Madagascar: Conflicts Of Authority In The Great IslandThe world's fourth largest island, with a unique biological and physical endowment, Madagascar is home to an extraordinary insular civilization that has struggled for more than a century against external domination. In this sensitive introduction to the Indian Ocean's "great island," Philip Allen shows how family affinities and community loyalties at the foundation of Madagascar's culture have influenced Malagasy nationalism and forged islandwide traditions. These same principles have nonetheless engendered social cleavages and resistance to economic and political change. In chapters on modern Madagascar, Allen analyzes the inability of a series of regimes to maintain authority among a people deeply bound to rituals of communication with their spiritual environment. He demonstrates how the first Malagasy Republic became stigmatized by its lingering identification with French colonialism and how the nationalist revolution in 1972 soon hardened into autocratic radicalism. Allen explores the complex challenges facing Madagascar's resurgent democratic forces–including a need to conserve the island's irreplaceable biodiversity and to facilitate authentic participation in public affairs without offending ancestral customs and local precedents. Finally, he discusses efforts to end Madagascar's economic and political dependence and to improve living conditions for its tragically impoverished population. |
From inside the book
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... Antananarivo (Tananarive in French) at roughly 1,250 to 1,500 meters. Two clusters of volcanic mountains point upward from the plateaus to a peak of 2,880 meters in the northern Tsaratanana range and slightly lower along the island's ...
... Antananarivo. The foreign parties were identified with Protestant and Catholic mission activity and with the various industrial plantation ambitions of their venturesome citizens. England's interests were relatively limited—enforcement ...
... Antananarivo itself . Malagasy slaves were illegally incorporated into the Creole islands until full mid - century . In return , superfluous Réunionnais and others were periodically dumped on the great island . Miserable nests of white ...
... Antananarivo. Security was provided by clan militias called fokon'olona, which were to evolve into political and economic institutions with broad communal participation. In ethnic and cultural traits the contemporary Merina represent a ...
... Antananarivo politics . The chief item of contention was the presence of Europeans both at the capital and in the exploitable countryside . Catholic and Protestant missionaries trekked to Antananarivo to offer services and seek souls ...
Contents
From Paternalism to Revolution | |
Revolution as Myth | |
Society in Modern Madagascar | |
Flight from Reality | |
Continuity as Revolution | |
Revolution and Continuity in International Relations | |
Notes | |
Selected Bibliography | |
Index | |