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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... slave raids and pillage of the nearby Comoros—and probably the African mainland as well. In 1840, as the central Malagasy monarchy of the Merina surged outward to the coasts, French admiral de Hell, governor of Réunion, occupied Nosy Be ...
... slavery, village conscription, and even coolie immigration. Slave trading by Arabs extended to Madagascar even into the late nineteenth century despite British efforts to sweep the seas in alliance with the Merina monarchy. But the Arab ...
... slave trade.34 Arabs alone are believed to have taken 40,000 to 150,000 slaves from that area. Slaves also went from western Madagascar.
Conflicts Of Authority In The Great Island Philip M. Allen. slaves from that area. Slaves also went from western Madagascar to the Cape colonies of the Dutch and to the Americas. British freebooters, shunted out of the West Africa trade ...
... 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 colonists dotted the entire ...
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 | |