Madagascar (Part II)
The gradations of genetic heritage within the Malagasy people were visible to early visitors to the island, with the people of the central and northern regions noted as more physically similar to the Indonesian strain of origin and the Malagasy of the western and southern regions more influenced by African ancestors. European visitors sometimes assumed a racial hierarchy based on these differences, but what extant evidence exists suggests that was based more on their own cultural assumptions than any real fact. A "racially diverse population" was thus formed, united by language and "common culture, of which the main features are ancestral veneration [...] the ritual importance of cattle [...] and the construction of rectangular houses" in the Austronesian style (Brown 11-12).
Unique religious culture...writing linked to both Arabic and Indonesia...Encountered Islam but that faded over time. "The Qur'an seems eventually to have been lost. 'The people hold to the law of Mohammed,' noted a sixteenth-century French traveler [...] 'yet they do not worship either God or Mohammed, but the moon'" (Larson 46) ISLAM – part of Islamoc world around ocean… – archaeological record does show presence of Muslim traders after the turn of the first millennia…probably traders coming down the east coast…But older traditions remained, as they were in the liminal spaces of the Muslim world, and merged with some of the basic Muslim ones, which was observed as having “knowledge of the U’ran and of the annual feast of Ramadan” and “they did not eat port and they practiced circumcision” 62
By the time of the European middles ages, the island was already part of the network of shipping in the Indian Ocean, from local trade with the nearby, thriving Swahili coast of Africa to the far reaches of the southeast Asia, despite being located in its furthest western reaches. While luxury goods certainly circulated for centuries, often drawing the interest of contemporary and modern audiences, the circulation of basic supplies for construction and human comfort had created a complex web of trade over the ocean, including Madagascar.
Kings ruled for hundreds of years in manner very similar to those of the Austronesean kings, both in terms of their titles and the their symbols of power.
Met's TOAH
WIKIPEDIA - UP WITH SCHOLARLY WORK This influx of diverse people led to various Malagasy sub-ethnicities in the mid-2nd millennium. The Merina were probably the early arrivals, though this is uncertain and other ethnic groups on Madagascar consider them relative newcomers to the island.[12] The Merina people's culture likely mixed and merged with the Madagascar natives named Vazimba about whom little is known.[13] According to the island's oral traditions, the "most Austronesian looking" Merina people reached the interior of the island in the 15th century and established their society there because of wars and migrant pressure at the coast.[14][15] Merina people were settled in the central Madagascar, formed one of the three major kingdoms on the island by the 18th century – the other two being Swahili-Arab influenced Sakalava kingdom on the west-northwest and Austronesian Betsimisaraka kingdom on the east-northeast.[11][16]
European understanding of physical geography quite good by mid-seventeenth century. Includes understanding of seasonal changes (which will be discussed in more detail in the next chapter). Representative Map. Concepts of Africa; useful visual via the Princeton exhibit that illustrates the changing European understanding of the continent. (Interested readers might enjoy the visual tour, given from-sixteenth to mid-nineteenth centuries, at http://libweb5.princeton.edu/visual_materials/maps/websites/africa/maps-continent/continent.html )
What was lacking, of course, was an equally nuanced understanding of the continent's culture, as European names (and soon, colonies) are mapped over African soil.
Monsoons- general overview with more detail LINK NOT WORKING
http://moocs.southampton.ac.uk/shipwrecks/2014/10/02/maritime-rhythms-indian-ocean-monsoon/
The seasons oceanic and atmospheric shifts due to monsoons made Madagascar an important stop for Europeans navigating their way into the Indian Ocean. As Jane Hooper points out, in Feeding Globalization, despite the island's significant links to the slave trade, "out of the more than eight hundred voyages to the island, only about a third of the English, French and Dutch vessels that stopped there between 1600 and 1800 carried traders in search of slaves. The others loaded valuable supplies of food, wood and water during their stays on the island" (3). These waves of European missionaries, slavers, merchants and pirates that would visit Madagascar, are discussed in Part III of this section.
Europeans first charted the island via a wave of Portuguese vessels, starting in 1498. Diego Diaz stumbled on the island in 1500, and found both supplies and willing native peoples. However, for much of the sixteenth century, voyages to the island remained largely "unintentional, as their ships landed on the island following harsh storms in the Mozambique Channel. Later voyages were sometimes intended to discover any survivors from shipwrecks" (Hooper 25). The Dutch, also among the first Europeans to explore the island, had similar experiences, as disease and low morale took a heavy toll on the crew of their first major expedition in the region. While one of the commanders, Frederik de Houtman, would eventually publish the first European translation of the Malagasy language, the expedition was marred by a fifty-percent casualty rate, violence with natives in southeast Asia and with Portuguese rivals, and Houtman's own incarceration for two years in Sumatra. While results were encouraging enough to be cited in the subsequent formation of the Dutch East India Company, maps of the expedition noted the heavy loses, labeling one part of the island "the Dutch graveyard because many of them are buried there."
AS A RESULT, SEEN LARGELY AS PROVISIONING STATION...PERFECT FODDER FOR PIRATES SEEKING PREY
BUT DECENTRALIZED AUTHORITY
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