Close Encounters of The Worst Kind

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Close encounters of the worst kind:

Malagasy resistance and colonial disasters
in Southern Madagascar
a
Mike Parker Pearson
a
Department of Archaeology and Prehistory , University of Sheffield
Published online: 15 Jul 2010.
To cite this article: Mike Parker Pearson (1997) Close encounters of the worst kind: Malagasy
resistance and colonial disasters in Southern Madagascar, World Archaeology, 28:3, 393-417, DOI:
10.1080/00438243.1997.9980355
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Close encounters of the worst kind:
Malagasy resistance and colonial
disasters in Southern Madagascar
Mike Parker Pearson

Downloaded by [Stony Brook University] at 03:28 16 October 2014
Abstract
The arrival of Europeans on the southern coasts of Madagascar in the sixteenth to eighteenth cen-
turies had profound if unusual consequences for indigenous societies. Certain of these, the Tandroy,
Karembola and Mahafaly peoples, actively shunned contact and trade with the outsiders, although
they imported large numbers of trade guns. The historical evidence indicates, however, that these
slave-based societies did not provide substantial numbers of slaves to the Europeans. Descriptions
of their isolation and endemic warfare can be matched by archaeological evidence for major dis-
continuities in the settlement patterns of the sixteenth to seventeenth centuries, when settlements
in the river valleys were abandoned for defensive locations in the waterless southern plain. Whilst
warfare may have been a feature of the expanding polities in the sixteenth century and later, it was
undoubtedly exacerbated by the arrival of French troops and guns in the seventeenth century. The
two European trading/colonial interventions in the south, at St Augustine and at Fort Dauphin, were
unsuccessful not only because of their involvement in this warfare but also because colonists did
not fully understand the central position of women within trading networks and political alliances.
Keywords
Madagascar; resistance; colonialism; Tandroy.
The colonial encounters between Europeans and the people of southern Madagascar
between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries were unlike anywhere else. It was the
Europeans who died of disease and not the indigenes. There was deep mutual suspicion,
fuelled by a succession of blunders and disasters. The colonial ventures were poorly led
and inadequately provisioned. In any case, the southern Malagasy were not interested in
trade goods other than guns whilst there were few suitable commodities for the Euro-
peans. Even the people were considered too difficult to take as slaves. There was no visible
or lasting 'creolization' of local culture throughout the south; and the colonialist ventures
of French, Portuguese, English and Dutch came to nothing until the French invaded in
1895. Even then, Madagascar was a colony for only a brief sixty years. The archaeological
and historical evidence suggests that, far from stimulating trade, contact and cultural
World Archaeology Vol. 28(3): 393-417 Culture Contact and Colonialism

© Routledge 1997 0043-8243
394 Mike Parker Pearson
integration, the appearance of Europeans exacerbated existing internal warfare and

created a deep mistrust of outsiders, including the highland Malagasy. Well into the twen-
tieth century the south was considered to be 'an island within an island' (Deschamps
1960). The significance of this episode is that it contrasts with so many others elsewhere
in the world and forces us to examine current stereotyping and preconceptions among
scholars of colonialism.
The specific nature of colonial encounters requires an understanding of the contextual
structure of relationships between prospective colonizers and colonized. Not always did
contact lead inexorably to discontinuity, disease or emulatory changes within indigenous
societies. In certain cases the intensive contact, exchange of European material goods and
imposition of material styles belied the maintenance of local cultural continuity (Decorse
1992). This rejection was even more pronounced where contact, trade or colonization
failed dismally, such as the Viking settlement of North America (McGovern 1987) or the
Portuguese trading posts in seventeenth-century Japan (Stony 1960: 54-65; FitzGerald

1966:196). The reasons for the failure in southern Madagascar were several. From the
European point of view, Madagascar was a stopping-off point as much as a trading desti-
nation so that, to some extent, the colonial programme was half-hearted. The southern
people were increasingly hostile except when outsiders were prepared to integrate fully
by abandoning their cultural and racial identity, a lesson learned by earlier Arab coloniz-
ers but understood by few Europeans other than some of the pirates.
The colonization of Madagascar, the fourth largest island in the world, can be said to
have begun with the arrivals of groups from somewhere in Indonesia and also from the
east coast of Africa around 2,000 years ago on an island which was apparently uninhab-
ited until this archaeologically late period (Vérin 1986;Dewar and Wright 1994). A second
era of colonization was that by Islamic peoples (thought to come from southern Arabia
and the Persian Gulf), probably beginning in the ninth century. Their domination of east
Africa (the Swahili coastal towns), the Comores islands and the northern and eastern
coasts of Madagascar increased, based on slaving and the long-distance exchange of exotic
goods such as Chinese porcelain, Islamic glass and Islamic sgraffiato (pottery from the
Persian Gulf). Islamic trading with Madagascar was disturbed but probably not seriously
interrupted by the arrival of the Portuguese in the western Indian Ocean (Vérin 1986:79,
96). Initially excluding other European nations from the area, the Portuguese acquired
slaves from Madagascar but failed to establish any permanent trading posts or to achieve
any religious conversions by the early seventeenth century. Dutch, French and English
interests developed in the seventeenth century when a number of trading posts and/or
colonies were briefly set up. Many European and American pirates of the late seventeenth
and early eighteenth centuries, such as Captain Kidd, Burgess and Misson, found havens
on Madagascar's east and northern coasts and were generally more succesful at local inte-
gration than the previous European adventurers. Slaves were exported from Madagascar
until the nineteenth century, particularly to the French colonies in the Mascarenes (Tou-
ssaint 1967; Filliot 1972; Campbell 1981), in return for large numbers of muskets and rifles.
From the late eighteenth century until the invasion by French forces in 1895, the Merina
empire of the central highlands took over all but the south of Madagascar. After a brief
spell as a French colony, Madagascar became an independent state in 1960.
The responses of the Malagasy in different parts of Madagascar to the trading, slaving
Malagasy resistance and colonial disasters 395
and colonizing efforts of Islamic, European and finally Merina and French expeditions
were varied. The most noticeable distinction is between the south of the island and the
rest. Islamic traders supposedly did not frequent this dangerous region (Vérin 1986: 4).
The Portuguese, after a variety of disasters in the south, also avoided it. The French and
English had more involvement though, as we shall see, they also fared badly. The Merina,
capable of capturing huge areas and of killing and enslaving hundreds of thousands, failed
to conquer the south in two military campaigns in the 1830s and 1850s (Campbell
1981: 204, 211; Heurtebize 1986: 176). The French, using a Senegalese force, finally
defeated the southern tribal groups of Tandroy1 and Mahafaly in 1900. In the previous
four centuries, foreigners were unlikely to live long after suffering shipwrecks on the reef-
fringed south coast. The only significant foreign posts in this area were the French port of
Fort Dauphin in the southeast corner of the island (Anosy, the region of the Tanosy) and
the English port of St Augustine on the west coast. Their histories were ill-fated and dis-
astrous but appear relatively successful when compared to the encounters between for-
eigners and the Tandroy and Mahafaly of the south coast. We need to consider just why
the Tandroy and Mahafaly of the south were so resistant to outside interference.
European encounters with people of the south coast: the evidence of European
written sources
One of the problems with the history of the south is the lack of local sources, other than
archaeology, for the period before the French invasion. There was no indigenous tradition
of writing whilst the oral histories of events involving outsiders go back little further than
1900. As a result, the accounts of Europeans provide histories which are selective but are
enormously important. One can almost detect a sense of puzzlement in many of these
texts as to why their encounters were so disastrous. Invariably, the Europeans were mas-
sacred after exchanges had been initiated. The Tandroy and others cannot tell their side
of this story but the European accounts give us some clues about the mismatching of cul-
tural logics from both sides. Consequently we need to examine those texts to understand
just how relations unfolded.
In 1506 the Portuguese sailor, Fernand Soarès, voyaged along the south coast of Mada-
gascar, failing to land at the natural harbour of Toalankara (renamed Fort Dauphin and
now called Tolafiaro) and passing the southern cape in his traverse from east to west. In
1508, Diego Lopes de Sequeira anchored in Ranofotsy Bay (named Saint Sebastian) and
sailed a few leagues east to Fort Dauphin where he was informed by the locals that it was
called Turubaya, after the captain of a wrecked Gudjerati ship, who had settled here. The
earliest recorded European shipwreck in the south of Madagascar is that of two Portuguese
crews in 1527 on the southwest coast (probably in the country of the Mahafaly), when 600
men were cast ashore. The only known survivors were a group of about 70 who moved east-
wards to the area of Ranofotsy Bay, near Fort Dauphin, where they constructed a stone
fort (Tranovato), probably together with other Portuguese also shipwrecked in southern
Madagascar. The Tanosy princes, the Zafiraminia, attacked them, however, during a feast
to celebrate the fort's completion and killed all but five, along with a French castaway from
a French ship which had visited the south coast in the same year. A few years later in 1531,
the survivors at Tranovato were picked up by a passing ship. In 1528, Nufio da Cunha
landed on the dry and barren coast near Cap Ste Marie to take on water from a source
known to his pilots. In 1529, a landing party from two French ships exchanged hats,
buckram and paternosters for a goat and some fruit at the Manambolo river mouth (on
the west coast) but this friendly encounter was overshadowed by the next day's massacre
of this party slightly further up the coast. Although such events were happening in differ-
ent parts of Madagascar, the south coast in particular had acquired a bad reputation:
The people there are negroes and valiant: but they are wicked and do not wish to trade
merchandise with any strangers. The Portuguese king had there formerly a factory
[Ranofotsy], where ginger was extracted; but the natives killed them and no longer
wished to trade with the Portuguese The island's coast is very dangerous, especially
the south coast and part of the southeast. Shoals run for more than 30 leagues.
(Jean Fonteneau 1547; cited by Defoort 1913:158)

Around 1550, over seventy Portuguese carrying a large amount of gold, presumably from
a shipwreck on the southwest coast, were massacred (Flacourt 1661:32-3). In 1595, a ship's
launch, part of Cornelius van Houtman's Dutch expedition, approached Cap Ste Marie
and saw 'six men who, seeing the launch come, fled to the hills'. The launch landed and
the crew encountered local people who:
were physically well proportioned, were clothed only in a ligature or strip which covered
that which modesty must hide and which was but poorly covered. They had long black
hair, divided in three to form three tresses. They had on their ears small pieces of wood
or bone the size of a flea. They appeared to be circumcised and to show this, they pulled
back their ligature.
(cited by Defoort 1913:159)
The Dutch later landed at Ampalaza ('place of masts' or Fenambosy/St John's Bay), learn-
ing that the people were ruled by a roandria (a ruler or prince); the landing party escaped
from an ambush merely by firing a single shot. On reaching St Augustine, the Dutch were
greeted by the inhabitants. However, two sailors accused of mutiny were dropped off on
the promise of reprieve if they found provisions but they never returned. The locals at St
Augustine were very interested in the crew's pewter spoons and other utensils and even
offered a ten-year-old girl in exchange for a spoon. However, illness and a breakdown in
relations with the inhabitants caused the deaths of 122 crewmen and led to brutal reprisals
by the Dutch before sailing away.
English interest in the southwest coast began in 1599 when an Englishman, John Davis,
landed with Houtman's returning Dutch fleet in St Augustine's Bay. The Malagasy, not
surprisingly, fled with their cattle and, within the space of five weeks, the intruders had
been able to buy only one cow and some milk. The English East India Company, formed
in 1601, sailed a fleet to St Augustine's Bay in 1607, commencing a tradition of regular
stops here for East Indiamen bound for the Far East. In 1609, an English ship called into
St Augustine; two crew were killed and a merchant was captured by the locals. Despite
mutual suspicion in the succeeding years, trade flourished here. Animals were exchanged
for silver coin; by 1638 the locals wanted Indian red cornelian beads (between 7 and 10
for a bullock): 'and nothing but the said beades will goe for beeves. As for sheep, hennés,
\M17
iv A
À *~
fa?
1 8
F/gure 7 A Portuguese map showing Madagascar, published in 1540. It depicts Europeans being
killed by Malagasy (from A. Grandidier 1892: plate 8b).
Diego Suarez Figure 2 The principal foreign trading

centres in Madagascar in the sixteenth to
eighteenth centuries, along with other
locations mentioned in the text.
fish, milke, oranges, etc., they may bee had for bigge brasse wyre . . . to hang in their eares,
about their neckes and armes' (Peter Mundy 1538, cited in Brown 1978:38).
Plans for English colonies were first formulated in 1635 but it was not until 1645 that
140 settlers were landed at St Augustine, amidst growing tension between the English,
Dutch and French over the island's control. The settlers were unprepared for the harsh,
arid and barren soils of the locality and had even failed to bring a sufficient quantity of
the prized red beads. The settlers died from hunger, dysentry and fever and the locals
became antagonistic when they realized that the settlers were here to take their land.
Relations were further soured by the disastrous actions of John Smart, the colony's com-
mander, who reneged on an agreement to give military help to a local roandria, Dian
Brindeth, in a dispute; Smart captured the roandria and his sons and ransomed them for
200 cattle. Open warfare ensued and the sixty remaining colonists sailed away in 1646, just
14 months later. A similarly disastrous history of illness and conflict put an end to English
hopes of establishing another colony, between 1649 and 1650, on Assada (Nosy Be) in the
north of Madagascar.
Dutch colonial enterprises similarly failed by 1645 with the abandonment of their
Antongil colony in northeast Madagascar; the island had already been dubbed the
100
km
Figure 3 The ethnic groupings of southern Madagascar in the seventeenth to eighteenth centuries.
graveyard of the Dutch. The French were more successful in Fort Dauphin, on the south-
east coast, where they remained from 1642 to 1674. The early history of this venture is
chronicled by Etienne de Flacourt, who was governor of Fort Dauphin from 1648 to 1655
(Flacourt 1661; 1995). He also recounts the stories of two Dutch shipwrecks on the inhos-
pitable south coast (1661:35-9), one of them 20 years before and the other around 1618.
The latter left only a sole survivor, Pitre, the captain's son, who washed up on the shore
of Karembola (Caremboulle; around Cap Ste Marie). He was taken to the village of the
local roandria, Dian Mammori, to whom he gave a cut diamond and a gold ring; he lived
here for two years and learned Malagasy. Knowledge of his presence reached Dian Tsi-
ambany in Anosy (southeast Madagascar), who brought him to Anosy and provided him
with a house, a wife and slaves. Five years later, a Dutch ship arrived and Pitre negotiated
the exchange of 50 cattle, 50 panniers of rice, 50 fowls, honey, honey wine and edible roots
for 100 pieces-of-eight, six bolts of cotton, Indian fabrics, porcelain and silk. Pitre left with
the ship, bound for Holland. The second shipwreck, around 1640, occurred three to four
leagues west of the Manambovo river, again in Karembola, and some 500 men reached
shore. They built a large barque and a wooden fort, and traded for cattle with the locals.
The locals then stole the cattle back and also harassed them. In the following conflict, the
captain and several others were killed. The officers sailed off with 100 men in the barque.
Of the remaining 400 men, many died of illness and disease and the rest separated into
small groups and dispersed. All were killed or died of privation except for two French-
men who reached Anosy. Flacourt says that the ship was carrying a large amount of silver
Figure 4 Etienne de Flacourt's 1656 plan of the Tranovato and surrounding features, including the
cemetery of the roandria of Fanjahirambe ('Fanshere').
and that each man was carrying 200-300 pieces-of-eight, and he claims that many were
ambushed by forest thieves in the Ampatres and killed for their clothes and silver
(1661: 36-7). The two survivors had resided with Dian Mammori but had left when he
demanded gold with menaces. On their way to Anosy, they buried 500 or 600 pieces-of-
eight which were not recovered.
The initial French colony of the Société Française de l'Orient at St Luce was abandoned
in 1643 because of fever and hostile inhabitants, in favour of a defensible headland on
which Fort Dauphin was constructed. The local Antanosy were relatively friendly and
were ruled by Dian Ramaka who had learned Portuguese and been baptized a Christian
during a stay of three years in Goa; many of his subjects were descendants of shipwrecked
Portuguese sailors. Ebony, hides and beeswax were exported and thousands of cattle were
brought back to the French settlement from a round trip throughout southern Madagas-
car. The colony's commander, Pronis, married Ramaka's niece, cementing trading relation-
ships but leading to mutiny in 1646 because her family made the colony's stores their own.
Pronis was held for six months, released by an incoming Société ship. He then permanently
soured local relations by killing a local roandria who had slept with his wife and by enslav-
ing 73 Malagasy whom he tricked into coming to the fort; these he presented as a reward
to the ship's captain.
Flacourt arrived from France in 1648 to take over the situation. The colony was dwin-
dling from losses caused by fever and warfare. No more Société ships arrived for five years
and the decline in local trade forced Flacourt to carry out cattle raids. His troops, armed
with muskets, were constantly in demand throughout the south to settle feuds. One of
these, in 1649, began with a request from Dian Manhelle (Manely) of the Mahafaly for
troops to fight against Dian Raval. Fifteen French soldiers were dispatched and, having
agreed to split the booty with Manhelle, captured 10,000 cattle and 500 slaves. They
returned through the Ampatres with only 600 cattle (as many as they could herd), where
they were attacked. They were received hospitably by Dian Mififarivo at Montefeno in
the Ampatres, though he warned them to be on their guard against his sons. A soldier was
sent to Anosy with a demand for reinforcements but he was killed near the Mandrare
river. The message, however, got through and nineteen fresh troops arrived at Montefeno
and all returned with the cattle and a quantity of loincloths. Flacourt discovered that the
attack by the Ampatois had been orchestrated by Ramaka and and other Antanosy roan-
dria. Later, Ramaka led thousands of Antanosy in an attack on Fort Dauphin. After dis-
persing them with cannon-fire, Flacourt burned Ramaka's village to the ground and killed
Ramaka. Flacourt left the colony for France in 1655 but died returning to Madagascar in
1660 when his ship was attacked by Barbary corsairs. His replacement, Champmargou,
arrived in 1656 to find the fort burnt, Pronis dead and two roandria executed. Champ-
margou pursued a ruthlessly oppressive strategy which resulted in Fort Dauphin becom-
ing even more beleaguered. The damage that he caused was temporarily offset by his
subordinate, Le Rochelais Le Vacher, known as La Case. This extremely able man par-
ticipated in wars against the Karembola and the Mahafaly, and successfully set himself up
as a local ruler, having married the daughter of a roandria. His army of indigenous war-
riors saved Champmargou's troops from annihilation when Champmargou had gone to
revenge the death of a priest who had insulted a powerful roandria, Dian Manana
(Deschamps 1960:73). The arrival of thousands of colonists and troops during the 1660s,
under a new Compagnie des Indes Orientales, was countered by their attrition from fever
and warfare. The poor profits of the Compagnie led to its rights reverting to the Crown.
In 1671 Admiral de la Haye advised Louis XIV that Fort Dauphin should be abandoned.
The 200 colonists that were left were now surrounded by a hostile, war-torn hinterland.
The colony's end came in 1674 when a shipload of young women bound for Bourbon
(Réunion) was wrecked in the harbour. The women persuaded the governor to marry
them to the colonists; the colonists' Malagasy wives then betrayed the colonists to the
Malagasy forces, who massacred about 100 of them during the marriage festivities. The
survivors soon left by ship, having spiked the cannon and burned the stores.
Thereafter, French interests were largely in provisioning Bourbon and île de France
(Mauritius) with cattle, rice and slaves from Madagascar (Filliot 1972: 134). However,
between the 1680s and the 1740s, Fort Dauphin was considered too dangerous and too
unreliable as a slave port. The French had another unsuccessful attempt at creating a
colony at Fort Dauphin in the eighteenth century.
During the decades when Madagascar was a pirate haven, in the late seventeenth and
early eighteenth centuries, there was relatively little contact with the south. Around 1700,
a French ship was wrecked at Fenambosy (St John's Bay) in Mahafaly country and all of
its crew were massacred (Drury 1729 [1890:203]). In 1703, the Degrave, a 52-gun English
East Indiaman carrying the midshipman Robert Drury and about a hundred Englishmen
and women and fifty Arabs, beached on the south coast in the region of the Tandroy
Figure 5 Etienne de Flacourt's map of Fort Dauphin.
(Ampatois). The same mixture of hospitality and suspicion evident in other encounters
also led to disastrous consequences. The crew were marched to the roandria's capital,
Fenoarivo, where they found other British sailors and adventurers who had ended up here
during their travels around Madagascar. The roandria, Dian Crindo (Kirindo), was keen
to employ them in his army to fight against the neighbouring Tanosy and Mahafaly.
However, the crew wished only to return home via Fort Dauphin. Suspecting that Crindo
was arranging to kill them, the crew organized a dramatic kidnap of Crindo, which came
off with a few casualties on each side. The Degrave party and the other Britons marched
Crindo eastwards across the dry plains of Androy towards the Menarandra river, the fron-
tier with Anosy. They were armed with muskets, but so were some of the thousands of
spear-wielding Tandroy warriors who shadowed them. When Crindo was released at the
river, the Tandroy began to attack and killed several people. Just over two miles from the
river, the remnants of the Degrave crew occupied a sandhill and returned fire, preparing
to fight to the death. Under cover of nightfall, about thirty slipped away and later reached
Fort Dauphin, from whence some were eventually taken off by a Dutch ship (Benbow
1707). The remainder surrendered to the Tandroy the next morning and all, starting with
the captain, were speared to death except for the four midshipmen who were taken away
as slaves.
Robert Drury's lengthy account of his years as a royal slave has frequently been chal-
lenged as an unreliable source and even judged to be a work by Daniel Defoe (see
Molet-Sauvaget 1992 for the most recent statement of this view) but studies of the liter-
ary style and historical records (Secord 1961) and of his descriptions of Androy (Parker
Pearson 1996) indicate that his story, though probably transcribed by another hand, is
largely reliable. His days as a slave of Crindo's grandson, Mevarrow (Mivaro), included
going to war against the Mahafaly and the Antanosy. He was also caught up in civil wars
resulting from feuds over cattle and the royal succession, of which he says:
a common calamity reduced us to miserable circumstances. The epidemical evil of this
island is their frequent quarrels with one another, and the very cause so many of them
are sold to the Europeans for slaves. This is a dangerous and destructive misfortune to
a people otherwise good-natured and well inclined, who have wholesome stated laws
for determining disputes and punishing crimes . . . the supreme king of any country has
seldom force enough to bring the lesser chiefs in his dominions to answer in a judicial
manner to the wrongs they do one another, or the mistakes and errors committed by
chance, but they fight it out, making slaves of, impoverishing, and destroying one
another.
(Drury 1729 [1890: 111])
Slaves were obtained from warfare and one could be exchanged for a buccaneer gun (1729
[1890:164]). Drury himself was unsuccessfully offered to the Antanosy for the price of
two guns (1729 [1890: 98]) and at one point he was even placed in parapingo, leg-fetters
(1729 [1890:95]). It seems from his account that muskets were the most prized importa-
tions, being one of the trappings of high rank and playing a prominent part in victory cel-
ebrations. Other valued imports were glass beads and silks and calicoes, these fabrics being
purchased in 'seaport towns' (1729 [1890:181]). He mentions that wrist rings are some-
times of gold, often of silver (both imported) though mainly of copper (1729 [1890:182]).
Otherwise, it seems that the Tandroy had little interaction with European traders:
They have no canoes, neither . . . [the Mahafaly] . . . nor in Anterndroea [the Antan-
droy/Tandroy], therefore they can have no commerce with ships; for they are people of
the most treacherous disposition to white men of any in the island. Whether their little
acquaintance with Europeans makes them afraid of them, I know they have notions that
white men are very much addicted to fighting, and are not so tender-hearted as them-
selves. This may be a great reason for their destroying them for very slight provocations,
for they always think the white men have some barbarous designs on them. So that they
are ever suspicious and on their guard. . . . And in the countries of Anterndroea and
Merfaughla, where only strange stories are told, and they have no experimental know-
ledge to distinguish that wicked men are the production of every land, and having here
seen no good ones, every white man is looked on as not less a monster than we think a
cannibal.
(1729 [1890:203-5])
There are few external sources for Tandroy relations with the outside world during the
nineteenth century other than brief travel descriptions by Europeans (Dixion 1818; Gran-
didier 1868). From the landward side, the Merina state was increasingly encroaching upon
the south. Merina forces took control of Fort Dauphin in 1825 and the Merina mounted
two military campaigns against the Tandroy around 1830 and 1850. However, these ended
in failure, the first north of Angavo, the traditional northern boundary of Androy, and the
second after a coastal landing near Faux Cap ended in retreat to Fort Dauphin (Heurte-
bize 1986:176). In 1900, the French general, Gallieni, completed the French conquest of
Madagascar, invading the south as the last stage of military operations. French officers
commanding Senegalese troops crossed the Mandrare river from the east (probably at the
same point at which the Degrave crew crossed from the other direction) and soon subdued
the factionalized Tandroy clans, although Tandroy tactics of sniping from behind cactus
hedges inflicted some casualties. After the hostilities, the French collected and destroyed
some 12,000 firearms owned by the Tandroy (Deschamps 1960). Until recently there were
old men alive who remembered the coming of the French and particularly the courage
and brutality of the Senegalese.
The archaeology of contact
There are four classes of material evidence which may be considered: European forts or
colonies, shipwrecks, portable imports (beads, bottles, ceramics, gold and silver) and
modifications to indigenous material culture.
The European colonies

The earliest European building in Madagascar is the Tranovato ('Stone house'), the stone
fort built by the Portuguese in 1527 10 kilometres west of Fort Dauphin. Its location and
features were described by Luis Mariano when he visited it in 1613-14, long after the
inhabitants had been massacred in 1531, and it became the home of Portuguese mission-
aries for a few years~between 1613 and 1617. In 1653, Flacourt reinscribed the marble
stone brought by the Portuguese (supposedly marking their captain's grave) and had it
brought to Fort Dauphin. The site was excavated in 1973 by the Musée d'Art et
d'Archéologie (Vérin and Heurtebize 1974). The stone building was a 10m square block-
house, 3.5 m high, with walls over 1 m thick, located at the summit of a series of terraces.
It possesses two doors, midway along the east and west walls, a window in the west wall
and a series of rectangular apertures in all walls. To the excavators' surprise, deposits
within the house were mixed and none of the finds could date prior to the seventeenth
century. The imported artefacts comprised sherds of Chinese porcelain (final Ming phase),
celadon, fine Islamic glass and also twentieth-century glass and ceramics. Other imports
were a large nail and a brass bracelet. A stone setting 105 m away to the southeast was
interpreted as a Malagasy cult enclosure, presumably part of the Tanosy settlement con-
temporary with the Portuguese occupation. Sherds of pottery include imported Chinese
celadon and stoneware of the sixteenth century. There is little certainty of matching the
historical events with the archaeological material. The imported pottery may have been
decades or even centuries old before it was broken, and it is very likely that the portable
remains on the site derive from subsequent Malagasy occupation between the seventeenth
and twentieth centuries.
At Fort Dauphin, the remains of Flacourt's stone house can still be seen but there have
been no archaeological excavations of the colony. St Augustine has been the subject of
archaeological investigations by the Université de Tulear (Ramiandrisoa 1991; Barret

1991). The English colony's port is thought to lie beneath the modern town. The English
fort, once holding 500 men in the sixteenth century, is located to the south on the coast at
Soalara, where there is also a red-painted inscription from the first half of the seventeenth
century, referring to an English merchant/pirate's integration, primarily through marriage
alliances, to the local population. The large European cemetery at St Augustine has not
been located. The small island of Nosy Ve, within St Augustine's Bay, was occupied by the
Dutch in the seventeenth century prior to the arrival of the English, and in the nineteenth
century by foreign merchants. Excavations have taken place at indigenous sites in the
vicinity at Josépha and Sarodrano.
Shipwrecks
Archaeological evidence for shipwrecks along the south coast is relatively sparse.
Recently, two iron hoop-and-stave muzzle-loading cannon and an uninscribed bronze
ship's bell have been located in shallow water on the coast of Androy, south of
Ambovombe (Parfait pers. comm.). They presumably derive from a sixteenth-century
Portuguese, French or Dutch shipwreck. At the beginning of this century, Defoort saw two
bronze cannon on the shore 20 kilometres to the southwest of Ambovombe, and he sur-
mised that these 2.10 m and 2.35 m guns (11 and 14 cm calibre, with tulip-shaped breeches
and bevelled trunnions), both uninscribed, were from the Degrave (1913: 143 note 2).
From the written accounts, there must be at least a further five wrecks (and probably con-
siderably more) along this reef-strewn, treacherous south coast.
k
._ ^, French 1674
Portuguese 1527 ^, ^ C1 .
A Portuguese c.1550
1 6 t h cenfur
French c.1700 \ ^i^ V
The Degrave? (1703)
Dutch c.1618
Dutch c.1640
Figure 6 The locations of European shipwrecks on the south coast of Madagascar. Filled triangles
are known wreck sites; open triangles are wrecks inferred from written sources.
Imported artefacts
Despite the copious finds of Chinese porcelain and Islamic sgraffiato on eleventh- to sev-
enteenth-century settlements on the Manambovo river, deep inland at Andranosoa
(Emphoux 1981; Radimilahy 1988:145-57) and at its mouth at Talaky (Parker Pearson et
al. 1996; see also Battistini et al. 1963), there have been few finds of European-derived
imports pre-dating the nineteenth century within the south. Most of these come from the
hinterlands of Fort Dauphin (Wright et al. 1993) and St Augustine (Ramiandrisoa 1991).
The most spectacular assemblage is from the Josépha cave near St Augustine, an indigen-
ous burial site commencing in the seventeenth century in which the male corpses are
unusual in having ornamentally pierced sternums. The grave goods include fragments of
silk, red cornelian beads, beads of glass and agate, a gold ring and a gold filigree bead, a
silver ring, copper alloy bracelets and fragments of guns (Ramiandrisoa 1991:14-25). They
indicate that these trade goods were exchanged on a long-term and regular basis, and that
these dead were derived from a high-status local group (Ramiandrisoa 1991:29). Before
the end of the nineteenth century, gold was worn supposedly only by roandria. The
Josépha assemblage indicates that many of the precious trade materials were buried as
grave goods. This is further supported by excavations of burials at Antanambao-Elape
about 100 kilometres upstream from St Augustine (Barret et al. 1991), which contained
silver rings and glass beads probably dating to the eighteenth century. A visitor to Fort
Dauphin in 1671 observed that tombs were 'well garnish'd with the riches of these Blacks,
either with manellers [arm rings] of gold or silver, coral, cornelians, lambas [cloths], and
other things' (Dubois 1674 [1897:57]). He goes on to say that burial of trade goods in non-
funerary contexts was also a regular occurrence:
All these Blacks believe that they will rise again and come back to the world, to lead
the same life there; 'tis this which causes them whilst living to bury and hide whatever
they have of greatest value, whether gold, silver, ambergris, coral, cornelians, glass trin-
kets, beads and other merchandises, believing they will find again these things when they
shall be again risen from the dead; they say that if they have nothing they will be slaves.
Unless they did these things, the French would not find any trade with them, because
they have more than sufficient of merchandise which they have purchased ever since
the time that the French settl'd in the Island and that the Portuguese, English and Dutch
have traded here.
(Dubois 1674 [1897:58]).
In the land of the Tandroy, the absence of early trade goods is remarkable. The only early
item found so far is a single red glass bead from Ambaro. This was recovered from the
surface of a large settlement, probably of the late seventeenth to early eighteenth century,
which is thought to have been the royal town of Fenoarivo that the crew of the Degrave
were taken to (Parker Pearson et al. 1995, 1996). According to oral tradition, the
settlement was founded by a roandria named Andrianjoma (almost certainly a name pro-
vided after his death), probably in the late seventeenth century (Heurtebize 1986:178-85),
and he is likely to have been Dairy's Dian Crindo (Parker Pearson et al. 1996). This
site may not be disturbed today, but excavations in its vicinity, on its eighteenth- and
nineteenth-century successor settlement, uncovered bottle and vessel glass, and imported
metalwork (Parker Pearson et al. 1996). Discoveries of gunflints on this site are also evi-
dence for imported firearms; indeed, such finds are common on eighteenth- and nine-
teenth-century sites throughout Androy (Radimilahy and Wright 1986), though none have
been found on settlements of earlier date. Many of these gunflints are manufactured from
local sources but fine examples from the Mandrare rivermouth may be of French or
British origin (Parker Pearson et al. 1996). We must also accept that much traded wealth
in Androy was buried. Drury refers to the burial of beads, 'these they often dig holes for,
and hide' (1729 [1890:89]), and today certain sacred forests in Androy are considered to
be repositories of buried gold and silver. However, even allowing for the invisibility of
deliberately buried trade goods, the quantities of surface settlement finds are extremely
low when compared to sites of the same dates in the Fort Dauphin region. The large royal
sites of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries at Montefeno in Androy have no imported
items in their dense ceramic assemblages, in contrast to the site of Fanjahirambe, the
capital of the Zafiraminy roandria burnt by the French in 1651, with European stonewares,
earthenwares, glass bottles, Far Eastern green glaze and blue-and-white porcelain (Wright
et al. 1993).
Settlement scatters of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in Androy fre-
quently include European porcelain, glass and beads, indicating that these goods were not
only available but were also being used and thrown away. However, the quantities are
minute when compared to other parts of the colonized world at that time (eg. Kirch and
Sahlins 1992: 179-83). The abandoned settlement of Antanambazaha ('The land of the
foreigners') at the Mandrare rivermouth was clearly a small trading post in the nineteenth
century and is still recalled in oral traditions as a village of foreigners from before the
French conquest. It is also mentioned in a European source at the end of the nineteenth
century:
The Tandroy . . . were carrying on extensive raids at the time of my landing. They had
murdered many Hova [Merina] and had driven the Europeans out of Mandréré
[Antanambazaha] and Andrahombe, two small trading-stations on the coast, about 20
miles southwest of Fort Dauphin, had pillaged their stores, and were reported to be
advancing upon Fort Dauphin itself.
(Knight 1895:364)
Today, the archaeological remains of Antanambazaha consist of three settlement
sites, identifiable only as surface scatters of broken porcelain, glass and ironwork
(Parker Pearson et al. 1996). The presence of Tandroy pottery on two of these sites may
indicate a certain degree of intermixing though oral traditions and archaeology indicate
that the traders did not return. It is likely that they were trading for rubber and orchil
(the lichen Roccella Tinctoria from which a red or violet dye is obtained) (Sarah
Fee pers. comra.). This low level of colonial exchange indicates that Androy missed the
'spring tide of the world economic system' which swept away other traditional societies
in a flood of materialism after 1850 (Kirch and Sahlins 1992: 182). Far from being left
out, the Tandroy remained resolute in their resistance to the people and products of the
outside world.
Antanambao-Elapa
A Sarodrano
4 St Augustine
100
Figure 7 Sites in southern Madagascar, mentioned in the text.
Modifications to indigenous material culture

In his study of Indian Ocean history, Chaudhuri (1990:151-217) has commented on gra-
dients of acceptance and adoption of material culture styles between colonizers and colon-
ized, specifically for food, clothing and architecture (in that order on a decreasing scale of
adoption). This is, to some extent, true for southern Madagascar, even for the Tandroy.
Food habits have changed with the introduction of crops such as maize, peanuts, manioc
and many varieties of pulse, and meals are now eaten off enamel and glass wares with
metal spoons; although the communal form of eating from a single bowl is still maintained.
Even in Dairy's time, the elite wore imported clothing, although the standard dress for
men did not change much before the arrival of the French. It is in the domestic architec-
ture of the Tandroy that there has been least modification and the standard small rectan-
gular wooden house has changed hardly at all in probably four centuries (Decary
1957:26-34). Only in the last few decades in Androy has funerary architecture consciously
appropriated European motifs, modelling airplanes, buses and colonial buildings with
windows on top of the more lavish tombs. Until the twentieth century, most of Madagas-
car, and particularly the people of the south, resisted incorporating colonial styles into
their way of life, which has been guided by the ways of the ancestors.
Long-term structures in Malagasy-European relationships
Women, kinship, power and trade

The abilities of Europeans, mainly men, to conduct trade with the Malagasy were largely
dependent on their forming trading alliances through women. The recognition of outsiders
was not possible until sufficient kinship ties had developed through intermarriage with
indigenous women, a tradition by which Islamic migrants had earlier become accepted as
local rulers, with their successors assuming Malagasy identities (Kent 1970:78,93-4). Since
exchange, and trade, could only be conducted amongst kin, European traders needed to
marry into Malagasy groups, as hinted at in the St Augustine rock painting. Flacourt's pre-
decessor, Pronis, married the daughter of a local roandria. Later on at Fort Dauphin, La
Case became a successful local ruler after his marriage to a roandria's daughter. Although
the system of alliances that he created collapsed after his death (Kent 1970: 98), it is
notable that his daughter was married to de la Bretesche, the succeeding French com-
mander, within 26 days of his death in 1671, and his widow to a newly-arrived French
officer within 34 days (Oliver 1897: xvi)! Flacourt included the need for mixed marriages
in his recommendations on how to guide the colony's development (Deschamps
1960: 71-2). And yet many Europeans in St Augustine and Fort Dauphin seem to have
been oblivious to this essential rule. The collapse of Fort Dauphin occurred in 1674, only
three years after La Case's death, when the new commander foolishly ordered his men to
marry the shipwrecked French women and renounce their Malagasy wives, thereby inad-
vertently signalling that the alliances were broken; as an immediate result the Malagasy
went to war and massacred as many as they could. By the nineteenth century, a French
commanding officer specifically recommended that those who wished to trade in Mada-
gascar must take a woman from a chiefly or princely family, buy or rent a house, give her
their merchandise to trade and dispense presents amongst her kin (Filliot 1974:192-3).
Finally, the European pirates seem to have been the most successful of the Europeans pre-
cisely because they married indigenous women and formed the necessary political
alliances through them. Their mulatto descendants became powerful rulers on the east
coast (Brown 1978:92-109).
Other reasons for colonial failure

The inability of Europeans to subsume fully their racial and cultural identities through
intermarriage and create future generations of Malagasy successors is one of the main
reasons for their failure, in contrast to earlier Islamic traders and migrants, whose succes-
sors became fully integrated within the indigenous population. That said, the Islamic
trading ports of northern Madagascar were established with an eye to defence against
local attack (Vérin 1986:10-11) and the history of Islamic integration and submergence
within Malagasy culture was not entirely smooth. Other contributory causes of the Euro-
pean colonial failure were disease (notably malaria and dysentery), the lack of regular
supplies of European trade goods, the relatively poor products in return, the lack of clear
direction in the European enterprise and misplaced religious zeal.
The Portuguese were elsewhere successful in the Indian Ocean: from an early date they
established a colony at Goa and intermarried; they built forts at strategic points through-
out the Ocean; and they formed alliances with rulers of territories important for trade
(Toussaint 1966:104-6). Yet they made relatively little mark on Madagascar, being soon
reduced to a minor role by the competition from other Europeans (Vérin 1986:103-5).
The 'India Companies' of Holland, England, France and Denmark were set up initially for
trade but soon became embroiled in imperialist concerns, until trade could 'not be main-
tained without war and war without trade' (Jan Pieterzoon Coen in 1614 cited in Tous-
saint 1966:129). St Augustine, the English colony, oscillated from being a refuelling point
to a colony to a trading port. The attempt at colonization took no account either of the
difficult soils or of indigenous sensibilities at having their land taken away, with the unsur-
prising result that the desperate colonists were massacred. Fort Dauphin similarly lacked
any guiding direction: the initial intentions of its inhabitants, to trade and to farm, were
diverted by lack of support from France (and the ensuing relative absence of imported
goods to trade) and the massacres of those who tried to farm outside the fort. This resulted
in the fort's inhabitants having to pursue a strategy of raiding their hinterland simply to
stay alive. By the time that the last 100 French at Fort Dauphin were evacuated in 1674,
about 4,000 French had ended their lives here. Similarly disastrous were attempts by the
Portuguese and the French to convert the Malagasy to Christianity at this time, efforts
which were wholly unsuccessful and only led to further confrontations and killings. Finally,
the trade items that were obtained from Madagascar were poor in quality. There were no
spices or precious metals, nor fine fabrics. As an example of exports, the Saint-Laurent
returned to France in 1650 'charged with hides, tobacco, wood, wax, tamarind and other
samples, shells and curiosities' (Barassin, cited in Filliot 1974: 22). The only important
exports were sugar, tobacco, indigo and human cargo - slaves.
Slavery and guns

For all Malagasy, guns were considered to be the principal desired trade good. When Fla-
court's French troops roamed the south in 1649, they were the only people to be thus
armed; Flacourt records that the presence of just one musketeer in Dian Manely's
Mahafaly army was enough to secure the recapture of slaves and cattle after a battle with
Dian Raval's forces (1661: 233). Even in Anosy, close to Fort Dauphin, only nine flint-
locks, taken from individual Europeans or from shipwrecks, could be mustered among the
Tanosy in 1650 (Kent 1970:27). By 1703-10, Drury observed that muskets and pistols were
not simply the possessions of local roandria but also of the upper social ranks (Drury 1729
[1890:190]). In 1768-9, the Fort Dauphin area was provisioned with 10,000 guns, 100,000
pounds of powder, 120,000 balls of lead shot, and 300,000 gunflints, along with 24,000
knives and 10,000 small mirrors by the French on Mauritius (Kent 1970: 27; Filliot
1974: 206). To the north, in the highlands of Imerina, muskets were considered sacred,
imbued with hasina (a sacred force); it was not so much the deadly impact of muskets
(trade guns were notoriously unreliable and inaccurate and never replaced the spear as
the main fighting weapon) but their symbolic power which was exploited so effectively by
Merina rulers (Berg 1986; Bloch 1977). In the south, guns may have had a similar role and
it is interesting to note from early photographs and paintings (e.g. Deschamps 1960: photo-
graph facing 144; Kent 1970:125,133,165) and Dutch and French records of 1741 and 1769
that guns were highly decorated. They included popular French makes (Maubeuge,
Charleville, Sauvade andThiolière) and had to be clean and unblemished, bound with iron
rings, encrusted with yellow copper and chiselled, as well as being light and long (Filliot
1974:207-8). The decorative and unblemished characteristics so necessary for these trade
guns are suggestive of their special sacred status.
It is clear that the arrival of guns post-dated the institution of slavery in Madagascar.
Flacourt noted that slaves were owned by Tanosy lords as well as by the Mahafaly roan-
dria. Whether the tradition of keeping slaves was started in the first millennium AD by the
Malagasy or whether it was the result of Islamic influence is not known. However, the
trade in guns undoubtedly stimulated the trade in slaves along with the warfare necessary
to maintain this trade, as well as creating favourable conditions for the extension of royal
absolutism (Filliot 1974:117). In 1703-10 in Androy, a single slave was worth one musket
and Drury himself was considered equivalent to two buccaneer guns (1729 [1890:98,164]).
Elsewhere in Madagascar in 1767, slaves might be exchanged for 2-3 muskets each (Filliot
1974:214). Many thousands of slaves were exported, especially to the Mascarene islands
under French control, and the taking of slaves was a principal strategy in the expansion
of the Sakalava and Merina empires, for working in the fields, exchanging for their own
taken in war, and exchanging for guns with European traders. Nevertheless, Fort Dauphin
and St Augustine were not major slaving centres among the dozen slave ports of Mada-
gascar. In eighteenth-century Fort Dauphin, the trade was intermittent and less important
than the export of cattle hides, salt beef or animals on the hoof to Mauritius (Filliot
1974: 142-3). Slaves from the south were considered troublesome and lazy (Filliot
1974: 29) and, despite Drury's implication that Tandroy warfare made European slavers
rich (1729 [1890: 111]), the south seems to have been largely left out of this trade. This
begs the question of how the Tandroy managed to get so many guns. Undoubtedly, they
must have taken some from shipwrecks and massacred crews as well as from defeated
enemies, but these are not likely to compare closely with Drury's observations of numbers,
let alone with the 12,000 confiscated by the French by 1904 (Deschamps 1960: 243).
According to oral histories of the Afomarolahy clan of the Tandroy, guns were obtained
from the Tanosy in return for cattle which the Tanosy then traded at Fort Dauphin to the
Europeans (Heurtebize 1986:299-300).
Cave ab incolis (Watch out for the locals)

The absence of suitable anchorages or natural harbours on the south coast, along with
its treacherous reefs, must be regarded as a contributing factor to the failure of Euro-
pean-Malagasy interaction in this region. The shallow rivers, blocked from the sea by
sandbars, were also not conducive to easy access. The lack of a sailing tradition and
suitable canoes among the Tandroy and the Mahafaly must also be considered as practi-
cal hindrances. Yet these difficulties were minor when compared to the social context.
A. Grandidier noted that Islamicized peoples avoided the southeast 'since anyone who
tried to trade in the Fiherenana and with the Mahafaly were plundered and sometimes
even killed, with the result that they ceased to frequent these inhospitable parts' (cited
in Vérin 1986:4). Earlier, in 1663, Blank similarly observed that '[n]either the Portuguese
nor the Africans (Arabs) frequent the coasts of Madagascar at a point further south
than the Baixos Pracel [the Barren Islands south of Maintirano]' (also cited in Vérin
1986:4).
Flacourt's inscription of 1653 on the marble stele fromTranovato reads: 'O advena, lege
monita nostra, tibi tuis vitaeque tua profutura: Cave ab incolis. Vale' (Oh newcomer, read
our advice; it will be useful for you, yours and your life: beware of the locals. Farewell)
(Deschamps 1960: 71). Interestingly, Flacourt himself was probably part of a process in
which the French soured relationships in the south. 'The seventeenth century and its
aborted dreams poisoned the region: the people of the countryside were always "badly
disposed" in the opinion of the French' (Filliot 1974: 143). Regnault, the French com-
mander of Réunion between 1665 and 1671, had this to say:
One does not go to trade for blacks in the island of Madagascar from the Mattatanes
as far as Cape Saint-Augustine, because the blacks of these countries have been made
warlike by the French and would be difficult to overcome. They would spoil the others
that one can trade for from Gallemboulle, from Antongil and other areas of the said
island, from the north and northwest coast, who are more given to work and, being away
from their homeland, would all receive baptism and submit quite easily.
(cited by Filliot 1974:29).
However, there are indications, both archaeological and historical, that internal warfare
and political transformations had their origins at least by, and probably prior to, the initial
phases of Portuguese as well as French contact.
Internal transformations: the archaeological evidence
It has been recognized for some time that the European arrivals on the west coast of
Madagascar coincided with the early stages of the Sakalava empire's emergence and that,
had the European colony at St Augustine been successful, it would have been destroyed
in the 1660s by Dian Lahifotsy's 12,000-strong army (Brown 1978: 49). Although the
Mahafaly and Tandroy kingdoms were never as powerful as the Sakalava, they appear to
have undergone major transformations in the sixteenth century when Islamicized Mala-
gasy from the southeast appear to have established the ruling Maroserana and Zafimanare
dynasties (Vérin 1986: 91; Heurtebize 1986: 167). The tribal boundaries between the
Mahafaly, Karembola, Tandroy andTanosy were principally the river valleys of the Man-
drare, Manambovo and Menarandra. Flacourt noted that the Mandrare and Manambovo
regions were uninhabited because of warfare which had been going on, in the Manam-
bovo valley,for at least fifty years (Flacourt 1661:34,38-9).Tandroy (referred to as Ampa-
tois by Flacourt) settlements were consequently heavily defended by wooden spikes and
thorn trees, and were often located miles from water sources for fear of attack.
The origins of this pattern of hostilities amongst local rulers can be traced, to some
extent, by archaeological methods. Disproving those sources which suggest that Islamic
penetration never reached the south, the large interrupted enclosure at Andranosoa on
the headwaters of the Manambovo has yielded significant quantities of Islamic sgraffiato
and Chinese porcelain (Emphoux 1981; Radimilahy 1988:145-57). This very large settle-
ment, occupied between the eleventh and seventeenth centuries AD, was clearly connected
to the Islamic world. It was also on the top rung of a three-tiered settlement hierarchy of
lesser enclosures and smaller open sites (Parker Pearson 1992). Sherds of sgraffiato have
also been recovered from a shell midden at the mouth of the Manambovo (Parker Pearson
et al. 1996).
The major transformation in settlement pattern in Androy began at some point during
the sixteenth or early seventeenth century and involved a shift from the valleys to the
plains. Large settlements were established in the hitherto uninhabited and unwatered
plains between the Manambovo and the Mandrare. The mouth of the Manambovo was
also abandoned around this time whilst there was just one large settlement, commencing
in the late seventeenth century, near the mouth of the Mandrare.
The archaeological evidence for abandonment is also supported by remote-sensing
studies of the vegetation (Clark et al. forthcoming; Garrod et al. 1995). A second phase of
transformation is represented by the disappearance of large settlements in the seven-
teenth century at Berenty on the Mandrare river, Andranosoa/Bekatrafay on the Man-
ambovo river and Vohidolo (the latter defended by stone walls) on the Sakaomby river.
At the same time, settlements in the central plains around Ambofiaivo and Montefeno
flourished in numbers and size, and new areas, such as Ambaro, in this previously deserted
or sparsely inhabited zone, became settlement foci, producing the landscape with which
Robert Drury was familiar, and which largely endures to this day.
The abandonment of trading centres, the desertion of the river valleys and the coloniz-
ation of the arid plains was a long process by which the Tandroy and other groups in the
south turned away from the outside world. Contrary to our expectations, Islamic and
Chinese trade goods were reaching coastal and inland sites in Androy until the fifteenth
century. The end of this trade and the social transformation from a riverine to a defen-
sive inland settlement pattern coincided with the appearance of Europeans, probably
commencing in the sixteenth century. However, recent archaeological discoveries in the
Anjampanorora and Montefeno areas of central southern Androy indicate that the
Zafimanare ancestors of today's Andriamanare clan were establishing themselves in
this area in that same century (Parker Pearson et al. 1996). They were probably
descended from Islamicized groups in the southeast of Madagascar and, according to
oral tradition (Heurtebize 1986:167), were rulers since their arrival. They presumably
subjugated existing groups, establishing a ranked society of roandria, roandria descen-
dants, commoners and slaves, similar to that observed by Flacourt in Anosy in the mid-
seventeenth century (Vérin 1986: 88-9). Whether their arrival and establishment were
actually the causes of the profound change in settlement pattern and the rejection of
foreign trade goods is not understood. Oral traditions of the Andriamanare suggest that
their ancestors first settled on the Mandrare river, before moving to Anjampanorora,
then Montefeno and finally the lower Manambovo (Heurtebize pers. comm.). It is very
possible that their arrival in these areas was the stimulus for conflict which led to the
river valleys' desertion.
It seems unlikely that the unrest was initially caused by the arrival of Europeans. By
the time of Flacourt's and La Case's military interventions in the mid-seventeenth
century, warfare was already endemic and long-established. There is no doubt that the
French contributed to the region's insecurity, which was probably more strained than in
other areas (Kent 1962: 48-50). The French mounted several military campaigns from
Fort Dauphin, foraying throughout the south in the middle of the seventeenth century.
However, the Fort Dauphin settlement was probably not responsible for creating the
initial dislocations.
The origins of settlement dislocation and possible conflict lie in the thirteenth to six-
teenth centuries when settlement patterns shifted from riverine and valley locations to
inland settlements often sited far from water. Styles of defence also changed: stone-walled
enclosures were abandoned and villages were surrounded by impenetrable thickets, as
described by Flacourt and Drury. The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries saw the expan-
sion of the Tandroy kingdom from its initial centre in the Montefeno area, especially to
the north and westwards. This process involved the establishment of royal centres, and
later royal burials, on its peripheries (Parker Pearson et al. in press). It is likely that cadet
lines of the royal dynasty were sent to establish buffer polities in these margins; although
intended to ensure the smooth succession of power at the centre, such moves led to rivalry
and usurpation by the juniors from their peripheral powerbases. As well as the potential
for internal struggle, so vividly described by Drury and mentioned by Flacourt, there were
undoubtedly boundary disputes with external neighbours. The interruptions in the settle-
ment sequence in these northern and western zones suggest that groups previously living
here (probably the Bara and/or Masikoro to the north and the Karembola to the west)
left between the thirteenth and seventeenth centuries. By the seventeenth century, there
remained a 25-kilometre wide empty zone between the Tandroy's northern limits and
their neighbours. During that century, those northern neighbours withdrew northwards
from the region. The first colonial encounters thus took place amongst internally-gener-
ated dynamic tensions and changes in Tandroy, Karembola and Mahafaly political struc-
ture.
Although French military activity stirred up existing hostilities, there is no evidence that
introduced diseases played a major role in population dynamics. The only textual refer-
ences to disease are to the decimating effects of malaria, fever and dysentery on colonists.
The settlement numbers show no decline in the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries, and
orally transmitted genealogies indicate a population explosion from the late eighteenth
century (Heurtebize 1986). The major dislocation in settlement structure by the sixteenth
century had nothing to do with the French and probably not with the Portuguese and
Dutch either, except possibly indirectly in introducing further uncertainty for those living
in the war-torn river valleys of the south. The contribution of Europeans prior to the twen-
tieth century was not in trade goods, religion and culture, nor even in disease or genocide.
In one of the few instances where the tables were turned on the colonizers, the Tandroy
and others had little to do with European or Malagasy outsiders other than the procure-
ment of guns through Tanosy middlemen and increased warfare amongst themselves and
against the colonists.
Acknowledgements
This research would not have been possible without the help of other members of the
Central Androy Project - Karen Godden, George Heurtebize, Ramilisonina, Victor
Razanatovo, Retsihisatse, Jean-Luc Schwenninger and Helen Smith. Our fieldwork has
been supported by Jean-Aimé Rakotoarisoa and Chantal Radimilahy of the Musée d'Art
et d'Archéologie of Antananarivo. Other people who have contributed advice and help
towards this paper are Paul Buckland, Chris Clark, Sarah Fee, Simon Garrod, Captain
Parfait, Jane Webster and Henry Wright. The archaeological research would also not have
been possible without the consent and help of the many villages and communities in
southern Madagascar where we have been working. The research has been financially sup-
ported by grants from the British Academy, the National Geographic Society, the British
Natural Environment Research Council, the Nuffield Foundation and the Society of Anti-
quaries of London.
Department of Archaeology and Prehistory

University of Sheffield
Note
1 The Tandroy live in Androy ('land of thorns') and are known in the earlier literature as
Antandroy ('people of the land of thorns'). Similarly the Tanosy are often referred to
as the Antanosy. Their self-designations are Tandroy and Tanosy.
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Close Encounters of The Worst Kind

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Mike Parker Pearson

Madagascar; resistance; colonialism; Tandroy.

World Archaeology Vol. 28(3): 393-417 Culture Contact and Colonialism

integration, the appearance of Europeans exacerbated existing internal warfare and

Portuguese trading posts in seventeenth-century Japan (Stony 1960: 54-65; FitzGerald

(Jean Fonteneau 1547; cited by Defoort 1913:158)

Diego Suarez Figure 2 The principal foreign trading

Figure 5 Etienne de Flacourt's map of Fort Dauphin.

The archaeology of contact

The European colonies

archaeological investigations by the Université de Tulear (Ramiandrisoa 1991; Barret

Figure 7 Sites in southern Madagascar, mentioned in the text.

Modifications to indigenous material culture

Long-term structures in Malagasy-European relationships

Women, kinship, power and trade

Other reasons for colonial failure

Slavery and guns

Cave ab incolis (Watch out for the locals)

Internal transformations: the archaeological evidence

Department of Archaeology and Prehistory

Barret, J. B. 1991. Sarodrano. Aombe, 4: 31-54.

Defoort, E. 1913. L'Androy: Essai de Monographie. Antananarivo: Bulletin Economique.

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