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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... French, it is familiarly known as "the great island" (la grande île). A typical insular people, the Malagasy have been able to live their own unique history while communicating fruitfully with nearby shores and distant lands. In the ...
... 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 central vertebrae from the ...
... French empire in the Indian Ocean. Halfway between the two lies hat-shaped Réunion, equally lovely step-sibling of Mauritius in the Mascarenes archipelago.6 Dependent for long periods on sugarcane for their mark in the world economy ...
... French admiral de Hell, governor of Réunion, occupied Nosy Be and offered a refuge there to his ally, the besieged Sakalava queen Tsiomeko. In a somewhat different, more maritime mode, Sainte Marie and the corresponding northeast coast ...
... French domination during the mid-and late nineteenth century, and from Gujarat and Bombay. Starting as imported coolie labor, the Indo-Pakistani Muslims stayed on and established themselves into a colony of some 10,000 by independence ...
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 | |