Madagascar First Contacts

   Madagascar has a population that is predominantly of mixed Asian and African origin. The island of Madagascar was uninhabited until Indonesian seafarers arrived around the first century A.D. and married African wives and slaves. Migrations continued from both the Pacific and Africa which furthered the mixture of Asians and Africans.

   The seventh century A.D. brought about the written history of Madagascar. Arabs established trading posts along the northwest coast. It wasn’t until the 1500's that Madagascar experienced European contact. A Portuguese sea captain, Diego Dias, sighted the island when his ship became separated from a fleet that was bound for India. Since then there have been numerous contacts between Europeans and the Malagasy people and each time they were able to resist the attempts made by the Europeans to establish footholds on the island. [1]

Map of the community at Tranovato Ilha de Santa Cruz 1656 Madagascar.
- Author Flacourt.
   Portuguese, Dutch, English, and French traders frequented the ports of Madagascar and discovered that the Malagasy people already and had been for a while, engaging in long-distance trade. They traded with different groups throughout the Indian Ocean. They sold rice, slaves, and other items that could be found on the island. Merchants in Madagascar created ties with East Africa and the Arabian Peninsula through marriages and blood ties.[2]

   
   In the second half of the seventeenth century, the Dutch undertook many voyages to ship slaves from Madagascar to their colony on Mauritius. This colony failed to be productive to the Dutch, so their trips were abolished in 1647. French vessels also occasionally visited the island of Madagascar to acquire goods and slaves from their nearby settlement on the island of Bourbon.[3]

Pirate Cemetery Ile Sainte Marie, Madagascar.
   
   A few years later pirates began arriving in the Ile Sainte Marie. Large communities of pirates then began living on the east coast of the island from 1690 to 1720. These pirates came from diverse locations like Europe, the Caribbean, Africa, and North America.

   
   By the nineteenth century, Madagascar was now ruled by a native monarchy which ended in 1883. French troops began to occupy Madagascar and became a protectorate of France in 1895. The native monarchy was abolished French became the official language of Madagascar.[4]

WWII planes flying over Madagascar.
   
   

    Since Madagascar was a territory of France, the Malagasy people took part in WWII. They sent troops to fight the Nazi regime in France, Morocco, and Syria. During the war, the Nazi’s briefly sent Jews to Madagascar as a part of what was known as the “Madagascar Plan." Then France fell to the Nazis and Great Britain occupied Madagascar to protect it from the Germans but had to relinquish the island after France was freed in 1944. French control grew week as they tried to recover from the war and the Malagasy people staged an uprising and in 1958, Madagascar declared itself and autonomous republic.[5] 


                                                                                                        
[1] Madagascar. (2012). (). Washington: Superintendent of Documents. Retrieved from ProQuest Central; SciTech Premium Collection; Social Science Premium Collection.
[2]Hooper, Jane. "Pirates and kings: power on the shores of early modern Madagascar and the Indian Ocean." Journal of World History 22, no. 2 (2011): 215+. U.S. History In Context (accessed April 30, 2018).
[3]Bialuschewski, Arne. "Pirates, Slavers, and the Indigenous Population in Madagascar, C. 1690-1715." The International Journal of African Historical Studies 38, no. 3 (2005): 401-25. 
[4]Taylor, Franklyn. "Madagascar." In Native Peoples of the World: An Encyclopedia of Groups, Cultures, and Contemporary Issues, edited by Steven Danver. Routledge, 2013.
[5]Taylor, Franklyn. "Madagascar." In Native Peoples of the World: An Encyclopedia of Groups, Cultures, and Contemporary Issues, edited by Steven Danver. Routledge, 2013.

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