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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... central role in the world only after Europeans had rounded the Cape of Good Hope to defeat that system and link the Indian Ocean with the Eurafrican west. And even that distinction evolved slowly. Madagascar's insularity is more than a ...
... central vertebrae from the Ankaratra range south of Antananarivo to the Andingitra around Fianarantsoa. Some of the granite up Map 1.1 Provinces and cities of Madagascar buddings of central.
... central and eastern Madagascar date back more than 3,000 million years, representing "perhaps the oldest rocks on the face of the earth."5 Ravaged by fire, overgrazing, and erosion, the mountains are often entirely devoid of vegetation ...
... central Malagasy monarchy of the Merina surged outward to the coasts, 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 ...
... experienced a surge of population and a corresponding expansion of rice fields. Tavy technology spread throughout Madagascar. It has aggravated the deforestation that so sternly marks the central plateau and threatens to devastate the east.
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 | |