Blog

The origins of the population of Madagascar are poorly known.

The population of the island reveals several components, witnesses of several waves of immigration.
Some populations thus came – according to methods which remain controversial – from Africa : Bantu and perhaps, it has sometimes been assumed, Khoïsan (http://www.cosmovisions.com/ChronoAfrique08.htm). Others from Asia, perhaps from Arabia and India for some, but especially from Indonesia.

It is possible that the first settlement, said proto-Malagasy, already bringing together all these components took place towards the end of the 1st millennium and corresponds to the ancient people, shrouded in legend, of the Indigenous people.

The indigenous people (or Kimo) are mentioned from 1652, par Flacourt, who reported that they had been exterminated around twenty years earlier. Already legendary ? Commerson, cited by Buffon, assured a little later that there still survived a few groups bearing the name of Vazimba scattered among the other populations. (in Menabe, among the Sakalava and in the North-West and North-East of Imerina). They cultivated rice and raised Indian zebu.
On the other hand, the Vazimba were attributed with the erection of megalithic monuments, dolmens and especially tumulus found on the island.

Between the 12th and 14th centuries, a second wave of immigrants from Indonesia (via the Maldives?) settles on the island to leave a very strong imprint. Thus, for example, the language spoken today in Madagascar by the entire population, whatever its origin, belongs to the Malay language group, of the Austronesian family.
Creolized under the influence of Bantu languages, appears close to a speech practiced in Borneo. These newcomers, who will first make themselves masters of a large part of the central plateau, will be, by the policy of conquest carried out by one of their groups, the Merinas, the vectors of the unification of the country.

The Merinas, known during the colonial era by the name of Hova, which is in fact only the name of one of the castes that make up their society, had their stronghold, Imerina, in the Antananarivo region (Antananarivo). Its history dates back to the end of the 16th century, but it did not become a powerful state until the very beginning of the 19th century, under the reign of Andrianampoinimerina (= the lord of the heart of Imerina). The first affected by its expansion policy will be the Betsileo, population also of Indonesian origin, living a little further south. His son, Radama Ier, benefiting from the competition between the French and British on the island, and choosing the side of the latter against the former, will extend its conquests to the coastal and northern regions (Tamatave and Tsimiheti belong to him from 1817, then in 1822, The water pysalva, around Majunga.

Radama thus succeeded in making Madagascar practically a single kingdom.. Only the country of Anossi and a few districts escaped its domination. ; he made Tananarive his residence.
Or Ranavalo's widow, who succeeded him in 1828, signaled his reign with strong hostility towards all foreigners.
His son Radama II, reached the throne in 1861, got closer to the Europeans, but he was assassinated 1863.

Europeans arrived in the 16th century. The island had been visited by Portuguese navigators in 1506, and a few decades later it attracted the attention of France : Henri IV had a fort built there in Dauphine Cove, in the south-east of the island. The French established a few trading posts there as early as 1642, and an edict of 1686 declared the island a crown dependency. Count Beniowski was sent there in 1774; but, having wanted to become independent, it was fought by France itself, and its establishment destroyed in 1786.

From 1815, the French, occupied a few points again (Tintingue, Tamatave, Foulpointe), but they abandoned them in 1831.
De 1833 to 1890, new conflicts will oppose the Malagasy and the Europeans and the agreement reached between the European powers in Berlin in 1890, consecrating the sharing of their zones of influence in Africa granted primacy to France over Great Britain.
En 1896, Madagascar entered the French colonial domain, to gain independence 1960.

Hôtel★★★ Restaurant gourmand Coco Lodge Majunga.