The Malagasy names for seasons, months, days, and coins are Arabic in origin, as is the practice of
circumcision, the communal grain pool, and different forms of salutation. The Arab magicians, known as the
ombiasy, established themselves in the courts of many Malagasy tribal kingdoms. Arab immigrants imposed the patriarchal system of family and clan rule on Madagascar. Previous to the Arabs, the Malagasies practiced the
Polynesian matriarchal system whereby rights of privilege and property are conferred equally on men and women.
By the fifteenth century, Europeans had wrested the spice trade from the Muslims. They did it by sidestepping the Middle East and sending their cargo ships around the Cape of Good Hope to India. A Portuguese mariner named Diego Dias became the first European to set foot on Madagascar when his ship, bound for India, blew off course in 1500. In the ensuing two hundred years, the English and French tried and failed to establish settlements on the island.
Fever, dysentery, hostile Malagasy tribespeople, and the trying arid climate of southern Madagascar soon terminated the English settlement near Toliary (Tuléar) in 1646. Another English settlement in the north in
Nosy Bé came to the same end in 1649. The French colony at Taolañaro (Fort Dauphin) fared a little better. It lasted thirty years. On Christmas night 1672, local Antanosy tribesmen, perhaps angry because fourteen French soldiers in the fort had recently divorced their Malagasy wives to marry fourteen French orphan women who had been sent out to the colony, massacred the fourteen grooms and thirteen of the fourteen brides. The Antanosy then besieged the stockade at Taolañaro for eighteen months. A ship of the French East India Company rescued the surviving thirty men and one widow in 1674.
Between 1680 and 1725, Madagascar became a pirate stronghold. Pirate luminaries such as
William Kidd,
Henry Every,
John Bowen, and
Thomas Tew made Antongil Bay and Nosy Boraha (St. Mary's Island), a small island 12 miles off the northeast coast of Madagascar, their base of operations. The pirates plundered merchant ships in the
Indian Ocean, the
Red Sea, and the
Persian Gulf. The pirates looted ships bound for Europe of their silks, cloth, spices, and jewels. Ships going the opposite direction to India were robbed of their coin, gold, and silver. The pirates robbed the Indian cargo ships that traded between ports in the Indian Ocean as well as ships commissioned by the East India Companies of France, England, and the Netherlands. The pilgrim fleet sailing between Surat in India and Mocha on the tip of the Arabian Peninsula was a favorite target because the wealthy Muslim pilgrims often carried jewels and other finery with them to Mecca. Merchants in India, various ports of Africa, and
Réunion Island were eager to fence the pirate's stolen goods. The low-paid seamen who manned merchant ships in the Indian Ocean hardly put up a fight, seeing as they had little reason or motivation to risk their lives. The pirates often recruited crewmen from the ships they plundered.
Previous to the arrival of Europeans, the Malagasy tribes occasionally waged wars to capture and enslave prisoners. The slaves were either sold to Arab traders or kept on hand as laborers. With the arrival of European slaver traders, human chattel became more valuable and the coastal tribes of Madagascar took to warring with each other to obtain prisoners for the lucrative slave trade. Instead of spears and cutlasses, the tribesmen fought with muskets, musket balls, and gunpowder that they obtained from Europeans. The wars were fierce and brutal. On account of their relationship to the pirates on Nosy Boraha, the Betsimisaraka in eastern Madagascar had more firearms than anyone else. They overpowered their neighbors the Antakarana and Tsimihety and even raided the Comoros Islands. As the tribe on the west coast with the most connections to the slave trade, the Sakalava also had access to guns and powder. They subdued the other tribes on the west coast. Tribal chiefs who failed to capture prisoners for the slave trade sometimes did what had previously been considered unthinkable -â€" they sold their own people into slavery.
Andrianampoinimerina
In the central highlands of Madagascar, the Merina kingdom, a kingdom of rice farmers, had been living in relative isolation from the rest of Madagascar for several centuries, but by 1824 the Merina conquered nearly all of Madagascar thanks to the leadership of two shrewd kings,
Andrianampoinimerina (circa 1745â€"1810) and his son
Radama I (1792â€"1828).
By marrying the princesses of different Merina clans and warring against the princes, Andrianampoinimerina united the Merina kingdom. He established
Antananarivo as the capital of Madagascar and built the royal palace, or
rova, on a hilltop overlooking the city. The king was ambitious. He proclaimed,
Ny ranomasina no valapariako ("the sea is the boundary of my rice field"). But what distinguished Andrianampoinimerina from other ambitious kings and tribal chiefs was his ability to administer. The king codified the laws. He supervised the building of dykes and trenches to increase the amount of arable land around Antananarivo. He introduced the metal spade and compelled rice farmers to use it. King Andrianampoinimerina was an exemplary military commander. By the time of his death in 1810, he had conquered the Bara and Betsileo highland tribes and was preparing to push the boundaries of his kingdom to the shores of the island.
Radama I
His son Radama I (Radama the Great) assumed the throne during a turning point in European history that had repercussions for Madagascar. With the defeat of
Napoléon, the balance of power in Europe and the European colonies shifted in England's favor. The English, eager to exert control over the trade routes of the Indian Ocean, captured Réunion and
Mauritius islands from the French. Although they returned Réunion, they kept Mauritius as a base for expanding the British Empire. Mauritius's governor, to woo Madagascar from French control, recognized Radama I as King of Madagascar, a diplomatic maneuver meant to underscore the idea that the island was sovereign and therefore unclaimed by any European powers.
Radama I signed treaties with England outlawing the slave trade and admitting protestant missionaries into Madagascar. On the face of it, the terms of these treaties seem innocuous enough, except the protestant missionaries, the English knew, would spread British influence as well as Christian charity, and outlawing the slave trade, the English hoped, would weaken Réunion by depriving that island of slave laborers for its sugar plantations. In return for outlawing the slave trade, Madagascar received what the treaty called "The Equivalent": an annual sum of a thousand dollars in gold, another thousand in silver, stated amounts of gun powder, flints, and muskets, plus 400 surplus British Army uniforms. The governor of Mauritius also sent military advisers who accompanied and sometimes led Merina soldiers in their battles against the Sakalava and Betsimisaraka. In 1824, having defeated the Betsimisaraka, Radama I declared, "Today, the whole island is mine! Madagascar has but one master." The king died in 1828 while leading his army on a punitive expedition against the Betsimisaraka.
Ranavalona I
The 33-year reign of Queen
Ranavalona I (Ranavalona the Cruel), the widow of Radama I, began inauspiciously with the queen murdering the dead king's heir and relatives. The aristocrats and sorcerers who had lost influence under the liberal regime of the previous two Merina kings reasserted their power during the reign of Ranavalona I. The queen repudiated the treaties that Radama I signed with Britain. Emerging from a dangerous illness in 1835, she credited her recovery to the twelve
sampy, the talismans endowed with supernatural powers that were housed on the palace grounds. To appease the sampy who had restored her health, she issued a royal edict prohibiting the practice of
Christianity in Madagascar, expelled British missionaries from the island, and persecuted Christian converts who would not renounce their religion. Christian customs "are not the customs of our ancestors," she explained. The queen scrapped the legal reforms started by Andrianampoinimerina in favor of the old system of trial by ordeal. People suspected of committing crimes -â€" most were tried for the crime of practicing Christianity â€"- were made to drink the poison of the tangena tree. If they survived the ordeal, which few did, they were judged innocent. Malagasy Christians would remember this period as ny
tany maizina, or "the time when the land was dark." By some estimates, 150,000 Christians died during the reign of Ranavalona the Cruel. The island grew more isolated and commerce with other nations came to a standstill.
Unbeknownst to the queen, her son and heir, crown prince
Radama II, attended Roman Catholic Masses in secret. The young man grew up under the influence of French nationals in Antananarivo. In 1854, he wrote a letter to
Napoléon III inviting France to invade Madagascar. On June 28, 1855 he signed the
Lambert Charter. This document gave Joseph-François Lambert, an enterprising French businessman who arrived in Madagascar only three weeks before, the exclusive right to exploit all minerals, forests, and unoccupied land in Madagascar in exchange for a 10-percent royalty to be paid to the Merina monarchy. In years to come, the French would use the Lambert Charter and the prince's letter to Napoléon III to justify the Franco-Hova Wars and the annexation of Madagascar as a colony. In 1857, the queen uncovered a plot by her son Radama II and French nationals in the capital to remove her from power. She immediately expelled all foreigners from Madagascar. Ranavalona the Cruel died in 1861.
Radama II
In his brief two years on the thrown, King Radama II reopened trade with Mauritius and Réunion, invited Christian missionaries and foreigners to return to Madagascar, and reinstated most of Radama I's reforms. His liberal policies angered the aristocracy, however, and he was strangled in a coup d'état engineered by Rainivoninahitriniony, the prime minister. This cunning man or his equally cunning brother, Rainilaiarivory, would rule Madagascar from behind the scenes for the remaining 32 years of the Merina monarchy. First Rainivoninahitriniony and then his brother married Queen Rasoaherina, Radama II's widow. Rainilaiarivory also married the last two queens of Madagascar, Ranavalona II and Ranavalona III.
Rasoaherina
Rabodo, the widow of Radama II, was approached by a council of princes headed by Rainilaiarivony the day after the death of her husband. They gave her the conditions under which she could succeed to the throne. Among these conditions were the suppression of
trial by ordeal as well as the monarchy's defense of
freedom of religion. She was crowned queen on May 13th
1863 under the throne name of
Rasoaherina; her reign lasted until her death on April 1st
1868[ Frédéric Randriamamonjy, Tantaran'i Madagasikara Isam-Paritra (The history of Madagascar by Region), pg 529-534].
Queen Rasoaherina would be remembered for sending
ambassadors to
London and
Paris and for prohibiting
Sunday markets. On June 30th
1865, she signed a treaty with the
United Kingdom giving British citizens the right to rent land and property on the island and have a resident ambassador. With the
United States of America she signed a trade agreement that also limited the importation of weapons and the exportation of cattle. Finally, with
France the queen signed a peace between her descendants and the descendants of the
Emperor of France[ Frédéric Randriamamonjy, Tantaran'i Madagasikara Isam-Paritra (The history of Madagascar by Region), pg 529-534].
Ranavalona II
In 1869, Queen
Ranavalona II, who had been educated by the
London Missionary Society, was baptized into the
Anglican Episcopal Church and subsequently made that faith the official
state religion of Madagascar. The queen had all the
sampy burned in a public display. Catholic and protestant
missionaries arrived in numbers to build churches and schools. The reign of Queen Ranavalona II was the heyday of British influence in Madagascar. In parts of the island,
English replaced
French as the
second language.
Cup,
carpet, and other English words entered the Malagasy language. British arms and troops arrived on the island by way of
South Africa.
Ranavalona III
Razafindrahety was selected by Prime Minister Rainilaiarivony to succeed Ranavalona II. She was crowned queen publicly on November 22nd 1883 and given the name Ranavalona III. Her first order of business was to confirm the nomination of Rainilaiarivony and his entourage in their positions. She also promised to do away with the French threat.
[ Frédéric Randriamamonjy, Tantaran'i Madagasikara Isam-Paritra (History of Madagascar by Region), pg 546. ]The End of the Monarchy
Angry because the Lambert Charter had been cancelled, seeking to restore property that had been confiscated from French citizens, France invaded Madagascar in
1883 in what became known as the first
Franco-Hova War (
Hova being the name of the Merina aristocrats). At the war's end, Madagascar ceded
Antsiranana (Diégo Suarez) on the northern coast to France and paid 560,000
gold francs to the heirs of Joseph-François Lambert. In Europe, meanwhile, diplomats partitioning the Africa continent worked out an agreement whereby Britain, to obtain the Sultanate of
Zanzibar, ceded its share of
Heligoland to
Germany and renounced all claims to Madagascar in favor of France. The agreement spelled doom for Madagascar. Prime Minister Rainilaiarivory had succeeded in playing England and France against one another, but now France could meddle without fear of reprisals from England. In
1895, a French flying column landed in
Mahajanga (Majunga) and marched by way of the
Betsiboka River to the capital,
Antananarivo, where the city's defenders were taken by surprise. They had expected an attack from the much closer east coast. Twenty French soldiers died fighting and 6,000 died of
malaria and other diseases before the second Franco-Hova War ended. In 1896, the
French Parliament voted to
annex Madagascar. The 103-year-old Merina monarchy ended with the royal family sent to exile in
Algeria.
The British accepted the imposition of a French
protectorate over Madagascar in 1890 in return for eventual control over
Zanzibar (now part of
Tanzania) and as part of an overall definition of spheres of influence in the area.
[See Allen and Covell, Historical Dictionary of Madagascar, pgs. xxx-xxxi] Absolute French control over Madagascar was established by military force in 1895-96, and the Merina
monarchy was abolished.
Malagasy troops fought in
France,
Morocco, and
Syria during
World War II. After France fell to the
Germans, Madagascar was administered first by the
Vichy government and then in 1942 by the British, whose troops occupied the strategic island to preclude its seizure by the
Japanese. The Free French received the island from the
United Kingdom in 1943.
In 1947, with French prestige at low ebb,
a nationalist uprising was suppressed after one year of bitter fighting, in which as many as 80 000 Malagasy died.
[Lonely Planet: Madagascar History] The French subsequently established reformed institutions in 1956 under the
Loi Cadre (
Overseas Reform Act), and Madagascar moved peacefully toward independence. The
Malagasy Republic was proclaimed on October 14, 1958, as an autonomous state within the
French Community. A period of provisional government ended with the adoption of a constitution in 1959 and full independence on
June 26, 1960, with
Philibert Tsiranana as President.
Tsiranana's rule represented continuation, with French settlers (or 'colons') still in positions of power and unlike many of France's former colonies, strongly resisted movements towards
communism.
[Lonely Planet: Madagascar History] In 1972 protests against these policies came to a head and Tsiranana was forced to step down. He handed power to General
Gabriel Ramanantsoa of the army and his provisional government. This regime reversed previous policy in favour of closer ties with the
Soviet Union.
[BBC: Madagascar timeline] In 1975 Lieutenant-Commander
Didier Ratsiraka (who had previously served as foreign minister) came to power in a coup. Ratsiraka was elected president for a seven year term and moved further towards socialism, nationalising much of the economy and cutting all ties with France.
[BBC: Madagascar timeline] These policies hastened the decline in the Madagascan economy that had begun after independence as French immigrants left the country leaving a shortage of skills and technology behind.
[Lonely Planet: Madagascar History] Ratsiraka's seven year term was extended after his party (Avant-garde de la Révolution Malgache or AREMA) became the only legal party in the 1977 elections.
[Lonely Planet: Madagascar History] In the 80s Madagascar moved back towards France, abandoning many of its communist-inspired policies in favour of a
market economy, though Ratsiraka still kept hold of power.
[Africa.com: Madagascar history and culture]Eventually opposition both in Madagascar and internationally forced him to reconsider his position and in 1992 a new democratic constitution was approved.
[BBC: Madagascar timeline]The first multi-party elections came in 1993 and Ratsiraka was defeated by
Albert Zafy.
[Lonely Planet: Madagascar History] Zafy failed to reunite the country and was impeached in 1996.
[Africa.com: Madagascar history and culture] The ensuing elections saw a turnout of less than 50% and surprisingly ended in the re-election of Didier Ratsiraka.
[BBC: Madagascar timeline] He moved further towards
capitalism. The influence of the
IMF and
World Bank led to widespread
privatisation.
Opposition to Ratsiraka began to grow again. Provincial elections in 2000 were boycotted by opposition parties and the 2001 presidential election produced more controversy. The opposition candidate
Marc Ravalomanana claimed victory after the first round (in December) but this position was refuted by the incumbent. In early 2002 supporters of the two sides took to the streets and there were violent clashes. Ravalomanana claimed that there had been fraud at the polls. After an April recount the High Constitutional Court declared Ravalomanana president. Ratsiraka continued to dispute the result but his opponent was internationally recognised and he was forced into exile in France, though forces loyal to him continued to be active in Madagascar.
[Lonely Planet: Madagascar History]Ravlomanana's
I Love Madagascar party achieved overwhelming electoral success in December 2002 and he survived an attempted coup in January 2003. He used this mandate to work closely with the IMF and World Bank to reform the economy, end corruption and realise the country's potential.
[Lonely Planet: Madagascar History] Ratsiraka was tried in his absence for
embezzlement (he was charged with taking $8m of public money with him into exile) and sentenced to ten years
hard labour.
[BBC News: Ratsiraka gets 10 years hard labor]* Matthew E. Hules, et al (2005). The Dual Origin of the Malagasy in Island Southeast Asia and East Africa: Evidence from Maternal and Paternal Lineages.
American Journal of Human Genetics, 76:894-901, 2005.
* Philip M. Allen & Maureen Covell (2005).
Historical Dictionary of Madagascar 2nd ed. Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press. ISBN 0810846365.
* Mervyn Brown (2000).
A History of Madagascar. Princeton: Markus Wiener Publishers. ISBN 1558762922.
* Philip M. Allen (1995).
Madagascar: Conflicts of Authority in the Great Island. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press. ISBN 0813302587.
*
Newsletter article on the first settlers of Madagascar*
A Historical Timeline for Madagascar*
History of Madagascar*
Madagascar: a Portuguese settlement: the Portuguese fort near Tolanaro
