by France at the end of the nineteenth century, and it flourishes today.
Malagasy positively brims with vowels. Of course, some unstressed syllables are dropped, and diphthongs compress vowels, but that’s cold comfort for the tongue given the abundance of a, e, i, and o in many words. A simple greeting, “Hello” (two vowels in English), has seven in Malagasy—Manao ahoana. That’s manageable, but the names of some people and places seem bewilderingly long to the non-Malagasy speaker. The chieftain who unified the Merina clans in the late eighteenth century to form a powerful kingdom in the highlands went by the polysyllabic name of Andrianampoinimerinandriantsimitoviaminandriampanjaka. Presumably, some rival Merina chiefs surrendered after failing to successfully pronounce his name, a small triumph for syllables over armed conflict. Later, he adopted the shorter, easier-to-recall name, Andrianampoinimerina (the lord at the heart of Imerina). His son, who expanded the Merina empire, made it easier for his foes to negotiate terms. He was called simply Radama I.
As in other languages, the name tells a story about the position or lineage of its owner. The name of some kings begins with “Andriana,” a term that denoted the noble caste of Merina society. In the extended form of Andrianampoinimerina, “Andria” appears three times, indicating that the king ruled over three regions. It’s a well-worn monarchical marketing strategy to project power by accumulating titles, so the Merina king was doing no more than European rulers had been doing for centuries. Andrianampoinimerina’s British contemporary, the unfortunate George III, was officially King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, Defender of the Faith, King of Hanover, and Duke of Brunswick-Luneburg. Napoleon I made himself Emperor of the French, King of Italy, Protector of the Confederation of the Rhine, and Mediator of the Helvetic Confederation. All of which makes the Merina king’s name look rather modest. The difference, of course, is that in Malagasy, the titles run together in a compound word.
The Merina kings followed the playbook of all conquerors, renaming places to imprint their own version of history. “The imperial tactic,” according to Luke, “was to inscribe the Merina presence in the mythology and identity of local places.” In many cultures, the clearest markers of settlement and land ownership are ancestral tombs; when these are removed by a conquering army, the original inhabitants’ historical claims to the land are erased. In the early seventeenth century, the chieftain Andrianjaka expelled the inhabitants of Analamanga, a village at the highest meeting point of two forested ridges, and built a rova. According to oral tradition, he deployed a garrison of one thousand soldiers to guard the rova. A later king, Andriamasinavalona, renamed the settlement Antananarivo, the “city of the thousand,” in honor of Andrianjaka’s soldiers, and it became the capital of the Merina kingdom. A hundred miles west of Richard’s home town of Arivonimamo (the “town of a thousand drunken soldiers”), on the edge of the highland escarpment at the terminus of RN1, is the town of Tsiroanomandidy where “two shall not rule,” which is reportedly what the Merina king told the local ruler when he conquered the place. East of Tana on RN2, place names commemorate the passage of the Merina kings and queens and their retainers. There’s Manjakandriana, which literally means “where the king passed through.” Nandihizana is “the place where there was dancing,” marking the arrival of the Merina queen and the cue for the local population to turn out and boogie.
Madagascar has had eight presidents since independence in 1960; the names of six begin with “Ra”—Ramanantsoa, Ratsimandrava, Ratsiraka, Ravalomanana, Rajoelina, and Rajaonarimampianina. When I first reviewed the list of our UA colleagues, I was similarly dismayed: they included Rabaovololona, Ralalaoherivony, Randriamasitiana, Ravelonjatovo, Rakotonirina, Rasolofoniaina, and Ramamonjy. The lineage of most highland Malagasy is represented through their names, which position them in relation to their clan, region, or village. Remembering them is easier when you mentally lop off the honorary “Ra” prefix, which means “Mr.” or “Ms.” But there are still a lot of vowels and syllables. Even for the Malagasy. Antananarivo is usually abbreviated as Tana, except on the iconic French red and white kilometer road markers, where it is uncomfortably squeezed into an ugly “Ant/rivo.”
Divide and Rule
For even the experienced analyst, Madagascar’s politics are infuriatingly complex. Since independence in 1960, the country has vacillated between dictatorship and freewheeling democracy, between socialism and unbridled capitalism, while maintaining a close but uneasy relationship with its former colonial master. Five successive presidents were forcibly ousted from office. In a continent that has seen more than its fair share of coups, Madagascar is near the top of the league table; in the first decade of the twenty-first century, it had at least four actual or attempted coups. The name of that Tana restaurant, Ku-de-ta, is no joke.
“Parties keep changing their colors,” said Richard. “Today, a party is in opposition, but tomorrow it will rejoin the alliance of the party in power and in return has to be given a ministry.” Richard served in government positions under three presidents and criticizes a system that is “100 percent influenced” by politics. Ministers are, of course, political appointees, but party membership is also required for department heads who, in another country, would be career civil servants. Ministers and their staffs are constantly changing. Richard recalls a test question on the entrance examination for first-year sociology students: Who is the minister of public services? “No one knew. It changes so often.”
Richard credits his political activism to his father, Rasamoelina, who worked as a barber in Arivonimamo. Rasamoelina was a member of the Democratic Movement for Malagasy Renovation (MDRM), formed by French-educated nationalists after World War II to push for independence. The MDRM hoped for a peaceful transition, but the French government refused to consider any degree of political autonomy. The French colonial minister, Marius Moutet, cabled the high commission in Tana to “fight the MDRM by any means.” As tensions rose, Rasamoelina’s smoke-filled barber’s shop became a hotbed of political discussion. In 1947, a revolt broke out in eastern Madagascar, with rebels attacking French commercial interests, including plantations and mines. The revolt spread to other regions. In Arivonimamo, Rasamoelina, aged thirty-two, left his family and shop to join a rebel unit. He was lucky to survive.
The suppression of the 1947 rebellion is regarded by historians as one of the most brutal of the colonial period. There were few French casualties because most fighting was done by Senegalese—an example of one colonial people being used to suppress another. Psychological tactics were employed—rape, torture, and the burning or razing of villages. In one town in the southeast, prisoners were thrown from an aircraft on a so-called death flight. In Tana, prisoners were herded into railroad cars; at Moramanga, on the line to the east coast port of Tamatave (now Toamasina), the doors were opened, and the prisoners machine-gunned. French colonial reports put the death toll at eighty to ninety thousand, although later figures lowered it to eleven thousand. The discrepancy has never been satisfactorily explained. Perhaps no one will ever know how many died from hunger or disease after fleeing from their villages into the forest.
In Arivonimamo, Rasamoelina’s rebel unit was forced to flee to the hills ahead of advancing Senegalese troops. The group was captured, but Rasamoelina and a few others escaped from trucks while being transported back to Arivonimamo. A few months later, after the fighting was over, he returned to the town. Family connections enabled him to stay out of prison.
Richard was born seven years later, but the struggle against the French shaped his politics and passions. “My father always talked about how hard it was to achieve independence. We paid with many deaths, with torture, with forced labor.” Men were sent to build roads, and women and children conscripted into the civilian labor corps.
Richard criticizes the French for fomenting ethnic divisions in Madagascar. “My father talked about how the colonizers lit the fire between the coastal peoples [the côtiers] and those of the high plateau. It was the kings of the high plateau [the Merina] who united the island, after conquering the small coastal kingdoms. But when the French came to colonize, they told the coastal peoples, ‘We’re liberating
