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 The value accorded to these desired provisioning items, priced in firearms and silver coins, approached that which Europeans had paid for slaves. By manipulating European demands for laborers and provisions as well as expanding their control over the island, Sakalava rulers maintained a tight grip on the exchanges on the west coast of Madagascar. The term merchant kings would be a more apt description for these monarchs.
MAP 3.1. Madagascar, c. 1600–1800
IDENTIFYING THE SAKALAVA
Sixteenth-century Portuguese visiting northwestern Madagascar either described the islanders they encountered as “Moors” (African Muslims) or referred to them as “Boucki” (also written as “Bouckes,” “Buki,” or “Buqua”) if they were not Muslim.13 Visitors to Madagascar suggest that these identities were not only rooted in religious differences, but were linguistic ones as well, as the Boucki spoke a language distinct from the Moors, who sounded more similar to the “Kaffirs” from East Africa14 During the seventeenth century, an Englishman identified a third group on the island, the “Hoves” (Hova), who “agree[d] in their speech” with the Boucki and lived in the interior of Madagascar.15
By the early eighteenth century, Drury noted very few differences, aside from minor variations in vocabulary and pronunciation, between the languages spoken in southern and western Madagascar. Instead he identified people by the regions in which they lived (the countries of “Saccalauvor,” “Merfaughla” (Mahafaly), “Anterndroea” (Antandroy), etc.), each distinguished by slightly different patterns of governance, land use, and social customs.16 He mentioned that Sakalava also functioned as a family name, noting that Sakalava rulers were related by blood and joined together in an “amicable alliance.”17 Yet many other eighteenth-century visitors in western Madagascar, including Dean, do not use the term Sakalava to describe the kings and queens of this region, even if the names of the leaders they encountered appear in Sakalava royal genealogies. Throughout the eighteenth century, the term Sakalava was used more frequently to describe major ports on the west coast of the island.18 In light of such inconsistencies, it is difficult to uncover how the term Sakalava was understood in western Madagascar.
By the mid-nineteenth century, the term Sakalava was being used to describe not only kings and queens, but also their subjects in the western portion of the island.19 The history of the Sakalava monarchs was recorded in a series of publications penned by foreign missionaries, government officials, and, most influentially, a French naval captain, Charles Guillain, who composed one of the earliest collections of Sakalava royal traditions, Documents sur l’histoire, la géographie et le commerce de la partie occidentale de Madagascar.20 The compilation of these traditions and, relatedly, the use of the label Sakalava, served to confirm the legitimacy of the coastal rulers who inherited power from their Sakalava ancestors.21 The writers, including Guillain, were concerned with identifying rulers with whom the French could form alliances and their writings reflected Western perceptions of statehood, leadership, and empire.22 Nineteenth-century Europeans frequently sought to fix firm boundaries around the territory controlled by the Sakalava rulers, despite the fact that the area dominated by these monarchs
