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'One That's More Torrid': The Pirates of Madagascar

[Madagascar Part V] La Bigorne

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Madagascar: V The accounts of the pirates of Madagascar end in death or mystery. Misson was based from the start on an amalgamation of other pirates' lives, mixed with Johnson's own imaginative plot, and his 'fate' was thus likely dreamed up as wish fulfillment for the status quo back in England. Tew was killed in action. Avery disappeared to retirement in England, according to the General History, or to a kingship on Madagascar, according to other contemporary -- and likely unreliable -- sources.

In fact, by the early 1700s, many of the pirates stopped practicing their trade altogether and settled into more traditional lives on the island. There were attempts, both directly via residents of the island and through relatives back 'home' in England, to obtain pardons from the Crown. However, "spectators soon grasped the crucial point that the island's natural resources were limited and offered few commercial opportunities" beyond slave trafficking, and the "desire to distance the Crown and Parliament from any taint of corruption connection to piracy ensured that Queen Anne was advised to reject proposals that involved issuing a royal pardon to pirates in return for a shore of their loot. The increasing coherence and force of international law also made such schemes less attractive" (Lincoln 180).

When the English appeal was unsuccessful (and, far from being pardoned, Avery was convicted of piracy in absentia), some of the Madagascar-based pirates even attempted to obtain pardon from another monarch, Charles XX of Sweden. As with the English, they offered an enormous percentage of their treasure and to put their knowledge of the eastern oceans to use in service of his crown (Dawson 210). The pirates of Madagascar were living examples of the pirate's paradox: what is a successful pirate to do with all of the plunder, if he cannot go home to spend it? Charles XX, like Anne, deemed the risks to outweigh the rewards. European powers sought stability in order to incubate their colonies, so a pardon for pirates was simply out of date -- an anachronism linked to the bygone days of privateers and more chaotic economies in what was then a "new" world -- and thus was a request easily set aside.

Ryan Holroyd explains that the pirates were able to thrive on the island even without further raids. They still possessed substantial weaponry, and often acted as "interpreters and intermediaries between Malagasy rulers and the growing number of slave traders coming to Madagascar [... A] less dangerous, more reliable way to generate income by removing the need to risk bloody engagements with enemy ships on the open seas, or to put themselves at the mercy of European state authorities (769).

Just as the "integration of Arabs and Persians" created "Swahili and Mappila societies," Edward Alpers explains, "individual pirates gradually settled in local coastal villages from Tamatave [today Toamasina] south to Antongil Bay, where the small Ile Sainte Marie [today Nosy Boraha] became the center for the stockpiling and marketing of goods seized by pirates of this community. Most pirate settlers married local women and established commercial and political relation" and their descendants "became known as Malara, mulattos, or Zana-Malata, children of mulattoes" (87). From that subculture arose a leader by the name of Ratsimilaho, the son of a pirate and local Malagasy noblewoman. A charismatic leader with local knowledge, cash reserves to buy weapons, and an understanding of the larger global economy, Ratsimilaho was in a unique position. Records indicate he voyaged to English territories in India in his youth, and "spent extensive time on the west coast of the island in the Sakalava court at Boina, suggesting that he was influenced as much by the models of leadership he found among the Sakalava and the English as he was by the pirates" (Hooper "Feeding Globalization" 84). Part of this manifested in his military tactics, specifically the use of extended military campaigns, "whereas previously there had been a tendency for groups at war to admit defeat after just a single engagement" (Randrianja and Ellis 106).

Ratsimilaho successfully united the Zana-Malata and created a successful alliance with the powerful Sakalava people of the southern and western regions of the island. Ratsimilaho's new union became known as the the Betsimisaraka ("The Many Indivisible") alliance. While the political union did not long survive his death, the new ethnic identity of the Betsimisaraka was lasting, and is today counted as the second-most populous ethnic group on the island (Brown 82). After Ratsimilaho's death, his daughter Beti reigned as queen, but tensions between the native people and increasingly powerful French presence in the previously uninhabited neighboring Mascarene island archipelago were untenable. Beti would be blamed for local uprisings and made to stand trial; when cleared, she was granted land on Mauritius and continued to attempt to negotiate favorable terms with French colonial powers.

Beti's brother would also struggle to retain the power and authority of Ratsimilaho, and the political authority of the Zana-Malata would fade (as would that of the Sakalava on the other coast). French authority over the coastlines grew and the Merina kingdom (often in allegiance with the English) rose from the central highlands as the new, centralized local power. As their ability to negotiate dwindled in the face of the dueling European forces, "the elites of Madagascar found themselves depending upon the British and French to support their claims to power, culminating in the French colonization of the island" (Hooper, "Pirates and Kings" 242).