This work covers a broad set of encounters between Europeans Europeans between encounters of set abroad covers work This Madagascar,”Southern in Disasters Colonial and Resistance Malagasy Kind: Worst the An exception is Mike Parker Pearson,2. “Close Encounters of 1:3–5. 20), nant Madagascar ed., Grandidier, Alfred 1. mine. are alltranslations noted, otherwise Unless about the ventures ofEuropean era early the treating textbooks history African in appear to yet has Madagascar them. below observe to gather often childhood—who his in author this children—including dazzling coasts, over Anosy’s high trails vapor telltale leave their times fl airline Long-distance economies. modern region’s and ofthe history currents main the from and in part because, espied across the waters by its neighbors, can Madagascar seem aloof scholarship in this region of overriding British infl lusophone, anglophone francophone, and separated have legacies linguistic colonial because Ocean Indian the and Africa ofsoutheast byscholars not is known well Europeans transient region. ofthe narratives historical interconnected and wider in them setting outlook, in tive compara- and broad is language any in Europeans its and on Anosy literature secondary little they but did, Mombasa and time same the At experts. Kilwa or Madagascar offrancophone circle aclose outside Hope known poorly are Good of Cape the as much Ocean, Indian southwest asignifi played ofAnosy grounds meeting The tion. interac- site ofEuropean-Malagasy important an was Madagascar 1674,in southeast in Anosy French ofMadagascar abandonment the to century sixteenth ofthe decades early From the come. to (French) for centuries Saint-Laurent and (Portuguese) Lourenço São as Madagascar identify to continued mapmakers and sailors route. European Cape the via Atlantic the from feast. the after cartography for European (Madagascar) bigisland the named Diaz and Lourenço, (fi extremity southeast Madagascar’s ofAnosy, coast the along caught on sight 10 crew ofland and way, August Diaz their regain to north Steering course. intended ofits it south well blowing others, the from Diaz byDiego commanded vessel the Larson M. Pier Confl Hunger, and God, Lost: Colonies ights linking South Africa and Australia, Mauritius, and Southeast Asia, for example, some- for example, Asia, Southeast and Mauritius, Australia, and Africa South linking ights 1 In part the early history of relations between the people of southeast Madagascar and and Madagascar ofsoutheast people the between ofrelations history early the part In As far as it is known, this was the fi the was this known, is it as far As the Cape of Good Hope. In late May 1500, inclement weather at the Cape separated 1500, May late Hope. separated In Cape inclement ofGood atthe weather Cape the fi Gama Vasco da after years two just Indies East for the Lisbon from sail fl ict inict Anosy (Madagascar) to 1674 eet of thirteen Portuguese vessels under the command of Pedro Álvares Cabral set Cabral ofPedro Álvares command the under vessels Portuguese eet ofthirteen , 9 vols. (Paris: Comité de Madagascar, 1903– Madagascar, de Comité (Paris: , 9vols. World Archaeology World Collection des ouvrages anciens concer- anciens ouvrages des Collection 28 (1997): 393–417. 28 (1997): rst sighting of Madagascar by seafarers hailing directly directly hailing byseafarers ofMadagascar sighting rst car in 1645–6,” inMadagas- “An Foster, William English Settlement and notes, inlater cited Belrose-Huyghues Vincent by articles the ters,” Encoun- “Close Pearson, see these, For inthisarticle. covered not Bay, are which Augustine Saint and Boina of Bay the larly particu- west, inthe being others century, seventeenth late the before inMadagascar interest European of areas several of one was Anosy perspective. anarchaeological from mainly century, and the inhabitants of southern Madagascar to the seventeenth cant role in the early modern history of the ofthe history modern early the role in cant uence from the late eighteenth century century eighteenth late the uence from English Historical Review Historical English g. 1). ofSão Feast the was day The 27 (1912): 239–50. 27 (1912): rst rounded

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continent or as a regular component of gradu- and locations along the East African coast tend ate syllabi in southern and East African history. to populate early modern histories of the re- It is tempting to hypothesize that no satis- gion and fi nd pride of place in historical narra- fying and broadly conceived synthetic histories tives of the western Indian Ocean. But colonial of early Portuguese and French colonization in “failures” are as important to understanding a Madagascar exist because publications on the historical era as are successes, and in any case, Big Island are typically specialized in some way success and failure are positioned, if not also or because European colonizing efforts foun- rather coarse, judgments. Is little known about dered when thrown up against the hierarchi- southeast Madagascar in the fi rst centuries of cal agrarian societies of Anosy. Intruders from European navigation in the Indian Ocean be- the Atlantic could not incorporate or push the cause the people of Anosy ultimately succeeded people of Anosy off into the interior, as they in preventing a permanent implantation of At- did at the Cape, or squeeze a manageable profi t lantic foreigners on their territory? from them, as happened in many parts of South There is relatively little work on Madagas- Asia where land and maritime trade in local car in Portuguese scholarship, which in the west- products generated considerable wealth. The ern reaches of the Indian Ocean is focused pri- histories of colonial “successes” in settlement, marily on Mozambique, the East African coast, production, and commerce in places such as and India, key regions of the expansive Estado the Cape, South Asia, the Mascarene Islands, da India.3 The Big Island mostly remained on

3. Michael Naylor Pearson, The Portuguese in India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987); Pear- son, The Indian Ocean (London: Routledge, 2003), 118–22. the periphery of this empire of commerce and of the gratuitous violence deployed by French 347 religion, though parts of western Madagascar colonists. The defeat in Madagascar stung the were in frequent contact with the northern por- sensibilities of French colonial partisans and tions of Mozambique across the shared channel scholars for more than two centuries to come. of water that separates them and suffered pe- “Since Richelieu, the possession of Madagas- riodic destruction at the hands of Portuguese car became one of our ambitions,” explained men of war in the early sixteenth century.4 Most J. Charles-Roux of the late-nineteenth-century writing on early Portuguese ventures about the colonization of Madagascar in the preface to a Big Island has been the product of French colo- much-used collection of primary documents on nial scholars researching Madagascar’s history Madagascar’s history. “It was not until the third during the fi rst half of the twentieth century republic that we achieved our goals thanks to

and chronicles shipwreck and pioneering Jesuit our valiant army conducted by General Duch- Colonies Lost Pier M. Larson missions.5 I employ these and other published esne, and later by General Gallieni.”6 primary and secondary sources in this article to Much writing about the seventeenth-cen- tease out an intellectual, religious, and diaspo- tury French settlement in southeast Madagascar ran history of Malagasy-Portuguese interactions depends heavily on the published work of one in southeast Madagascar and Goa during the of its many governors, Étienne de Flacourt (in sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. To southeast Madagascar, 1648–55), whose Histoire write of a lost Portuguese colony in Madagascar de la grande isle Madagascar was fi rst published is not accurate in the strict sense of the term, in Paris in 1658, reissued in an expanded ver- then, for Portuguese interests in Anosy were sion in 1661, and today remains an important mostly religious in nature rather than commer- European source of seventeenth-century Mala- cial or administrative and often carried out by gasy history. Flacourt’s book was republished Jesuits who were not Portuguese by birth. Their by colonial historian Alfred Grandidier in the failures mostly went down in the annals of Cath- early twentieth century and, edited and with an olic mission rather than Portuguese expansion. introduction by Indian Ocean specialist Claude France in Madagascar was an altogether Allibert, was recently reissued by a major Pari- different matter, however, for its efforts in Anosy sian publisher of African studies (Karthala). Be- during the mid-seventeenth century at the end sides the work of Flacourt, a number of French of frequent Portuguese navigation about the colonial-era studies of the colony exist, all more shores of southeast Madagascar created the fi rst or less narrowly based on Flacourt and the pub- French colony in the Indian Ocean. This origi- lications of other seventeenth-century colonists. nary and disastrous Indian Ocean colonization Some of these works are celebratory in nature, deserves much greater attention than it has re- and others are critical and designed to bring ceived, even in Madagascar. Its ragtag bands the lessons of history to a more perfect future of hungry settlers and their ultimate military French colonization of the Big Island. All are defeat have long made for embarrassing copy decidedly nationalistic works promoting French in France, in part because the habitation’s igno- colonization in the Indian Ocean. The ill-fated minious end in August 1674 left more than half French colony in southeast Madagascar receives the European colonists dead and the rest scram- scant mention in recent histories of France’s bling to escape the island and in part because ancien régime empire, and these are all based

4. Alfred Grandidier, “Histoire de la découverte de Shorter still are the articles published in Madagascar Borro: Témoignage d’un compagnon du Père Mariano l’île de Madagascar par les Portugais (pendant le XVIe by Vincent Belrose-Huyghues on early Portuguese sur Madagascar, 1630,” Omaly sy Anio 12 (1981): 105–13; siècle),”Revue de Madagascar (10 January 1902), 34–54; ventures about Madagascar. Frei Gaspar de São Ber- Belrose-Huyghues, “L’itineraire de Frère Gaspar de San Grandidier, Collection des ouvrages anciens, 1:14–44. nardino, Itinerário da Índia por terra até à Ilha de Bernardino: Une visite portugaise à la côte ouest de Chipre (1611; Lisbon: Agência Geral do Ultramar, Di- Madagascar en 1606,” Taloha 9 (1982): 39–87; Belrose- 5. The major exceptions are not synthetic second- visão de Publicações e Biblioteca, 1953); Humberto Huyghues, “La Baie de Boina entre 1580 et 1640: Une ary studies but new editions of published and man- Leitão, ed., Os dois descobrimentos da Ilha de São critique des sources anciennes et récentes,” Omaly sy uscript primary documentation such as Augusto Reis Lourenço mandados fazer pelo vice-rei D. Jerónimo Anio 17–20 (1984): 165–94. Machado’s reedition of Gaspar de S. Bernardino’s de Azevedo nos anos de 1613 a 1616 (Lisbon: Centro Itinerário da Índia, originally published in 1611, and 6. J. Charles-Roux, “Avant-Propos,” in Grandidier, Col- de Estudos Históricos Ultramarinos, 1970); Vincent Humberto Letião’s compilation of manuscripts re- lection des ouvrages anciens, 1:vii. Belrose-Huyghues, “L’information du Père Christoforro lating to Goan Jesuit pursuits around the Big Island. 348 on the aforementioned colonial publications, aquatic vista to modern visitors swooping out treating Madagascar only in passing in narra- of the sky on one of Air Madagascar’s Boeing tives concerned with more successful coloniza- 737s or bumping along Anosy’s sorely neglected tion projects around the world. Defeat has sunk roads in a land-bound vehicle. Today the largest the history of France’s fi rst Indian Ocean colony urban center in southeast Madagascar, Tolagn- and contemporary to Dutch settlement at the aro (also commonly known as Fort Dauphin), is Cape into near oblivion and unfortunately, too, located on a scenic Y-shaped peninsula jutting shut it out of most narratives of Indian Ocean into the blue-green waters of the Indian Ocean and southeast African history.7 To examine this in the southern reaches of Anosy. In the early mparative abortive early effort and the reasons for its fail- centuries of European navigation about the re- ure, I employ both published primary and sec- gion, the people of Anosy knew the peninsula Coudies of ondary materials, but also the letters of Catholic as Tolagñare (pronounced Too-lahng-yare) and St uth Asia, missionaries from the archives of the Congréga- in the mid-seventeenth century estimated its tion de la Mission (rue de Sèvres, Paris), com- immediately surrounding inhabitants at some So munications from clerics who periodically evan- ten thousand.8 The population of Anosy proper Africa and the ddle East gelized in the settlement and critically reported would have been several times this fi gure. Of Mi on it from the inside. the possible meanings of Tolagñare is “mixed But first I turn to Anosy. The land that bones” (taolana + aharo), a fi tting metaphor for people of southeast Madagascar call Anosy its long and thorny history of immigration, mé- runs nearly 150 kilometers from Manantenina tissage, and violence as a meeting ground for in the north to the Mandrare River in the south people hailing from disparate reaches of the (fi g. 2). The abundant water of the region is the Indian and Atlantic oceans. apparent reason for its name, which translates as Anosy’s societies were deeply stratified. “land of the islands.” Two principal rivers water The region’s rulers were collectively known as the larger province and drain its lands of sea- Raondriana, a term invoking political mastery sonally high rainfall, the Fanjahira (now Efaho) and often translated as “princes” at the time. toward the south and the Manampanihy in the Raondriana sovereigns claimed distant Arabian north (near its mouth, this river is also known origins and ruled over sometimes densely popu- as the Manantenina). When the lower Fanjahira lated chiefdoms and mini-kingdoms with royal river waters were pregnant with rain between residences inland along the rivers, sometimes January and April, and its estuary to the sea a good day’s walk from the sea. The harbors blocked by sand and silt, the waters spilled over and roadsteads at the waterside where Europe- their customary banks and turned the nearby ans tended to alight, like Ranofotsy, Tolagñare, heights into seasonal islands in an elongated and Manafi afy, lay on the periphery of power in plain of muddy water. The numerous lakes, southeast Madagascar, not at its center. It is possi- marshes, and streams on the sometimes narrow, ble this geography of political authority refl ected sometimes broad, coastal plain between the sea a defensive adaptation to actual and potential and the inland mountains still offer a splendid foreign enemies arriving from across the ocean,

7. Etienne de Flacourt, Histoire de la grande îsle Mad- la Haye sur Madagascar (Paris: Augustin Challamel, enne de Flacourt, Histoire de la grande isle Madagas- agascar, composée par le Sieur de Flacovrt, Directeur 1897); Arthur Malotet, Étienne de Flacourt, ou les orig- car, édition annotée et présentée par Claude Allibert general de la Compagnie Françoise de l’Orient, et Com- ines de la colonisation française à Madagascar, 1648– (1661; Paris: Karthala, 1995). The seventeenth-century mandant pour sa Majesté dans ladite Isle, et Isles adja- 1661 (Paris: Ernest Leroux, 1898); Alfred Grandidier, colony in Madagascar receives some mention in centes (Paris: Chez Gvillavme de Lvyne, Librairie Iuré, Henri Froidevaux, and Guillaume Grandidier, eds., Jean Meyer, Jean Tarrade, Annie Rey-Goldzeiguer, au Palais, dans la Gallerie des Merciers, à la Iustice, Histoire de la grande île de Madagascar Par Flacourt and Jacques Thobie, Histoire de la France coloniale, 1658); Flacourt, Histoire de la grande isle Madagascar (1642–1660): Première Partie, Nouvelle édition, Collec- des origines à 1914 (Paris: Armand Colin, 1991); and composée par le Sieur De Flacovrt, Directeur General tion des ouvrages anciens concernant Madagascar, bk. Philippe Haudrère, L’empire des rois: 1500–1789 (Paris: de la Compagnie Françoise de l’Orient, et Comman- 8 (Paris: Union Coloniale, 1913); Henri Froidevaux, Les Éditions Denoël, 1997). dant pour sa Majesté dans ladite Isle et és Isles adja- derniers projets du Duc de la Meilleraye sur Madagas- 8. “Autre Lettre dudit Sieur, dudit jour, à M.rs les In- centes, Auec vne Relation de ce qui s’est passé és an- car, 1663 (Paris: Édouard Champion et Émilie Larose, teressens” [Nacquart to Syndics of the Compagnie nées 1655. 1656. et 1657. non encor veuë par la premiere 1915); Guillaume Grandidier, De la découverte de Mad- des Indes Orientales, Fort Dauphin, 9 February 1650], Impression (A Troyes, chez Nicolas Oudot, et se ven- agascar à la fi n du règne de Ranavalona Ire, 1861, ed. Archives of the Congrégation de la Mission, rue de dent A Paris, Chez Gervais Clovzier au Palais, sur les Alfred Grandidier and Guillaume Grandidier, vol. 5, Sèvres, Paris (hereafter ACM), Recueil (Collection) degrez en montant pour aller à la saincte Chappelle, bk. 1, Histoire physique, naturelle et politique de Mad- 1501, 14. 1661); Henri Froidevaux, Un mémoire inédit de M. de agascar (Paris: Imprimerie Paul Brodard, 1942); Eti- 349 Colonies Lost Pier M. Larson

Figure 2. Anosy in the mid-seventeenth century. Map drawn by author

either to those intruding from the sea in earlier to mix farming of rice and dry-land crops with times such as the ancestors of the Raondriana or modest raising of chickens, sheep, and the to Portuguese and French seafarers arriving on humped zebu cattle, for which the Big Island is southeastern Malagasy shores from early in the now famous, and some hunting of nuisance wild sixteenth century.9 Raondriana ruled over vari- boars that tended to ravage plantations. Anosy’s ous categories of inhabitants roughly analogous aquatic environment provided ample opportuni- to chiefs, commoners, and slaves. The power of ties for both freshwater and saltwater fi shing. It Anosy’s Raondriana depended on the number was Anosy’s location; its chiefs, intellectuals, and of warriors they could muster on the battlefi eld Arabic-script writing; and its imagined potential and on their alliances with scribes and diviner- to feed visitors from the Atlantic that attracted healers known as ombiasy, whose knowledge European attention over the years. But it was included Malagasy language literacy in Arabic also probably its resilient economic and social script, the writing and reading of books (most organization that ultimately prevented Atlantic commonly known as soratse), and healing the foreigners from establishing themselves fi rmly sick.10 The people of Anosy lived off both land there until the twentieth century.11 and sea. Domestic and chiefl y economies tended

9. For histories of the Raminia and their descendants, de Madagascar: Anosy, une île au milieu des terres Savoirs arabico-malgaches: La tradition manuscrite see Gabriel Ferrand, La légende de Raminia d’après un (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1998), 91–95. Many sixteenth- des devins Antemoro Anakara (Madagascar) (Paris: manuscrit arabico-malgache de la Biblioghèque Natio- and seventeenth-century kings in western Madagas- Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orien- nale (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1902); Ferrand, “La car also maintained their residences well back from tales, 1990). légende de Raminia,” Taloha 6 (1974): 150–62; Mar- the coast. 11. Lettre de Mr. Nacquart, prestre de la mission, à Mr. celle Urbain-Faublée and Jacques Faublée, “Rabefa- 10. Philippe Beaujard, “Les manuscrits arabico- Vincent, général de ladite mission, de Madagascar, du ñian, souverain zafi raminia en Anosy,” Etudes Océan malgaches (sorabe) du pays antemoro,” Omaly sy 5 Feu. 1650, ACM, Recueil 1501, 22–23; Flacourt, Histoire Indien 23–24 (1997): 41–56; and Jean-Aimé Rakotoari- Anio 28 (1988): 123–49; Narivelo Rajaonarimanana, de la grande isle Madagascar (1661), 106–8, 111–14. soa, Mille ans d’occupation humaine dans le Sud-Est 350 Translators, Manuscripts, and Kidnappers southern Madagascar over the years made their After their first sighting of São Lourenço in way toward those known to have gathered in the 1500, Portuguese navigators visited several parts island’s southeastern extremity of Anosy. Anosy of the Big Island seeking its wealth, rumored to supposedly became the premier rendezvous for consist of silver and possibly gold. Following re- Europeans early washed up on the Big Island’s ports in 1506 by Ruy Pereira Coutinho from the shores.14 Bay of Boina in northwest Madagascar that sil- In 1508, for example, Diego Lopes de Se- ver bracelets were manufactured in the island’s queira and his crew retrieved only two young southeast, vessels were dispatched in later years Portuguese sailors at Tolagñare Bay. Conveying mparative to the Matitaña River in search of silver and local knowledge gained from conversations with took several hostages and examples of silver- the natives of Anosy, de Sequeira called the bay Coudies of work back to Lisbon. While these are the fi rst “Turubaya,” the fi rst known European reference St uth Asia, known Malagasy “visitors” to Europe, it is likely to Tolagñare. One of de Sequeira’s sailors “know- that Malagasy slaves, sailors, or hostages taken ing the language of the country” was likely the So aboard Portuguese ships had earlier reached purveyor of this information, for he acted as Africa and the 12 ddle East the Atlantic. Portuguese vessels sailing to and interpreter between de Sequeira and Diamom, Mi from the Indian Ocean sometimes sought re- a Raondriana ruler of the area.15 Three Portu- freshment in the Big Island’s bays, which lay, in- guese vessels were said to have attempted a trad- conveniently for purposes of speedy navigation, ing post somewhere in Anosy in 1510. It is un- astride the emerging maritime routes between clear what became of this project, for no records the Atlantic and the Indies. The most unfortu- of its implementation or aftermath have been lo- nate of Portuguese mariners found themselves cated. In 1527 two vessels carrying orders from cast suddenly onto Madagascar’s unexpected the king of Portugal to the viceroy of India were shores by foul weather or inattention at the wrecked on the sandy southeast coast of Mada- helm. The carreira da India between Iberia and gascar. Three years later, the Portuguese crown Asia was an exceedingly dangerous voyage, es- dispatched additional ships to Madagascar in pecially in the regions of southeast Africa and search of stranded sailors, who were reputed to Madagascar on the return to the Atlantic when exist there in signifi cant numbers. But only four vessels were routinely overloaded. Between 1580 Portuguese and one French speaker were taken and 1640 more than seventy of the four hundred aboard in the Bay of Tolagñare by the search ships departing Goa for Lisbon were wrecked party. They reported that many more had found on their voyages of return to the Atlantic, some their way into Anosy’s interior, perhaps seeking 16 percent of the total. An unknown though not after centers of population and power.16 Rescues insignifi cant number of the more than thirty failed to validate the persistent rumors. vessels lost in the decades between 1500 and In 1613 a man named Diamanoro re- 1579 were shipwrecked on Madagascar, many of called to European visitors that his ancestors them along the seaboard of Anosy.13 Europeans had embraced the Portuguese foreigners and who found themselves stranded elsewhere in attempted to domesticate them to country ways.

12. Malotet, Étienne de Flacourt, 8–10; Grandidier, the Shipwrecks of the Portuguese East Indiamen Sao 15. Grandidier, Collection des ouvrages anciens, 1:47– Collection des ouvrages anciens, 1:10–45. Thomé (1589), Santo Alberto (1593), Sao Joao Baptista 50. (1622), and the Journeys of the Survivors in South East 13. A partial list of known wrecks to 1538 can be 16. Joseph-Étienne Canitrot, “Les Portugais sur la Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press for found in Grandidier, Collection des ouvrages anciens, côte orientale de Madagascar et en Anosy,” Revue the Hakluyt Society, 1959), 24–25; Boxer, The Portu- 1:44–45 n. 1. They include three ships in 1504, one in d’histoire des colonies 9 (1921): 203–7. See also Gran- guese Seaborne Empire, 1415–1825 (New York: Knopf, 1505, one in 1507, four in 1527, four in 1534, and one in didier, Collection des ouvrages anciens, 1:51, 55–59, 76, 1969), 381; Belrose-Huyghues, “L’itineraire de Frère 1538. A briefer list of shipwrecks along the coast of 85–88. Gaspar de San Bernardino,” 51. See also Charles Ralph southern Madagascar, with a map, can be found in Boxer, ed., Further Selections from the Tragic History Pearson, “Close Encounters,” 405. of the Sea, 1559–1565: Narratives of the Shipwrecks of 14. James Duffy, Shipwreck and Empire, Being an Ac- the Portuguese East Indiamen Aguia and Garça (1559), count of Portuguese Maritime Disasters in a Century São Paulo (1561), and the Misadventures of the Brazil- of Decline (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, Ship Santo António (1565) (Cambridge: Cambridge 1955), 21, 30–31, 53–64, 95; Charles Ralph Boxer, ed., University Press for the Hakluyt Society, 1968). The Tragic History of the Sea, 1589–1622: Narratives of Many whites had been shipwrecked on the coast ies different stories that implicated erstwhile 351 of Anosy in earlier times, he claimed, and had Raondriana rulers in a slaughter of foreigners. established themselves at Trañovato (literally Accounts of a massacre of Portuguese at Traño- “stone house”), a seasonal island in the Fanjahira vato fi rst originated in the minds of Jesuit mis- River nine kilometers west of Tolagñare.17 It be- sionaries frustrated by their inability to convert came known to the Portuguese as Ilha de Santa Anosy’s rulers to Catholicism in the years after Cruz; parts of the structure they occupied— 1613. They determined that Bruto Chambanga, much of it probably already existing at their ar- king at Fanjahira town, together with his father, rival—remain standing.18 There they married had been complicit in killing Portuguese sailors the daughters of Diamanoro’s male forebears. only after Chambanga refused to willingly hand The son of the chief of the shipwrecked whites, his son over to them as a hostage to be removed 20 known in local memory by the sobriquet Dia- to Goa for a Catholic education. Colonies Lost Pier M. Larson masinoro (from Malagasy Dian, “prince/royal,” All accounts of a massacre of whites in and Portuguese meu senhor, “my lord”), had wed- early-sixteenth-century Anosy date to 1613 and ded King Diamanoro’s “aunt” and issued two later, nearly a century after the supposed inci- children by her, one of whose daughters was dent, and are based on hearsay evidence.21 As Diamanoro’s wife. Others fathered many de- Flacourt told it in 1661, for example, enemies of scendants with local women. Some of the Portu- the Europeans proposed celebrating a missavats guese departed after a time, having constructed ritual to commemorate the construction of a an escape vessel for themselves of local timber, new building on the Fanjahira island of Traño- he said. They sailed off toward Mozambique. vato, or Ilha de Santa Cruz. The ritual and en- What became of them, he continued, was un- suing feast were to take place outside the stone known, for they never returned to retrieve their residence of the Portuguese and their Mala- wives and children as they had promised.19 gasy wives and children. The Europeans were While the offspring of Portuguese sailors invited to bring along all their accumulated and women of Anosy became effectively inte- riches to display (these may have been goods grated into the societies of southeast Madagas- from the Indies salvaged from wrecked ships). car, relations between the stranded Portuguese At the conclusion of the meal, and as the trea- gathered at Trañovato and surrounding Raon- sure boxes were opened, warriors fell upon the driana may have turned sour after a time. In the Europeans, killing some seventy of them. Only early seventeenth century when Portuguese ex- the fi ve Portuguese sentries who remained to peditions from Goa repeatedly sought out traces guard the residence at Trañovato are reported of these earlier shipwrecked sailors, Anosy’s to have survived the ambush. They were later memories were divided over their fate. No one rescued by a passing European vessel.22 It is disputed their existence. The rulers of Anosy not known precisely how or when this killing repeatedly stressed that European sailors had occurred—if it did at all—but by 1550 few Por- met no violent end and that some of the men tuguese remained in Anosy and the people of had escaped the Big Island on their own. Oth- the Big Island had earned a reputation among ers reportedly told Goan sailors and missionar- European mariners for being extraordinarily

17. Trañovato at the time probably consisted of exist- établissement européen à Madagascar,” Bulletin de rie that cannot be tied to Anosy in any direct way—is ing structures in stone at a site previously associated Madagascar 7 (1954): 523–37; Pierre Vérin and Georges found in Jean Alfonse, Les voyages auantureux du with Raondriana rulers. The structures were not due, Heurtebize, “La tranovato de l’Anosy, première con- Capitaine Ian Alfonce, Sainctongeois: Contenant les at least originally, to Portuguese constructions and struction en pierre,” Taloha 6 (1974): 117–42. Reigles et enseignemens necessaires à la bonne et Seure are often mistakenly called a “fort.” See Grandidier, Nauigation; Auec Priuilege du Roy (Poitiers: Par les de 19. Grandidier, Collection des ouvrages anciens, 2:43– De la découverte de Madagascar, 18–19; Claude Allib- Marnesz et Boucherz freres, 1559), 59v. The manu- 46, 52. ert, “Tradition et modernité à Madagascar, présenta- script for this book was apparently composed in 1547. tion de l’oeuvre d’Etienne de FLACOURT,” in Flacourt, 20. Ibid., 2:58–60, 62–63. 22. Flacourt, Histoire de la grande isle Madagascar Histoire de la grande isle Madagascar, édition anno- 21. For three such accounts of the supposed massa- (1661), 32–33. A description of the missavats (misana- tée et présentée par Claude Allibert, 16; Rakotoarisoa, cre dating from the seventeenth century and later, sana) ritual is offered in Allibert, “Tradition et moder- Mille ans d’occupation humaine, 79–86. see ibid., 1:60–62, 265–68, 486–87. See also Henri nité à Madagascar,” 61–62. 18. Georges Sully Chapus, “Fort-Dauphin: La ‘trano Froidevaux, Les Lazaristes à Madagascar au XVIIe siè- vato’ des Portugais,” Revue de Madagascar (October cle (Paris: C. Poussielgue, 1902), 5–8. The earliest men- 1936): 53–62; G. Kling, “Le fort des Portugais, premier tion of the killing of Europeans—at a Portuguese fate- 352 “mean” (French, meschans).23 Portuguese ships with coastal chiefs, and to seek out possible sites continued to alight and to founder along the for new Catholic missions from Goa.25 shores of Anosy from time to time during the Captured by the Portuguese in 1510, second half of the sixteenth century, but there Goa was not only the capital of the Estado da are few detailed accounts of crews’ interactions India but became a diocese of the Province of with Malagasy.24 Lisbon in 1533, then an archdiocese in 1557, One dimension of the elusive early- and fi nally an ecclesiastical province in 1558. sixteenth-century Portuguese presence in Anosy Its administrative domain comprised the en- left an enduring impression on local memory tire Indian Ocean, and many mission activities mparative and practice. A “towering” cross that stranded in the Arabian Sea were coordinated from the city, including those to the island of São Lou- Coudies of sailors were said to have erected at Trañovato during their residence there (this may well have renço.26 Among the passengers of the Nossa St uth Asia, been a padrão, pillar, of the sort Portuguese Senhora da Esperança was one Luigi Mariana, a navigators commonly posted along their routes Genoese Jesuit stationed at Goa seeking a suit- So of “discovery”) continued to attract Raondri- able location at which to evangelize in Madagas- Africa and the 27 ddle East ana and their subjects to the seasonal “island” car. Mariana was set aboard the Nossa Senhora Mi in the Fanjahira well after the reported killings by Jeronimo de Azevedo, viceroy of Goa, acting of the sixteenth century. Diamanoro claimed on information earlier supplied by one Gaspar in his conversations with Jesuits many decades de São Bernardino, a Franciscan who had been later that he and his subjects frequently “prayed” briefl y shipwrecked in the Bay of Boina and im- at the cross and deposited offerings there, re- portuned Iberian authorities for a mission to questing fulfi llment of desires, for the cross was the Big Island.28 Although in 1567 the Council thought to bring rain and sun and to keep in- of Goa provided for Dominicans to evangelize sects from pestering cattle, ensuring prosperity along the coast of Africa and its nearby islands, to surrounding people. Diamanoro’s accounts Jesuits were substituted for the task at Madagas- of the early-sixteenth-century presence of Portu- car when the Dominicans proved wanting in guese around Trañovato derive from the store of personnel and funds.29 Anosy’s collective memory and come through his Departing from Goa in January 1613 car- reported conversations with captain Paulo Ro- rying Mariana and his colleague, Father Freire, driguez da Costa and fellow passengers aboard together with five “Muslim interpreters” who the caravel Nossa Senhora da Esperança, which may have been natives of Mozambique, the Nossa was fi rst dispatched to Madagascar from Goa in Senhora da Esperança fi rst anchored on 15 April 1613 to conduct a hydrographical survey of the at New Masselage (Antsoheribory island), one of Big Island’s coasts, to form treaties of friendship Madagascar’s major trade entrepôts at the time

23. Alfonse, Les voyages auantureux du Capitaine Ian pia, 1555–1634 (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Sam Francisco da Provincia de Portugal Com licenca da Alfonce (1559 ed.), 59v. Dame Press, 1985); John Correia-Afonso, The Jesuits Sancta Inquisicam E ordinaria (Lisbon: Na Offi cina de in India, 1542–1773 (Anand, India: Heras Institute of In- Vicente Aluares, 1611), chaps. 1–3. The account of ship- 24. Most Portuguese accounts of Madagascar from dian History and Culture, 1997), 43–45; A. J. R. Russell- wreck found in this work and analyzed, with transla- the second half of the sixteenth century refer to re- Wood, The Portuguese Empire, 1415–1808: A World on tion into French, in Belrose-Huyghues, “L’itineraire de gions other than Anosy. See Grandidier, Collection des the Move (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, Frère Gaspar de San Bernardino.” ouvrages anciens, 1:109–11, 139–43, 155–59. Relations 1998); Hervé Pennec, Des Jésuites au royaume du between Mozambique and northwest Madagascar 29. For the history of Portuguese mission interests in prêtre Jean (Éthiopie): Stratégies, rencontres et tenta- remained stronger and more frequent in these years, Madagascar and the western Indian Ocean, see Vin- tives d’implantation, 1495–1633 (Paris: Fundação Calo- for ships at Mozambique island frequently resorted cent Belrose-Huyghues and Jean-Louis Peter, “Les uste Gulbenkian, 2003). to the bays of northwest Madagascar for provisions. premières missions à Madagascar à la lumière des Belrose-Huyghues, “L’itineraire de Frère Gaspar de 27. Like Mariana, Italian Jesuits dispatched to Goa matériaux de la ‘propagande’ du Prof. Dr. Schmidlin San Bernardino,” 47–53; Belrose-Huyghues, “La Baie were usually destined for further missions. See de Munster,” Omaly sy Anio 11 (1980): 113–27; Belrose- de Boina,” 165–94. Charles J. Borges, The Economics of the Goa Jesuits, Huyghues, “L’information du Père Christoforro Borro,” 1542–1759: An Explanation of Their Rise and Fall (New 105–13; Belrose-Huyghues, “L’itineraire de Frère Gas- 25. Original Portuguese language accounts of the Delhi: Concept, 1994), 30–31. par de San Bernardino,” 64–69; Belrose-Huyghues, ship’s travels can be found in Leitão, Os dois desco- “La Baie de Boina,” 165–94. brimentos. In this article I rely on French translations 28. Frei Gaspar de São Bernardino, Itinerario da India of these accounts. por terra ate este reino de Portugal com a discripcam de Hierusalem, dirigido a raynha de Espanha Margar- 26. Boxer, Portuguese Seaborne Empire; Philip Cara- ita de Austria nossa senhora: Composto pour Frei Gas- man, The Lost Empire: The Story of the Jesuits in Ethio- par de Sao Bernardina da Ordem do Seraphico Padre and located in the Bay of Boina on the north- After rounding the southernmost extrem- 353 west coast of the Big Island.30 The Muslim in- ity of Madagascar, the caravel anchored in Ano- terpreters aboard ship were probably competent sy’s Ranofotsy Bay on 17 October. Word of the in Arabic as well as Kiswahili, or its Malagasy vessel’s arrival spread quickly, for onlookers and variant, since it was well known that in north- those seeking to provision the ship soon began western Madagascar of the time the people gathering on the adjoining beach. Even the cap- could “speak, near the sea, a language similar tain of a Dutch ship then riding at Manafi afy, to that of the Cafres, that is to say the countries farther north in Anosy by some forty kilome- of Mozambique and Malindi.”31 At New Masse- ters, learned by overland intelligence about the lage, the vessel took aboard two additional in- presence of a European vessel at Ranofotsy. Be- terpreters by written agreement with the king lieving it was another Dutch ship, he dispatched

of the country, Tsimamo. The interpreters were a letter in Dutch to the captain of the Nossa Sen- Colonies Lost Pier M. Larson probably native Malagasy speakers competent hora by means of local messengers. To ward the in translating among Kiswahili, Malagasy, and enemy Protestants off, Captain Paulo Rodriguez Portuguese, each common languages of trade da Costa spread a rumor among Malagasy mes- in the Mozambique Channel and along the sengers to Manafi afy that the Nossa Senhora was west coast of the Big Island.32 Heading farther the lead ship in a Portuguese fl eet soon to arrive south along Madagascar’s west coast, the Nossa at Ranofotsy Bay. Meanwhile Bruto Chambanga, Senhora made contact with one King Kapitapa, the principal ruler of the immediate region with whose populous capital of some ten thousand his residence at Fanjahira town, met the Nossa lay inland from the mouth of the Manambolo Senhora with fi ve hundred armed men, prepared River. Kapitapa put his son, Lokeha, aboard to defend himself from any potential Portuguese the Nossa Senhora as an aide and translator (his depredations. And facing suspicion on the part languages of competence in addition to Mala- of the Portuguese, Chambanga also composed a gasy are not specified).33 Beyond its growing letter to Captain da Costa affi rming that “I have elite corps of translators competent in different never killed any Portuguese or strangers who Malagasy dialects, the Nossa Senhora da Esperança came to my country.”36 Such a literate disavowal also carried with it many slaves “from different in the Arabic-script soratse of Anosy translated provinces of the island.” Enslaved sailors, some by one of the on-ship interpreters was a prereq- of whom had been aboard ship for some time, uisite for alliance, for suspicions of the massa- could well have acted as direct interpreters be- cre of Portuguese at Trañovato nearly a century tween the Big Island’s dialects and Portuguese, earlier remained strong among the Portuguese as they were known to have done on other Por- crew and exposed Chambanga and his people tuguese vessels.34 Taking on translators at vir- to possible vengeance from the sea. As he had tually every stop as it moved counter-clockwise done elsewhere along Madagascar’s coast prior around Madagascar, the Nossa Senhora da Esper- to arrival in Ranofotsy Bay, Captain da Costa for ança was a polyglot “fl oating Babylon” with Mal- his part sought to negotiate a treaty of friend- agasy of varied dialects aboard and equipped to ship with Chambanga. handle most challenges to communication that Competent in the soratse of southeast Mad- might be encountered about the coasts of São agascar and having several ombiasy diviners and Lourenço.35 other scribes at his disposal, Chambanga played

30. Belrose-Huyghues, “La Baie de Boina,” 165–94. d’autrefois; Contes en dialecte swahili du village de 34. São Bernardino, Itinerario da India, chap. 2; Gran- Canitrot suggests the interpreters were Mozambi- Marodoka (Nosy Be, Madagascar) (Antananarivo, didier, “Un voyage de découvertes,” 597; Belrose- cans. Canitrot, “Les Portugais,” 217. Madagascar: Imprimerie Nationale, 1980). Huyghues, “L’itineraire de Frère Gaspar de San Ber- nardino,” 78–79. 31. Grandidier, Collection des ouvrages anciens, 2:21. 32. Grandidier, Collection des ouvrages anciens, 2:16. See also Alfred Grandidier, “Un voyage de décou- 35. Charles Ralph Boxer, ed., The Tragic History of the 33. Lokeha was returned to the shore north of the vertes sur les côtes occidentales et méridionales de Sea (1959; repr., Minneapolis: University of Minne- Manambolo River at the completion of the ship’s l’île de Madagascar en 1613–1614, Relation du P. Luiz sota Press, 2001), vii. visit to Anosy. Mariano, traduite et résumée,” Bulletin du Comité de 36. Grandidier, Collection des ouvrages anciens, Madagascar 4 (1898): 581. For details on this dialect, 2:59. see Noël J. Gueunier, ed., Si mimi mwongo, watu wa zamani: Ce n’est pas moi qui mens, ce sont les gens 354 his own part in shaping the terms of the ensu- in the early seventeenth century.38 During the ing treaty. The fi nal document was made at Fan- fi rst two weeks of the Nossa Senhora’s sojourn in jahira town, Chambanga’s residence, after the Ranofotsy Bay more than two thousand hawkers king agreed to put his nephew aboard the Nossa and gawkers collected daily on the strand. In Senhora as hostage to guarantee the safety of conversation with the throng on the beach, the one Antonio Gonçales and Jesuit father Freire crew of the Nossa Senhora quickly learned that to negotiate on the part of the Portuguese. Lit- an eclectic set of Portuguese words had already tle is known about the substance of the offi cial worked themselves into the vernacular of Anosy, negotiations and the crafting of the fi nal docu- including camisa (shirt), calçaõ (breeches), romã mparative ment except that it was drafted by Chambanga (grenade), filho meu (my son), and espingarda and his scribes “in the bouque language [Mala- Coudies of (musket). In curiosity, many of the islanders at- gasy] in Arabic characters, in which he obliged tended the daily mass performed on shore by St uth Asia, himself,” the European negotiators reported Jesuit fathers Mariana and Freire, whose coterie without producing the original text, “to send to of interpreters alternately provided explanations So the Portuguese his oldest son Anria Serivai to of the proceedings and shooed away crowds anx- Africa and the ddle East be taken to Goa to the viceroy to teach him the ious to kiss the image of Saint Luke or touch the Mi customs and the grandeur of the Portuguese.” temporary altar erected on the sand. What those Chambanga also showed the priests a book gathered about actually understood of the cler- written in Arabic character, no doubt a soratse ics’ pronouncements can only be guessed, for manuscript crafted in the dialect of southeast interpreters aboard Portuguese vessels “were Madagascar. Knowing that documents prof- naturally better acquainted with market prices fered to members of the Portuguese expedition and bazaar gossip than with subtle theological about their fellow sailors’ fate might protect arguments.”39 Some of his audience, Mariana them from future pillaging, Chambanga also reported, sported pewter crosses hanging from put into Portuguese hands a manuscript said to their necks, signs of previous contact with Por- have been written by the head of the erstwhile tuguese and a confi rmation of the impression shipwrecked Portuguese at Trañovato during offered by King Chambanga that the large cross the sixteenth century. It “was fi lled with prayers, once elevated by castaway Portuguese at Traño- litanies, and psalms, half in Latin, half in Por- vato in the Fanjahira River (it had since fallen) tuguese.” In early meetings between Europeans had become integrated into local practices of aboard the Nossa Senhora da Esperança and peo- prayer and desire. A few of those listening on the ple of Anosy, the production and exchange of beach even stepped forward to display crosses books and manuscripts in different languages “tattooed” on their bodies.40 and writing systems served as important media Some weeks into their stay, Father Mari- of diplomatic and intellectual exchange.37 ana set out for Trañovato with a suite of three But it was not only the ruling class of Anosy Portuguese sailors and “many of our slaves,” who met the Portuguese and their interpreters at intending to construct a chapel and house in Ranofotsy in 1613. Commoners from across the timber there for himself and Father Freire, who countryside turned up at the beach to provision intended to remain in Anosy to make Chris- the vessel, exchanging their rice, “yams,” beans, tians out of King Chambanga and his subjects. lemons, ginger, cattle, sheep, goats, eggs, poultry, The construction consumed nearly two weeks, cotton cloth, and silver bracelets for minted pi- during which Mariana preached daily through astres and glass beads, typical items of exchange the indispensable service of his interpreters to

37. Grandidier, “Un voyage de découvertes,” 590; East and Central Africa and the Indian Ocean,” Jour- Grandidier, Collection des ouvrages anciens, 2:38 nal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great (book in soratse), 49 (treaty in soratse), 51 (manu- Britain and Ireland 88 (1958): 203–16. script in Latin and Portuguese). 39. Boxer, Portuguese Seaborne Empire, 65. 38. Beads remained an important item of exchange 40. Grandidier, Collection des ouvrages anciens, along Madagascar’s east coast to at least the mid- 2:40–41. For additional information on pewter eighteenth century. W. G. N. van der Sleen, “Ancient crosses, see 2:51; on Portuguese terms in the dialect Glass Beads with Special Reference to the Beads of of Anosy, see 2:52. those who gathered around him. They were from father and then shoved Drian-Ramaka un- 355 visited at Trañovato by a faquy (itinerant holy ceremoniously aboard a dinghy; Chambanga’s man) competent in reading and writing the warriors and subjects tried unsuccessfully to soratse (probably an ombiasy) who sought to de- free the young man from the clutches of his Eu- bate the characteristics of cherubim, seraphim, ropean kidnappers that day. They were driven and the archangels Michael and Gabriel. Mari- away by musket fi re and artillery from the ship. ana unveiled for the inquirer his sacred images Efforts to ransom Drian-Ramaka back to free- on paper, including a picture of the cross. The dom from his Jesuit captors proved futile. It is faquy was so pleased, Mariana reported, that he unlikely Chambanga was comforted by promises pledged to send his son to the priests to learn to shouted ashore that his son would be returned read and write in roman character and to study to Anosy in a few years after a course of religious 42 the “law of God.” The church and house com- instruction in far-off Goa. Colonies Lost Pier M. Larson plete, the work crew threw up a lofty cross some ten meters in height. Another was planted on an Goan Interlude eminent rock by the entrance to Ranofotsy Bay Among Jesuit mission strategies in the Indian and close to the anchored Portuguese caravel. It Ocean was the creation of a European-friendly loomed over the beachside masses conducted by indigenous coterie of helpers and clergy. Elite Father Mariana.41 students from about the region were to be If the relationship between the passengers brought, by force if necessary, to a course of re- of the Nossa Senhora da Esperança and the Raon- ligious study at Goa, an education potentially driana of southern Anosy commenced propi- leading to the priesthood. The College of Santa tiously enough, things deteriorated over time. Fe (Holy Faith), to which Drian-Ramaka was On 30 November, nearly six weeks after the party carried, had been established in 1541 to train anchored in Ranofotsy Bay, Captain da Costa non-Portuguese students between about ages commanded his crew to bring Drian-Ramaka, thirteen and fi fteen recruited from among the Chambanga’s son, aboard the Portuguese cara- highest castes and social groups in their places vel by force. As Mariana told it, Chambanga had of origin; its direction was assumed by Jesuits agreed in his treaty to send a son named Anria under François Xavier some years later. After Serivai to Goa aboard the Nossa Senhora but had several decades of operation, over two thou- later reneged on the deal, offering a younger sand students from across the subcontinent and presumably less infl uential relative instead. and the Indian Ocean fi lled its classrooms. It The Jesuits and their captain, da Costa, spurned was the largest educational institution in the this offer and burned hot with anger over the Portuguese empire and also the most expansive change of mind, a “great affront so prejudicial religious edifi ce in Goa. In 1610, only four years to the honor and name of the Portuguese.” It before Drian-Ramaka’s arrival, the college was was at this point the Jesuits first determined transferred to a new location on a hill overlook- Chambanga must have killed “a good third of ing the city. When it was shifted to its new loca- the shipwrecked Portuguese” in earlier times. tion, the college also became known as the New For his part, Chambanga denied he had ever College of Saint Paul (o novo São Paolo), or more promised to send his son off to an unknown fate popularly still, referring to the hill, São Roque.43 in Goa or that he had killed Europeans. (The “Boys of all races and classes were admitted,” treaty he was said to have composed was never wrote one scholar of the institution, “including produced.) A scuffl e broke out on the beach as a few Abyssinians and Bantu from East Africa, sailors and soldiers employed a ruse to part son although Indians naturally predominated. The

41. Ibid., 2:53–56. 43. Carlos Mercês de Melo, The Recruitment and For- mation of the Native Clergy in India, Sixteenth to Nine- 42. Grandidier, “Un voyage de découvertes,” 595; teenth Century: An Historico-Canonical Study (Lisbon: Grandidier, Collection des ouvrages anciens, 2:55–63. Agência Geral do Ultramar, Divisão de Publicações e Biblioteca, 1955), 33–85; Dauril Alden, The Making of an Enterprise: The Society of Jesus in Portugal, Its Em- pire, and Beyond, 1540–1750 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1996), 44–45. 356 colored students who graduated from this semi- out for him, becoming quite knowledgeable in nary were ordained as secular priests, only very “religion” and able to respond to all questions rarely were they admitted to any of the religious put to him relating to it.46 orders before the second half of the eighteenth How the training proceeded, linguistically century.” Graduates of Santa Fe and São Paolo speaking, is unclear. The Jesuits at São Paolo were primarily employed as assistants to Eu- specialized in teaching children from across the ropean clergy in India and other parts of the Estado da India and beyond both Portuguese Church’s Province of Goa.44 language and the catechism. Whether they A young man of some twelve years at the employed an interpreter with Drian-Ramaka is mparative time he was rustled aboard the Nossa Senhora unclear, but it is likely, at least during the fi rst da Esperança, Drian-Ramaka had been born months of his captivity aboard the ship that Coudies of just after 1600 to King Chambanga and Anria brought him to Goa. Malagasy speakers may St uth Asia, Fatema, the granddaughter of a sixteenth- well have been among the slaves and servants century Portuguese castaway at Trañovato. He employed at the College of São Paolo, and able So was destined for a crash course in Portuguese to work between their native tongue and Portu- Africa and the 47 ddle East literacy and Catholicism at the hands of Jesu- guese. Such translators in the capacity of both Mi its and at the College of São Paolo in Goa, rub- slaves and sailors could be found on Portuguese bing shoulders with an elite of young men like vessels alighting at Madagascar. While in Goa, himself from about the Indian Ocean who Jesu- Drian-Ramaka enjoyed a close relationship with its thought likely to become politically signifi - the viceroy, who was personally responsible for cant in their time.45 Father Mariana writes that teaching him to ride a horse. At some point Drian-Ramaka arrived in Goa in mid-May 1614 during his sojourn in Goa, Drian-Ramaka was by way of Mozambique and fi rst studied reading baptized with the name Don André de Souza and writing in Portuguese with the fathers of by the archbishop, the viceroy serving as his São Paolo and afterward enrolled at the college, godfather.48 where he surprised many by his intelligence. He With a working knowledge of Portuguese, was provided with a stipend to acquire Portu- literate in Roman character, instructed in the guese clothing. Christoforro Borro, who claims catechism, and baptized, Drian-Ramaka de- to personally have instructed Drian-Ramaka parted Goa in early February 1616 after nearly during a period of fi ve months, writes that the two years of study and returned to Anosy’s shores young abductee learned to read, write, sing, two months later with eight “white companions,” ride a horse, and “in a word, to practice all the among whom were several sailors and Jesuit mis- arts we instructed him in with great facility.” He sionaries Luigi Mariana, Custodio da Costa, and was taught basic Portuguese literacy and care- Manuel d’Almeida. The Jesuits carried instruc- fully instructed in the Latin catechism, able to tions to form a mission at Trañovato under the respond in Latin to basic questions posed on infl uence of their young protégé and his Raon- Catholic doctrine. From his vantage on the hill driana father. Mother and father were delighted overlooking Goa and the sea from which he had to learn their son was alive, but Jesuits refused come, Drian-Ramaka progressed with rapidity Drian-Ramaka permission to go ashore until through the literate course of instruction laid Chambanga put two relatives on board the cara-

44. Grandidier, “Un voyage de découvertes,” 598– 46. Grandidier, Collection des ouvrages anciens, 99; Charles Ralph Boxer, The Church Militant and 2:71–75; Belrose-Huyghues, “L’information du Père Iberian Expansion, 1440–1770 (Baltimore: Johns Hop- Christoforro Borro,” 111–12. kins University Press, 1978), 12, 123–24, including n. 19 47. For African and Malagasy slaves traded to India (123–24). and laboring at Jesuit establishments there, see 45. Charles J. Borges, “Jesuit Education in Goa (Six- Alden, Making of an Enterprise, 514–15; Thomas teenth to Eighteenth Centuries),” in Goa: Cultural Vernet, “Le commerce des esclaves sur la côte swa- Trends, ed. P. P. Shirodkar (Panaji, India: Goa Direc- hili, 1500–1750,” Azania 38 (2003): 84–85. Alden talks torate of Archives, Archaeology and Museum, 1988), of “Mozambican” slaves at Goa, but some of these 153–64. may well have been from Madagascar.

48. Grandidier, Collection des ouvrages anciens, 2:71–75. vel as hostages. While he eventually complied, da Costa reported that spies were repeatedly sent 357 Chambanga was immeasurably angered by this to determine if the Portuguese were still alive. demand. Matters only deteriorated from there. It seems clear Chambanga sought to rid himself It was the Jesuits’ intention to return Drian- of the potential dangers to his kingdom of a Ramaka to the ship unless Chambanga pro- continuing commerce with the Portuguese. The vided them with at least another of his sons (if priests, meanwhile, chalked up their failure to not two) to take to Goa for a similar course of the inclinations of Anosy’s inhabitants for Islam. study. Chambanga angrily refused, keeping The Jesuits baptized but one individual before Drian-Ramaka from the clutches of the priests departing Anosy toward the end of April 1617.51 and their soldiers and explaining to them that Goan and Mozambican Jesuits completely aban- “he felt the Portuguese had the custom of send- doned their evangelistic activities in eastern 52 ing some missionaries fi rst to lands they desired Madagascar around 1620, never to return. Colonies Lost Pier M. Larson and following later to take possession” of them. Incensed by Chambanga’s savvy affront to their A Hungry Colony plans and orders from the viceroy, the Jesuits France came relatively late to the mer des Indes. and crew of the ship planned a “war without A few private French vessels, some of them cor- mercy” upon the king and his people. They sairs, ventured beyond the Cape of Good Hope later came to their senses, though, reasoning as early as the 1520s, but with French colonizing that their plans for a mission would fail entirely efforts focused on New France (Quebec) during if they waged war in Anosy. They eventually con- the sixteenth century and Portuguese enjoy- cluded another treaty with Chambanga (again ing a virtual monopoly of European shipping in the Arabic-script soratse of Anosy) allowing in the Indian Ocean, the French crown showed missionaries to remain in the country to evan- little interest in Madagascar and its surround- gelize in exchange for taking just one of the ing ocean.53 This changed only in the mid- chained hostages aboard the ship to Goa.49 seventeenth century with the decline of Portu- Fathers Custodio da Costa and Manuel guese maritime hegemony and the formation d’Almeida installed themselves under the shadow of the Compagnie française d’Orient, the fi rst of the cross erected three years earlier at Traño- French East India Company, in 1642, under vato as the caravel that brought them sailed for the direction of Cardinal Richelieu. With the Goa with Anria Çambo (whose name can trans- subsequent rise of Jean-Baptiste Colbert in the late, ironically, as Prince Boat). But the mission Conseil des fi nances, colonizing projects in the soon failed. The priests were searching quite Indian Ocean received continuing and fi rm sup- openly for precious metals and unwisely targeted port. Colbert was instrumental, for example, in the ombiasy writers of Anosy as the enemies of creating the third compagnie in 1664 and defi n- God; in retaliation the ombiasy threatened poi- ing its plans for Madagascar. Each of the seven soning.50 The soratse of southeast Madagascar successive Compagnies des Indes orientales and the Word of God had come into direct con- chartered by the French crown (hereafter simply fl ict. All the Portuguese fell sick with fevers. By designated in the singular as “the compagnie”) December Chambanga forbade his subjects to was granted an exclusif for trade in the Indian supply or exchange anything to the Portuguese Ocean and charged with promoting French in- at Trañovato, starving them into exile. Custodio terests through colonization and commerce.54

49. Ibid., 2:119–39, 143–55. 52. “Lettre escritte de Madagascar le six de Feburier des Indes,” in Sociétés et compagnies de commerce en 1655 par Monsieur Mousnier Prestre de la Congrega- orient et dans l’océan Indien, ed. Michel Mollat (Paris: 50. Stories about the poisoning of missionary Joäo de tion de la Mission à Monsieur Vincent de Paul Su- Service d’Edition et de Vente des Productions de S. Thomas in the Bay of Boina on Madagascar’s north- périeur Général de ladite Congregation,” ACM, Re- l’Education Nationale, 1970), 453–66. west coast in 1587 probably made these threats cred- cueil 1501; Belrose-Huyghues, “L’information du Père ible to the Jesuits at Tolagñare. Belrose-Huyghues, 54. Histories of the compagnie include François Christoforro Borro,” 109. “La Baie de Boina.” Charpentier, Relation de l’établissement de la Com- 53. Isidore Guët, Les origines de l’île Bourbon (Paris: pagnie Françoise pour le commerce des Indes Orien- 51. Froidevaux, Les Lazaristes, 10–14; Grandidier, Col- Librairie Militaire de L. Baudoin et Ce, 1885), 41–44; tales (Paris: Chez Sebastien Cramoisy et Sebastien lection des ouvrages anciens, 2:159–61, 167–70; Belrose- Grandidier, De la découverte de Madagascar, 18, 21–23; Mabre-Cramoisy, 1665); Du Fresne de Francheville, Huyghues, “L’information du Père Christoforro Louis Dermigny, “East India Company et Compagnie Histoire de la Compagnie des Indes, avec les titres de Borro,” 111–12. 358 Emissaries of the first compagnie arrived in Relations between the newly arrived southeast Madagascar in 1642, only months French settlers and the several Raondriana after the syndicate was formed in Paris, to com- rulers of Anosy soured quickly, reverting to mence the fi rst French colonizing project in the shifty, volatile alliances and then degrading Indian Ocean. The aim of the compagnie’s inau- into bloodshed. Ambiguity toward the foreign- gural project was both extravagant and broad: ers stemmed in part from Anosy’s experience to transform Madagascar into a vibrant colony with Portuguese sailors and Jesuit missionaries of exploitation and settlement and into a hub in earlier times and in particular from memory of Indian Ocean commerce and colonization, of the kidnapping and transportation to Goa of mparative a France orientale linking all future envisioned Drian-Ramaka and Anria Çambo in the second metropolitan ventures in the region. If colonists decade of the seventeenth century. Matters were Coudies of succeeded in squeezing any kind of a profi t from not helped when Governor Pronis captured St uth Asia, a sea few French actually knew, in other words, Malagasy servants, employees, and visitors near the compagnie’s syndics would be satisfi ed. the French homestead one day and sold them So The ill-fated colonial experiment com- all off to a passing Dutch vessel seeking labor- Africa and the 57 ddle East menced at the Bay of Manafi afy some forty ki- ers for its fl edgling colony at Mauritius. King Mi lometers north of Tolagñare when commander- Chambanga, Drian-Ramaka’s father, was dead governor Jacques Pronis and a ragtag band of by 1642, but Drian-Ramaka had succeeded sailors and settlers rowed ashore from the Saint- him and taken possession of the key chiefship Louis in late 1642 after having rounded the Cape at Fanjahira town in the interior, northwest of of Good Hope and visited Bourbon, Antongil Tolagñare, where he usually resided. The Mala- Bay, and Sainte-Marie.55 Things went badly gasy graduate of the College of São Paolo, Goa, from the start. Religious dissention between was now in his political prime and engaged in the Protestant governor and his Catholic sub- heated competition with other Raondriana for ordinates eroded solidarity from within. Many political mastery in Anosy. of the forty passengers who arrived with Pronis While they were generally disliked and quickly expired from fevers (no doubt malaria) feared by the Raondriana, French governors and or were slain while scrounging for provisions armed settlers also proved useful allies against along the coast; only fourteen of the forty re- domestic opponents. “They are in constant divi- mained after two months in Anosy.56 Seeking a sion with their neighbors,” noted one observer more healthy and secure location, Pronis moved of the Raondriana rulers of Anosy, forming and his people south to Tolagñare sometime in 1643 reforming often ephemeral alliances with other and constructed a “fort” of shrubs on the north- kinglets and with the newly arrived French at ern portion of the peninsula, which rises steeply Tolagñare peninsula to ward off enemies, in- above the water and is constantly refreshed by cluding many among their own subjects who sea breezes. The French habitation at Tolagñare surreptitiously offered their loyalties to other was baptized Fort Dauphin in honor of the then princes and to the French governor when it fi ve-year-old king (dauphin), Louis XIV. suited them.58 It was a volatile political mix even

ses concessions et privilèges, dressés sur les pièces au- des Indes (Paris: Émile Bouillon, 1899); Henry Weber, Portugais et les Hollandois, Trois Relations D’Egypte, thentiques (Paris: Chez De Bure l’aîné, 1746); Garonne, La Compagnie Française des Indes (1604–1875) (Paris: et vne du Royaume de Perse, ed. Claude Barthélemy Mémoire historique et politique sur le commerce de Arthur Rousseau, 1904); and Jules Sottas, Histoire de Morisot (Paris: Chez Avgvstin Covrbé, au Palais, en la l’Inde (Paris: Chez Ant. Baillul et P. Mongie, 1802 [An la Compagnie Royale des Indes orientales, 1664–1719 Gallerie des Merciers, à la Palme, 1651), 1:89, 110–11. X]), 37–45; Louis Pauliat, Madagascar sous Louis XIV: (Paris: Plon-Nourrit, 1905). 57. Flacourt, Histoire de la grande isle Madagascar Louis XIV et la Compagnie des Indes Orientales de 55. The last two destinations are on Madagascar’s (1661), 219–20. 1664, d’après des documents inédits tirés des archives east coast. Etienne de Flacourt, Histoire de la grande coloniales du Ministère de la marine et des colonies 58. Gabriel Dellon, Relation d’un voyage des Indes isle Madagascar (1661), 204. (Paris: Calmann Lévy, 1886); Marcel Giraud-Mangin, orientales, dedié à Monseigneur l’Evêque de Meaux, 2 La Compagnie des Indes orientales à Madagascar de 56. François Cavche, “Relation dv voyage qve Fran- vols. (Paris: Chez Claude Barbin, au Palais, sur le Per- 1664 à 1672, épisode de la conquête française (Nantes, çois Cavche de Roven à fait à Madagascar, Isles adja- ron de la sainte Chapelle, 1685), 1:36–37. France: Imprimerie Centrale, 1895); Henri Froidevaux, centes, et coste d’Afrique, Recueilly par le Sieur Mor- Documents inédits relatifs à la constitution de la Com- isot, Auec des Notes en marge,” in Relations veritables pagnie des Indes Orientales de 1642 (Paris: Challamel, et cvrievses de l’Isle de Madagascar, et dv Bresil, Auec 1898); Charles Montagne, Histoire de la Compagnie l’Histoire de la derniere Guerre faite au Bresil, entre les before the compagnie entered the picture, but 359 seemed to unravel thereafter into a chronic state of hostility and civil war. Both Raondriana and French governors sought mastery over Anosy’s limited resources in food, livestock, and follow- ers. To these basic designs, French settlers, like the Portuguese before them, added extraordi- nary dreams of metals and precious stones, all of which failed to materialize in the malaria- ridden aquatic environment of Anosy.59 Affairs deteriorated signifi cantly during the

governorship of Étienne de Flacourt (1648–55), Colonies Lost Pier M. Larson who sought to submit all of Anosy to the French chief at Fort Dauphin and in the process sent waves of violence and destruction rippling across the land. In the space of two years, Flacourt’s dawn raids “pillaged and burned more than 50 villages” with the object of forcing the people of Anosy into starvation and the necessity of sur- rendering to the French at Tolagñare lest they be unable to return to their fi elds and cultivate their crops.60 It was superiority in weapons and military logistics that enabled such savagery. In

1651 Flacourt’s troops killed the Goa-educated Figure 3. Fort Dauphin on the Tolagñare peninsula Drian-Ramaka in a sunrise attack on his resi- and its nearby gardens, woodcut published by dence at Fanjahira town, shooting him and his Allain Manesson Mallet in 1719 after a seventeenth- son “between the shoulders,” and presumably in century original by Governor Flacourt. From the the back, on the banks of the river as they were at- author’s personal collection tempting to cross in fl ight. Drian-Ramaka had re- cently besieged Fort Dauphin with his armies.61 rounding Malagasy rulers stretched as far as the When the chief Dian Manangue exe- Matataña River to the north and the Linta River cuted the French priest Étienne and his party to the west, each some three hundred kilome- after Étienne irreverently ripped charms from ters from Tolagñare peninsula. the king’s neck in 1664, the French retaliated To a signifi cant extent, the complex and with extreme vengeance, laying waste to settle- chronic cycle of plunder and recrimination ments along the Mandrare River. “During six between the French intruders and the people days more than 150 villages were burnt and of Anosy stemmed from the exasperating chal- more than 1000 people killed, men as well as lenges chronically hungry European colonists women and children,” wrote a participant, “and faced in feeding themselves in a land of seem- we took at least 4000 cattle.”62 The ever-shifting ing plenty. Although colonists set gardens in politics of alliance and repression between the the vicinity of their fort (fig. 3), they did not core French settlement at Fort Dauphin and sur- have sufficient land on which to cultivate or

59. Urbain Souchu de Rennefort, Histoire des Indes Gautier and Henri Froidevaux, Un manuscrit arabico- 62. M. de V., Voyage de Madagascar, connu aussi sous orientales, ed. Dominique Huet (1688; Sainte- malgache sur les campagnes de La Case dans L’Imoro le nom de l’Isle De S t Laurent, Par M. de DE V . . . Com- Clotilde, France: ARS Terres Créoles, 1988), 114, 409. de 1659 à 1663 (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1907); missaire Provincial de l’Artillerie de France: Dedié Jean-Claude Hébert, “Les coureurs de brousse, infor- à S.A.S.M. le Prince de Conty, ed. Carpeau du Saus- 60. The strategy is laid out in Flacourt, Histoire de mateurs de Flacourt géographe,” Etudes Océan Indien say (Paris: Chez Jean-Luc Nyon, Libraire au premier la grande isle Madagascar (1661), unpaginated in- 23–24 (1997): 157–209. Pavillon des Quatre Nations, à Sainte Monique, 1722), troduction to the second volume and 46. As the two 237. The identity of the author of this narrative, who volumes of this work are bound together and suc- 61. Flacourt, Histoire de la grande isle Madagascar was in southeast Madagascar in 1663 and 1664, is cessively paginated, I do not indicate volume num- (1661), 298–99. unclear. bers in succeeding citations. See also Émile-Félix 360 the knowledge with which to turn themselves returned little benefi t to most of the desperate into successful tropical planters.63 And unable and largely abandoned colonists eking out a to retain captive labor at Tolagñare, they did living there.66 If one was not a governor—and not tend the fi elds well themselves. Security for even, sometimes, if one was—colonial life at To- farming colonists, too, was always a problem in lagñare could be utter misery. the gardens, which lay in exposed positions to Most French settlers and soldiers in Anosy the south of the fort. Insects complicated an during the thirty-two-year duration of the already diffi cult situation. “Once the plague of établissement were an impoverished, ill, and nearly Egypt in the time of Moses,” locusts repeatedly naked lot. Sickness and death stalked every- mparative appeared over the western horizon to devour where. Colonists were “dressed like the blacks,” crops. In a span of minutes they could leave lamented an arriving priest. They wore “nei- Coudies of fi elds looking “as if a fi re had passed through ther socks nor shoes nor coats [pourpoints], nor St uth Asia, them.”64 From Fort Dauphin, matrimonial al- shirts for the most part.”67 The sick “complained liance, commerce, and pillage appeared surer of dying, lacking both food and medicine” and So solutions to full stomachs than did steady invest- “sold the shirts off their backs to purchase chick- Africa and the ddle East ment in agriculture. ens” with which to nurse themselves back to Mi At fi rst the competition over food, wealth, health, “or they tore up their clothing to wrap and followers in Anosy was not unlike that ex- their wounds.”68 No wonder the ailing French- perienced by Khoikhoi and employees of the men were scantily clad. When hunger knocked Dutch East India Company in nearly the same at the gates of the fort it provoked internal dis- period at the Cape of Good Hope. But at the sention over acquisition and allocation of food. Cape, Dutch colonists eventually converted Victuals essential to the colonists did arrive from themselves into farmers and herders, pushing many directions. Some provisions came aboard pastoral Khoikhoi into the interior or incor- vessels hailing from as far afi eld as the Atlantic, porating them into their own society as subor- India, and Bourbon. But these were few and dinates, while in Anosy compagnie employees very far between, and they were extremely dear. and settlers lurched inexorably toward a politi- Years sometimes passed before a single compag- cal economy of murder and plunder; they were nie ship appeared in the harbor of Tolagñare. eventually driven from the land in 1674 by its None arrived between 1648 and 1654, for ex- exasperated farmers when the balance of power ample, leading desperate Governor Flacourt to and weaponry shifted in the other direction.65 attempt a voyage into the Atlantic on a locally And unlike the slaving forts of Atlantic Africa constructed boat. The impossible undertaking or the emerging European établissements and on such a small vessel failed after ten days at sea comptoirs in the Arabian Sea and the Bay of Ben- (they had run into a storm that nearly capsized gal, no steady income-generating commerce the boat), and Flacourt returned in despair, but fl owed from the colony to contain the internal with his life, to a brewing mutiny at Tolagñare.69 dissension over resources within it. The ebony, Even when it was possible to trade for rice leather, wax, aloe, benzoin, wild pepper, and and beef during lulls in the violence, Malagasy slaves entering the holds of the few compagnie farmers demanded in return the scarce trade ships departing Tolagñare Bay (Anse Dauphine) goods arriving aboard compagnie ships from

63. Tolagñare actually lies just south of the Tropic of 65. Richard Elphick, Kraal and Castle: Khoikhoi and en naigre); “Memoirs enuoyez de Madagascar par M.r Capricorn. the Founding of White South Africa (New Haven, CT: Monsnier à Mons.r Vincent touchant les choses qu’il Yale University Press, 1977); Nigel A. Worden, “VOC y faut enuoyer, et les moyens d’empescher qu’elles 64. “Lettre escritte de l’Isle de Madagascar, touchant Cape Town: A Dutch-Asian City in Africa,” in Global- ne se gastent ny derrobent par les chemins. 5. febu. le succés du Voiage et de l’Employ des Missionnaires, ization and the South-West Indian Ocean, ed. Vinesh 1655,” ACM, Recueil 1501, 53. qu’on y a envoyez de Sainct Lazare lez Paris, particuli- Y. Hookoomsing (Réduit: University of Mauritius, erement depuis l’An 1655 à Monsieur Vincent de Paul, 68. “Lettre de Monsieur Nacquart Prestre de la Mis- 2000), esp. 18–19. Sup.r General de la Congregation de la Mission, Par sion à Mr. Sup. General, Monsieur Vincent,” Au Fort Monsieur Bourdaise, Prestre de la mesme Congrega- 66. Cavche, “Relation dv voyage,” 1:90; Rennefort, Dauphin ce 9. Feurier 1650, ACM, Recueil 1501, 8. tion, du 19 Feurier 1657,” ACM, Recueil 1501, 92. See Histoire des Indes orientales, 268, 370. 69. Flacourt, Histoire de la grande isle Madagascar also Dellon, Relation d’un voyage, 1:52, 58. 67. “Lettre De Mr Bourdaise du 8. feurier 1655: A Mad- (1661), 360–62. agar ce 8. feurier 1655” [Toussaint Bourdaise to Vincent de Paul, Fort Dauphin], ACM, Recueil 1501, 133 (habilez India.70 Rice and other foodstuffs were obtained and Malagasy women, and even those who 361 from the natives, colonists lamented, for “glass “marry the women of the country will choose beads [rassades] of all kinds and colors as well as far off and out of the way places” to live where copper manillas, with which [they] make neck- they could furnish themselves with food.75 Such laces and bracelets.” The manillas also came in intimate relations—alliance for food—whether silver and pewter; coral beads and Indian tex- near the core settlement on the Tolagñare pen- tiles were likewise popular items of exchange, insula or further afield, confounded a neat when they could be had from passing compag- politics of race and brought great influence nie ships.71 Although they sought silver in Anosy, over the colony to some women of Anosy. The the French actually supplied most of it in the French were dependent for survival on local alli- form of coins and jewelry.72 To stave off hunger, ances, while acquaintances, wives, and children

governors at Fort Dauphin dispatched emissar- spanned the blurry divide of hostility between Colonies Lost Pier M. Larson ies up the east coast to establish provisioning European and Anosy communities. Yet the ra- stations at Antongil Bay, Sainte-Marie, Galem- cial line was unbearably crossed when Governor boulle (Fénérive), and the Matataña River, Pronis married Dian Ravellom Manor (or Andi- from whence the food (mainly rice) was to be anramariuelle), the daughter of the “great lord freighted southward on locally constructed sup- of this region” and niece of Drian-Ramaka. Col- ply boats or compagnie ships. The distance and onists fearful of the dire consequences of their expense was too great to sustain, however, for leader’s matrimonial alliance mutinied, clapped the outposts “cost the Company much without the governor in irons, and held him imprisoned offering it any advantage.”73 Administrators at in his darkened bedroom. He languished there Tolagñare also dispatched exposed colonists with nothing but candlelight and a pillow for six into the immediate interior of the peninsula, months during 1646. Mutineers accused Pronis including to Manambaro west of the Fanjahira of diverting rice meant for French colonists to River, to secure both food and intelligence use- his Raondriana wife and extended family.76 ful in defense of the core settlement, but these When the governor recuperated his freedom, helped matters little.74 he exiled the head rebels and their Malagasy The syndics of the compagnie put few Eu- wives to Bourbon, where they founded the sec- ropean women aboard vessels to Anosy, trust- ond French colony in the Indian Ocean. Once ing that most young men they dispatched there allied in cohabitation or matrimony with the would strike up friendships and sexual liaisons women of Anosy, who ensured them food and with local women. It seemed a sensible plan, but comfort, colonists loosened their loyalties to the it dispersed both men and loyalties away from governor and to the even more distant syndics the fort. Many a man who survived several years of the compagnie, in France. in Anosy fathered children with a native female When commerce and matrimony proved partner and learned to speak the local dialect insufficient to match demands for rice and with at least halting fl uency. “There is absolutely beef at Tolagñare, punitive raids by colonists no punishment for scandalous Frenchmen,” la- most loyal to the French fort and aimed against mented missionary Nacquart to his superiors “treacherous natives” set off into the interior or about sexual relations between colonial men northward along the coast. They were designed

70. Père Roguet to Unknown [probably Alméras], du Caron, Journal du voyage des grandes Indes: Conten- 73. Dellon, Relation d’un voyage, 1:59. Fort Dauphin ce 26ème octobre 1671, ACM, Recueil ant tout ce qui s’y est fait et passé par l’Escadre de Sa 74. Rennefort, Histoire des Indes orientales, 62. 1502, 5r. Majesté envoyée sous le Commandement de Mr de la Haye, dépuis son départ de la Rochelle au mois de Mars 75. “Lettre de Monsieur Nacquart Prestre de la Mis- 71. Du Bois, Les voyages faits par le Sievr D. B. aux 1670, 2 vols. (Paris: Robert et Nicolas Pepie, 1698), sion à Mr. Sup. General, Monsieur Vincent,” Au Fort Isles Dauphine ou Madagascar, et Bourbon, ou Mas- 1:84–85; V., Voyage de Madagascar, 91 (quotation). Dauphin ce 9. Feurier 1650, ACM, Recueil 1501, 8 and carenne, és années 1669. 70. 71. et 72. Dans laquelle il 9, respectively. est curieusement traité du cap Vert de la Ville de Surate 72. The ship conveying François Cauche to Anosy des Isles de Sainte Helene, ou de l’Ascention: Ensemble in 1638 carried “chaisnes, bracelets, [and] pendans 76. Cavche, “Relation dv voyage,” 1:111; Flacourt, His- les moeurs, Religions, Forces, Gouvernemens et Coû- d’oreilles” as trade goods. Cavche, “Relation dv voy- toire de la grande isle Madagascar (1661), 208, 214–15. tumes des Habitans desdites Isles, avec l’Histoire na- age,” 1:2. See also Flacourt, Histoire de la grande isle turelle du Païs (Paris: Chez Claude Barbin, au Palais, Madagascar (1661), 147; Dellon, Relation d’un voyage, sur le second Petronde la Sainte Chapelle, 1674), 123, 1:33. The gold of Anosy was not brought by French 126, 157; Dellon, Relation d’un voyage, 1:33; François vessels. 362 primarily for pilfering cattle and rounding tinuous state of distress. “This is a fortress whose up slaves. “They say we cannot procure cattle walls are a hedge [une haye], and the houses are to feed the settlement without making war in like small barns covered with leaves and walls of the future,” newly arrived missionary Nacquart reeds or sticks,” reported a resident of the fort in informed the head of his ecclesiastical order, 1650. 82 Twenty years later the fort was “merely a Vincent de Paul, in 1650.77 During the gover- yard enclosed by walls [une basse-cour enceinte de norship of Champmargou (1659–68), one ex- murailles] in which stood the Company armory.”83 pedition conducted with allies from Anosy into The highly combustible fortification of sticks the Matitaña country, well to the north of Tolag- and leaves and its accompanying structures of- mparative ñare, came away with the spectacular and prob- fered little protection in themselves. Only can- ably exaggerated number of fi ve thousand slaves non, firearms, and a careful economy of am- Coudies of and twenty thousand cattle. Most of the slaves munition (se seruir bien à propos de munitions), St uth Asia, were distributed among supporting Matitaña Flacourt felt, kept enemies at bay, but these chiefs to secure friends at a distance, but 13,800 posed risks of their own.84 Fort Dauphin caught So head of the cattle, it was said, were marched fi re in February 1655 during festivities marking Africa and the ddle East south into Anosy and shared with supporters the return of Governor Pronis when cannon and Mi there. “We returned to fort Dauphin after hav- small weapons fi re ignited thatched roofs. The ing destroyed the country,” explained M. de flames consumed the fort and burned nearly V., who took part in the expedition, “weighed the entire surrounding settlement of brush to down with booty, slaves, bulls, and cows, such the ground.85 Mutinies and insubordination that [the defeated rulers of Matataña] had to among the colonists were commonplace. In 1671 come and seek protection from us and sue for Père Roguet warned of the exposed situation peace.”78 The terms were cooperation and a sup- of the fort and its habitans and of the disturb- ply of slave labor.79 Military expeditions spear- ing number of fi rearms falling into the hands headed by the legendary Vacher de La Case and of the French settlement’s enemies. These were supply outposts set up along the coast and in the employed in frequent ambushes of Europeans Ambolo valley along the Manampanihy River to venturing beyond the confi nes of the garrison the north failed either to secure protection or or their domestic locations. “The country,” he to suffi ciently supply the French fort at Tolag- wrote, “is incomparably worse off today than it ñare.80 When La Case pilfered twelve thousand has ever been.”86 It would be diffi cult to disagree cattle from the land of the Vohitsangombes far with Fortuné Albrand’s assessment two centu- to the interior northwest of Anosy, only fi fteen ries later that “the fi rst establishments planted hundred of them actually arrived at Fort Dau- at Fort-Dauphin were marked by the spirit of vio- phin some time later.81 Violence and plunder lence and injustice that presided in all European had taken on senseless lives of their own. enterprises in the Indies.”87 The outcome, how- Matters at Fort Dauphin and among those ever, was entirely unique in the annals of French who moved away from it were usually in a con- colonization in the Indian Ocean.

77. “Lettre de Monsieur Nacquart Prestre de la Mis- 81. Rennefort, Histoire des Indes orientales, 249–50. 85. “Lettre escritte de Madagascar le 10e janvier 1656 sion à Mr. Sup. General, Monsieur Vincent,” Au Fort A Mons.r Vincent de Paul Superieur General de la Con- 82. “Autre Lettre dudit Sieur, dudit jour, à M.rs les In- Dauphin ce 9. Feurier 1650, ACM, Recueil 1501, 11. gregation de la Mission par M.r Bourdaise pbrestre de teressens,” [Nacquart to Syndics of the Compagnie la mesme Congregation,” ACM, Recueil 1501, 56–57; 78. V., Voyage de Madagascar, 62–66, 184 (quota- des Indes Orientales, Fort Dauphin, 9 February 1650], Flacourt, Histoire de la grande isle Madagascar (1661), tion); Rennefort, Histoire des Indes orientales, 130–32, ACM, Recueil 1501, 15. It did not appreciably change in 410–14. 409. M. de V. was at Fort Dauphin during the 1660s. ensuing years: Urbain Souchu de Rennefort, Relation du premier voyage de la Compagnie des Indes orien- 86. Roguet to Unknown [probably Alméras], du Fort 79. See Caron, Journal du voyage, 1:58. Once they be- tales en l’isle de Madagascar ou Davphine (Paris: Chez Dauphin ce 26ème octobre 1671, ACM, Recueil 1502, came allied with the French at Fort Dauphin, these François Clovzier au Palais à l’Image Nostre-Dame, 2v. In part, the arms were supplied by ships of other chiefs rendered an annual tribute. Rennefort, Histoire proche l’Hostel de Mr le premier President à la sec- nations (especially Dutch) trading at Madagascar. des Indes orientales, 126. tion de Boutique, 1668), 73–74. See Rennefort, Histoire des Indes orientales, 393. 80. R. de la Blanchère, Un épisode d’histoire coloniale: 83. Caron, Journal du voyage, 1:45–46. 87. Fortuné Albrand, “Mémoire sur la province Le Vacher de la Case à Madagascar (Algiers: Adolphe d’Anossi et le fort Dauphin, par M. Albrand,” Annales Jourdan, 1884); M. de Richemond, “Vacher de La Case, 84. Flacourt, Histoire de la grande isle Madagascar maritimes et coloniales 32 (1847): 537. prince d’Amboule,” Bulletin de la Société de Géogra- (1661), unpaginated front matter to second volume. phie de Rochefort 22 (1900): 137–44; Gautier and Froidevaux, Un manuscrit arabico-malgache; Ren- nefort, Histoire des Indes orientales, 73–85, 264–65. The French colony in southeast Madagas- women arrived at Tolagñare aboard the com- 363 car consumed the lives of at least half the four pagnie ship le Dunkerquoise and began marrying thousand soldiers and colonists dispatched male settlers, causing great jealousy among the there between 1642 and 1674. Most fell victim women of Anosy who had heretofore “enjoyed” to malaria, dysentery, malnutrition, and com- the “privilege” and who, in revenge, withdrew bat with local enemies; those spared either re- their protection of exposed men by assisting turned to France over the years or moved on to their countrymen in destroying them. The emerging outposts in the Indian Ocean, such breaking of marriage alliances with Anosy’s as Surat, Pondicherry, and Bourbon.88 Mired women may have played a role, but it is more in enmity and failure, the settlement in Anosy likely that local Raondriana subordinates of the became the nursery for French establishments French abandoned them and joined up with

elsewhere in the Indian Ocean, ironically fulfi ll- their longtime domestic enemy to the west, Colonies Lost Pier M. Larson ing ( just) one of its original missions. The quick Dian Manangue, when well-founded rumors of succession of governors in the colony’s last years the imminent departure of many of their gun- proved unable to contain hostility from within bearing European allies began circulating, leav- or security threats from without. “It may seem ing them exposed to the vengeful anger of their strange,” admitted Governor Flacourt in 1661, more powerful neighbor at the Mandrare River. “that a small number [of settlers] succeeded in Rather than be killed by Dian Manangue’s resisting such a great multitude of Barbarians.”89 spears and fi rearms when the French departed In the end, they could not. Exasperated by the (as rumor had it they would be), they joined role of French governors and their soldiers in Dian Manangue to rid him of his long-standing intra-Raondriana politics, chronic war making, European enemies.91 Fort Dauphin’s grinding demand on precious Of some four thousand European settlers resources, and the overly zealous evangelistic sent to the hapless “colony” of Fort Dauphin over efforts of its Catholic missionaries from about more than three decades, only sixty-three re- 1663, 90 surrounding Raondriana under the mained after the attack of August 1674 to sneak leadership of Dian Manangue of the Mandrare unceremoniously from the miserable fort at River to the west of Tolagñare combined in 1674 night, board the Blanc-Pignon then fortuitously to rid themselves of the French, dispatching riding in the harbor, and effect a permanent es- their servants (marmites et nègres de service) to kill cape from the Big Island.92 Many of these later seventy-four colonists living outside the fort on washed up on Bourbon by a circuitous route that 27 August. The massacre wiped out more than took them through Mozambique and Surat. The half the French population in Anosy. The re- bitter collapse of France’s imperial ambitions on mainder huddled both stunned and in fear of a the Big Island of the Indian Ocean solidifi ed previously unthinkable annihilation inside their French stereotypes of Malagasy as fort traître— fort of sticks, leaves, and hedges at Tolagñare. unruly, rebellious, and treacherous.93 It was a Isidore Guët suggests the killing occurred perception French colonists transferred to Mal- only shortly after more than a dozen French agasy slaves they later owned in the Mascarene

88. For navigation between Madagascar and Surat, 91. Guët, Les origines, 107, 113–17; Rennefort, Histoire 93. Parat [governor of Bourbon] to Pontchartrain, see Bois, Les voyages faits par le Sievr D. B., 61; Ren- des Indes orientales, 401–2. “Mémoire,” 19 septembre 1714, Dépot des Fortifi- nefort, Histoire des Indes orientales. cations des Colonies, Sainte-Marie, Carton 1, Pièce 92. Sonia Elisabeth Howe, The Drama of Madagascar 3, 222r, reproduced in Jean-Claude Hébert, “Le mé- 89. Flacourt, Histoire de la grande isle Madagascar (London: Methuen, 1938), 52; Meyer et al., Histoire de moire de Parat sur Madagascar (1714),” Bulletin de (1661), fi rst page of unpaginated front matter to the la France coloniale, 136. At times the mortality took l’Académie Malgache 56 (1978): 48; see also 224r– second volume. on appalling proportions. Père Roguet reported from 226r (51–52). Flacourt, Histoire de la grande isle Mad- Fort Dauphin that fewer than thirty of the fourteen 90. Principally Lazarist Père Étienne, who was killed agascar (1661), 83; Dellon, Relation d’un voyage, 1:35; hundred persons who arrived there in 1670 with him by Dian Manangue in the region of the Mandrare Alexis Marie de Rochon, Voyage à Madagascar et aux were still living a year later. Roguet to Unknown River after having ripped the king’s oly, or charms, Indes orientales (Paris: Chez Prault, 1791), 42. [probably Alméras], du Fort Dauphin ce 26ème octo- from his neck. But the zealous included also his col- bre 1671, ACM, Recueil 1502, 3r. league, Père Manier, who marched at the head of vengeful French raiders holding high a crucifi x and an image of the virgin. See V., Voyage de Madagascar, 186–94, 230–31. 364 Islands.94 The lost colony of Anosy continued to exchange. Madagascar was merely a stopping- rankle French advocates for the colonization of off point between the Atlantic and the East In- Madagascar into the late nineteenth century dies rather than a site of engagement. These and was only exorcised more than two hundred multiple characteristics of colonial encounter years later when in 1895 a colonial army of the in southern Madagascar to the late seventeenth Third Republic captured the Big Island and ex- century differentiated European-Malagasy rela- iled its most powerful rulers to Algeria.95 tionships from those of analogous type prevail- ing in the Atlantic and nearby Mozambique or Postscript: Anosy and its Europeans South Asia, he argues, posing a distinct contrast mparative In a recently published study of relationships to most experiences of European expansion and marking southern Madagascar and its people Coudies of between Malagasy and Europeans in the south- ern regions of the Big Island, archaeologist as unique in their foreign relations during the St uth Asia, Mike Parker Pearson argues that “the colonial early modern period.96 encounters between Europeans and the people One of the unacknowledged diffi culties So of southern Madagascar between the sixteenth Parker Pearson faced in forming his theory Africa and the ddle East and nineteenth centuries were unlike any- of European-Malagasy relations was that the Mi where else.” Examining the record of mistrust two colonization projects he examines (the En- and bloody relationships between Europeans glish at Saint Augustine Bay in 1645–46 and and Malagasy, Parker Pearson is struck by the the French in Anosy between 1642 and 1674) repeated failure of Europeans to successfully were quite different in intent and in the nature colonize the Big Island or to enter into last- of their relations with Malagasy than those of ing relationships of trade, alliance, or cultural the human flotsam and jetsam of the several exchange. The only European commodity in shipwrecks that he also discusses. The diverse which Malagasy were particularly interested, programs and desires of the varied groups of he writes, was weaponry, especially muskets, Europeans who washed up on southern Mala- which were turned back on Europeans or em- gasy shores over the centuries do not unite well ployed in internal political struggles in which under a single pattern of colonial encounters. Europeans inevitably became embroiled. Little Portuguese missionaries sought to win souls for else entered the island. As for exports, Mada- Christ by engaging the people of Anosy in con- gascar did not have much to offer. Malagasy versation. The English attempt to plant settlers captives would not even make desirable slaves, on the southern reaches of Saint Augustine Bay he writes. The persistently alternating relations lasted hardly a full year before starving survivors of “hospitality and hostility” between indigenes were evacuated; the French in Anosy remained and foreigners and the prevalence of diseases at and around Tolagñare, though hungry, for such as malaria that killed Europeans, he con- more than three decades. Further, Parker Pear- tinues, were among the reasons for the failure son’s research experience lies primarily in An- of foreign colonization on the Big Island. It was droy, a portion of southern Madagascar to the visitors from the Atlantic who died of disease, west of Anosy, where it was primarily European not indigenous people, a pattern inverse to that shipwreck survivors who temporarily settled of the Americas. Other reasons for colonial fail- or were held in captivity by Malagasy inhabit- ure included “half-hearted” colonization efforts ants.97 He tends to generalize the ephemeral and poor leadership. In addition to these, the history of foreign relations in Androy to all of contacts between Europeans and Malagasy led southern Madagascar. But it was at Tolagñare to “no lasting or visible creolization” or cultural and in Anosy more broadly—the locus of this

94. See Pier M. Larson, “Enslaved Malagasy and Le 95. Hubert Gerbeau, “De l’esclavage à la liberté: 97. See also Mike Parker Pearson and Karen Godden, Travail de la Parole at the Pre-revolutionary Mas- L’enigme de la diffusion des trois jours,” in La dernière In Search of the Red Slave: Shipwreck and Captivity in carenes,” Journal of African History 48 (2007), in traite: Fragments d’histoire en hommage à Serge Madagascar (Thrupp, England: Sutton, 2002), which press; Larson, “Malagasy at the Mascarenes: Publish- Daget, ed. Hubert Gerbeau and Eric Saugera (Paris: reiterates many of the central arguments of Parker ing in a Servile Vernacular before the French Revolu- Société Française d’Histoire d’Outre-mer, 1994), 176. Pearson’s article “Close Encounters.” tion,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 49 96. Parker Pearson, “Close Encounters,” esp. 393–94, (2007): 582–610. 402, 409–10; quotation from 393. article—that the most sustained relationships in the mid-seventeenth century about the 365 between Malagasy and Europeans of various things of religion. These resulted in hundreds origins occurred between the sixteenth and the of Malagasy baptisms by 1674 and the printing, late seventeenth centuries. It is here, in the most in Paris, of a French-Malagasy dictionary and important center of “colonial encounter,” where a catechism in the speech variety of southeast Parker Pearson’s generalizations about Euro- Madagascar.99 In the same period, a number of Malagasy relations break down. Malagasy-European vocabularies and speech While shipwreck, evangelization, and col- aids were issued from presses in Atlantic Europe, onization in Anosy by both the Portuguese and some of them the fruit of conversation with the the French led to colonial failure by late 1674, a people of southeast Madagascar in their home- close examination of relationships reveals much land and aboard European ships, where many

material, cultural, and linguistic exchange over served as sailing crew. Essential to francophone Colonies Lost Pier M. Larson several decades across the seemingly incessant publishing in the tongue of Madagascar were violence and misunderstanding. As we have the unions between European settlers and the seen, the people of Anosy early assimilated a women of southeast Madagascar, which not only number of Portuguese words and clothing styles enabled the French colony to survive for more as well as veneration for the cross. Surrounding than three decades but also generated a group inhabitants offered their prayers at the cross of of bilingual Malagasy-French speakers in the re- Trañovato, and crowds of onlookers sought in gion. Some of these bilingual settlers and their 1613 to touch the Jesuit altar at Ranofotsy and Malagasy consorts were the fi rst colonists at the their image of Saint Luke. The Nossa Senhora French island of Bourbon and in other French da Esperança fl oated around Madagascar with settlements of the time in South Asia. Ironically, a coterie of interpreters adept at translating it was ultimately the intimacy between colonist Malagasy dialects, variants of Kiswahili, and and host that undid the French settlement in European tongues. Two of Anosy’s sons traveled Anosy: in a single day the European intimates to Goa and underwent courses of evangelistic of Anosy’s women were murdered, forcing those study before they returned home. When both remaining to fl ee the island for their lives. The the French East India Company and English evidence for Anosy during the periods of Por- settlers fi rst turned their sights to the Indian tuguese and French interest examined here Ocean, they sought not to touch at the island suggests an ongoing process of cultural and with their vessels but to plant colonies of trade religious, as well as commodity, exchange with and settlement in southern Madagascar, hoping broader implications for the history of southeast that those colonies would emerge as robust plan- Madagascar and the western Indian Ocean. tation societies and entrepôts of Indian Ocean Parker Pearson is certainly right to point trade. The English colony quickly failed.98 But out that poor planning, lackluster leadership, in- French settlers in Anosy sank much deeper effective or entirely lacking lines of supply, and roots. They found that beads, copper, and silver an insuffi ciency of knowledge about local poli- were highly prized by the people of Anosy, to- tics and environments contributed to the ulti- gether with weapons. The hoards of beads and mate failure of European colonization in south- copper located by archaeologists in southwest ern Madagascar. At the same time, his study Madagascar, mentioned by Parker Pearson, tes- appears to neglect what was probably the most tify to a similar pattern there. important determinant of failure not easily as- In a forthcoming publication, I will ex- certained by archaeologists—incessant hunger. plore the intense vernacular conversations be- Starvation governed the evacuation of English tween Europeans and the inhabitants of Anosy settlers at Saint Augustine in 1646; the inability

98. Foster, “An English Settlement.” d’Espines, 1658); Flacourt, Petit catéchisme avec les prières dv matin et dv soir, que les missionnaires font 99. Etienne de Flacourt, Dictionnaire de la langve de & enseignent aux néophytes & cathecumènes de l’isle Madagascar, auec vn petit recueil des noms & dictions de Madagascar (Paris: Chez Georges Iosse, ruë Saint propres des choses qui sont d’vne mesme espèce (Paris: Iacques à la Couronne d’Espines, 1657). Chez George Iosse, ruë S. Iacques à la Couronne 366 to produce or procure food for Fort Dauphin and its inmates at Tolagñare led seventeenth- century French settlers to seek nourishment through matrimony and convinced the governor of the colony to send his armies on far-ranging missions to plunder cattle, creating enemies on every side. Blood, fear, enmity, and disloyalty stalk most early histories of Malagasy and Eu- ropean relationships in the southern reaches of mparative the Big Island. The climate and vegetation of southern Madagascar is altogether more tropi- Coudies of cal than that at the nearby Cape, where company St uth Asia, employees successfully transformed themselves into free farmers and husbandmen of crops and So animals that thrive in temperate regions. Africa and the ddle East There was plenty of violence in Anosy, Mi but violence did not preclude the exchange of commodities and ideas that shaped quotid- ian life, for example, or the history of Mala- gasy language literacy in Roman character. By the late eighteenth century, Madagascar’s east coast had emerged as an arena of cultural and human métissage, and Malagasy captives came to supply a large proportion of the slave labor forces at both the Cape of Good Hope and the Mascarene islands.100 If there was far more cul- tural and material exchange between Malagasy and Europeans in southern Madagascar than Parker Pearson allows or the as yet meager ar- chaeological work in the region suggests, the loss of colonies in southeast Madagascar was less a function of Malagasy obstreperousness than of the subtropical climate, the economic and social strength of indigenous agro-pastoral economies, and the poor choices exercised by would-be colonizers.