Feeding Globalization. Jane Hooper
for centuries prior to the arrival of Europeans on the island’s shores.225 Judging by the distribution of imported goods, merchants on the northwest coast traded (directly and indirectly) with a variety of groups throughout Madagascar by the thirteenth century. On an island of fluctuating rainfall and crop productivity, the ability to access and control food supplies may have contributed to political centralization by the sixteenth century. As agricultural communities in Madagascar’s interior produced more commodities for export, such as ironware, cloth, and other manufactured goods, they also supported leaders who could oversee these and other exchanges.226 Such economic and political changes have been noted throughout much of the island, even among the less populated pastoral communities in the south.227 There may have also been a population boom in the interior of the island as the first European ships began visiting Madagascar, although details are elusive.228
Thus island communities may have been in the midst of a major phase of reorganization just as the first Portuguese were arriving on their shores.229 Given these conditions, was the arrival of European merchants at the shores of Madagascar immediately transformational? Scholars have debated the importance of European intervention on communities along the shores of the Indian Ocean, but, by and large, most would agree with Abdul Sheriff who, along with others, concludes that the initial arrival of Europeans was less of a shock to the littoral societies of the Indian Ocean than it was to the economies of Europe.230 After all, Europeans not only competed with each other in these early years, but also faced challenges from other maritime and land-based powers.231 In Madagascar, Europeans needed to adapt to the economic conditions they encountered. Trade with Europeans in the northwest of the island was perhaps initially an outlet for surplus agricultural production that was already being accumulated for sale to African and Arab merchants. In the south of the island, by contrast, it would take an economic and political revolution for the people to secure dozens of bags of rice annually to sell to European merchants. Following this revolution, leaders could dictate the prices of the commodities they knew Europeans most needed. While European merchant groups introduced additional competition into trade in Madagascar, the real threat to coastal leaders did not come from these European visitors and colonists, but from populations elsewhere on the island.
THREE
The Sakalava
From Warriors to Merchants
THE ENGLISH VESSEL THE Sussex was returning from a visit to China in 1738 when strong winds suddenly tore apart the ship’s sails and damaged the mast. The crew panicked. Their commanding officers decided to board another English ship sailing in company with the Sussex, but sixteen men chose to stay on the damaged vessel.1 Four days after the departure of their officers, the remaining sailors sighted St. Augustin Bay. Upon entering the bay, the men signaled to the people on the shore to approach by hoisting a flag and firing several guns toward the beach. Two men, including a “linguester” (linguist) who could speak English, approached the vessel in a canoe. These newcomers brought with them a jar of honey, a present from the “King of Barbar.” The king’s representatives asked the captain to go ashore and visit with the king at his residence to the north, in the port of “Toliar.” They were informed that the king had just returned from war and had plentiful slaves and provisions for the Englishmen.
Despite this demonstration of trade and hospitality, the two islanders were suspicious of the English. They asked why so few men were on board such a large vessel and did not believe the evasive lies they were told, that most of the men were doing work in the hold of the ship. The “King of Barbar” was even more knowledgeable about the typical conduct of EIC traders. When the sailors tried to use “China ware” to purchase provisions, the king informed them that he knew that these goods were “private trade” and not typically used for such purchases. Feeling vulnerable to attack, the crew left the bay, traveling as fast as they were able in their rapidly disintegrating vessel.2
As the Sussex sailed along the west coast of Madagascar, it literally fell to pieces. Only a handful of sailors, including one named John Dean, made it to the shore alive. Once they arrived, the four men sought assistance from a variety of individuals: a Frenchman (perhaps a former pirate) who had lived in Madagascar and spoke the language of the islanders, a number of “headmen” who were constantly going off to war, the wives of the headmen who sheltered and fed the castaways, and the king, “Renauf,” who lived in “Moharbo” (Mahabo).3 According to Dean, the European arrivals were largely treated with indifference, as the king and other leaders were more interested in pursuing war with neighboring communities than helping them return home, although the visitors were generally able to obtain food and shelter from the islanders. Dean, the sole surviving crew member, was finally rescued by an English vessel visiting the king’s port of “Youngoult” (Young Owl, Iongoeloe, near Morondava) about a year later.4
Upon his return to England, Dean wrote a brief account of his time in Madagascar. His writing touches on dress and culinary practices, as well as the political organization of the state. The king in Mahabo ruled the west-central portion of Madagascar through violence but also exercised ritual authority over his subjects. One of the king’s chief friends and a “man of power,” Rabbalow, was frequently “out on the scout, with about fifty armed men.”5 Dean’s comments suggest that these military excursions were aimed at acquiring both slaves and cattle. Dean also described pausing at the town of “Munghavo” where “most of the deceased kings are laid in small houses.” Each time the king’s entourage passed through, “they killed an ox, beat drums, blowed their conches, and fired guns over the houses of the deceased kings.”6
Dean’s sketch of leadership in western Madagascar can be compared with the better-known account provided by Robert Drury.7 Drury, another shipwrecked sailor, spent about fifteen years living in southern and west-central Madagascar several decades before Dean set foot on the island. According to his published account, Drury encountered numerous monarchs during his stay on the island during the first years of the eighteenth century. At the time of his visit, the Sakalava king of “Moherbo” (Mahabo), “Rer Trimmonongarevo,” ruled over the port of Morondava, home to individuals who supplied milk and other provisions to European vessels.8 Drury outlined how the king’s brothers had formed predatory states directly to the north and south of Morondava and described personally observing their battles for control over land near St. Augustin Bay.9 Less than four decades after Drury’s stay on the island, the kings Dean encountered had consolidated their control over trade from the entire west coast of the island, which they used as a base for military operations against their enemies.
The kings depicted by both Dean and Drury demonstrated their power through the use of violence and demanded ritualized obedience from their inferiors, but the accounts left by the two sailors tell us little else about the beginnings of these states in western Madagascar.10 When Europeans halted at the coast of Madagascar during the seventeenth century, most were unaware of transformations occurring within the island. European knowledge was limited to the “continual quarrels” and “bloody wars” between “petty princes” that they observed during their brief visits.11 By the eighteenth century, however, European reports from their time on Madagascar supported the experiences of Drury and Dean. Although European sources are limited both in scope and content, they do suggest that Sakalava kings and queens preyed upon weaker communities that provided food to the leaders at gunpoint (or spearpoint) or as tributaries. In the southwest, the English and Dutch negotiated for rice and slaves with a King Baba who resided in the port of Toliara, just to the north of St. Augustin Bay. Morondava, a new port located in the west-central Menabe region, was controlled by a powerful king who provided Europeans and Americans with plentiful slaves and provisions. The northwest was no longer dominated by Muslim merchants and leaders, as Sakalava kings and queens began overseeing exchanges with Europeans in this region as well.
Sakalava rulers have been described by historians as “slave-trader kings,” and indeed their power to dominate the export trade from the island was central to their control over western Madagascar, although they chose to monopolize not only the sale of slaves, but also of rice and cattle.12