This will be my last post before heading back to site again this afternoon, hopefully to a new house and a long adventure in the Eastern Forest Corridor. I thought I would go out with a bit of a history lesson for you all. It was recently Malagasy Independence day, June 26th, and, like people the world over, the Malagasy celebrated their independence by drinking, dancing, marching and flag waving. There were also a lot of really long speeches but I tuned those down, except for the part where the major talked about me. He told the entire village that I have a PhD and plan on living in Madagascar for 4 years, not really sure where he got that information.

So, I figured Madagascar's birthday was a good chance to talk a little about Malagasy history. Enjoy.

A very short history of Madagascar

They think people 1st came here about 2000 yrs ago, from Asia oddly enough. Though they are not really sure about exact dates and that kind of stuff b/c the geological formation of Madagascar makes it pretty much impossible for things to fossilize so there is little in the way of a recent fossil record. So a lot of what they know about Madagascar pre 1800s is guesswork based on Anthropology, linguistics, legends, ect.

Then there were some kings and queens who had armies and unified the Island, more or less. Frequently with the help of the Europeans and the guns they brought. The 1st king had a really nice long name, Andrianampoinimeronadriantsimtoviaminandriampajaka. Starting this lovely tradition in Madagascar of giving everything impossibly long and difficult to pronounce names.

There was this one queen who liked to kill her subjects when she was having a bad day by feeding them to crocodiles or throwing them off a cliff in Tana. (this cliff is now a very popular tourist destination) This is what the Lonely Planet has to say about Queen Ranavalona "to say she was a psychopath would be something of an understatement"

In the late 1800's the French decided they kind of liked Madagascar and wanted it for themselves, so they sent along some warships in 1883 and occupied the main ports and forced Queen Ranavalona III (not the one you threw people off cliffs) to sign a treaty declaring Madagascar a French protectorate. A couple of years later the French decided that wasn't good enough and on August 6 1896 declared Madagascar a French colony.

The French did the typical colonial thing, forcing the Malagasy to speak French and sell all their natural resources to the French for much less then they were worth, created plantations with really coercive labor and taxation systems that resulted in a form of slavery, in everything but name. Many of these plantations still exist and many Malagasy people continue to work on them for substandard wages, caught in a cycle of debt they can not get out off.

One of the things that the French did that has a lot of repercussions for the field I am working in was introducing the eucalyptus tree as a source of fuel and building wood. Eucalyptus is an extremely fast and straight growing tree, so it is great for getting fuel, but absolutely horrible for the environment b/c it's leafs contain a poison that make it impossible for anything else to grow where they land, and this poison is reported to stay in the soil for up to 20 years after the tree has been removed. Essentially making it impossible to reforest eucalyptus plantations with native tree species. This has decimated the highland forests around Tana.

After WWII with General de Gaulle in power in France Madagascar made a "peaceful" transition to "independence" in 1960. In all reality the government of Madagascar continued to be a French puppet until the 1970s. Things continued to be rocky with a lot of corruption and coup attempts and in the early 1990s a communist style dictatorship. Things seem to be looking up for Madagascar, with relatively peaceful elections since Marc Ravalomanana came to power in 2002, but it remains to be seen what will happen when Ravalomanana comes to the end of his tenure as president. Will he peacefully step down and go back to selling yogurt and ice cream (which has made him one of the countries richest men) or will he find some way to stay in power?