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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... of the Island. Equator 13 40 Tropic of Capricom SOUTH ATLANTIC OCEAN Madagascar and surrounding region Madagascar in its region . INDIA Maldives Comoro Islands Seychelles INDIAN OCEAN Reunion Mauritius MADAGASCAR 80 Map by Alicia ...
... 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, both Mauritius and Réunion have grown steadily apart since 1811, the year 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 were capitals of Eurasian piracy in ...
... Réunion and directly to Paris for intervention against the "odious" monarchy. Following the conquest, French administrators and military personnel joined settlers, traders, teachers, and missionaries in virtually all districts of the ...
... Réunion ) , from where their descendants never ceased to contemplate recovering access to the larger , richer place to the west . The original Dauphin colony did leave an important work of scholarship , Etienne de Flacourt's Histoire de ...
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 | |