eighteenth century, men living in western Madagascar told Drury that they came willingly to the Sakalava king’s side, knowing that they “fight for their own security and ease, and when they get any plunder from their enemies, they think themselves sufficiently rewarded.”51 Drury also argues that Sakalava rule had enabled the country to grow “not only vastly populous, but rich, and the people live in plenty as well as peace.”52
In addition to protecting their subjects against enslavement, the Sakalava rulers also secured and redistributed food supplies within a relatively arid region. Exports of foods such as rice, beans, and tubers from St. Augustin Bay and Massaliege may have been stressing local communities by the mid-seventeenth century. It is telling that food, along with slaves, was included in tributary payments to Sakalava rulers. Supplies of cattle and rice were seen also as rewards for serving the king.53 Furthermore, around 1527, a Portuguese visitor to western Madagascar described finding little food for purchase, and there are no records of the Portuguese attempting to purchase provisions from the west-central region during the sixteenth century.54 It seems unlikely that large supplies of cattle and rice were for sale on the west-central coast, as rice was primarily grown further in the north and interior of the island and cattle were highly valued and seldom eaten, except on ceremonial occasions. This situation changed within the next century, at least in the west-central portion of the island. Portuguese sources describe how the king Andriamandazoala provided visiting priests with plentiful food in 1613, suggesting either increased agricultural production or the ability of the Sakalava to tap into additional supplies of food for export, through trade or frequent raiding.55 While the Portuguese did not list the food they obtained during this visit, we do know that people in the ports directly to the north at this time possessed rice, millet, “mungo,” beans, peas, nuts, bananas, ginger, sugarcane, and limes.56 Likewise, by the time Drury visited the island, coastal communities had devised means for supplying vessels with ample food and water during their stays in west-central Madagascar.57 During the early eighteenth century, the Sakalava king himself owned thousands of cattle, many of them acquired through warfare.58
According to seventeenth-century Portuguese reports, Andriamandazoala possessed a supply of unfree laborers obtained from throughout the island. One slave woman told the Portuguese that she had been marched across three countries (“pays”) before arriving at the ruler’s capital.59 Sakalava rulers probably used a variety of strategies to acquire these laborers, with some purchased from other groups and others captured through warfare or given in tribute. Drury mentions that many of the captives seized in warfare, especially women and children, were only kept as ransom and were returned to their families once the latter agreed to ally with the Sakalava.60 Those who remained enslaved may have been used for cattle herding, in addition to some agricultural and household labor. Royal ownership of slaves may have served to bolster Sakalava power, as it did in later periods.61
It appears, as historian Stephen Ellis has argued, that the Sakalava wars of the mid-seventeenth century predated the rise of a large slave trade with Europeans from the region.62 Despite the lack of slave exports to Europeans, there was evidence that Sakalava rulers were becoming more interested in engaging in trade with passing ships. According to traditions, the Sakalava ruler Andriandahifotsy (also referred to as Lightfoot, c. 1614–1683) established a permanent seat of power at his palace in Mahabo, a town along the shores of the Morondava River.63 Mahabo was a convenient base for controlling long-distance trade in the region, as the Sakalava ruler could easily reach interior portions of the island along the river as well as have access to the coastal port of Morondava. By the 1730s, Andriandahifotsy was particularly revered for the role he had played in consolidating Sakalava control over commerce from the region.64
European sources confirm that Andriandahifotsy began to take tentative steps toward forming a relationship with European merchants visiting western Madagascar, although this period was marked by considerable misunderstandings, as the following story makes clear. According to French merchant François Martin, a group of forty-five Frenchmen sailed to the west-central coast of Madagascar in the mid-seventeenth century.65 The French commander found a welcoming river inlet and went ashore to negotiate with a local ruler, named “Lahe Foutchy” (likely Andriandahifotsy). The French narrator described Lahe Foutchy as not only one of the richest lords of this region, but one of the greediest. After the king refused to sell the Frenchmen provisions for cheap prices, the French commander led his troops inland into a region rich in cattle and, the French hoped, gold. On their march into the interior, the French forces encountered an army numbering twelve to fifteen thousand men, all armed with spears. The men, led by Lahe Foutchy, massacred all of the soldiers save one, a Portuguese man who later escaped to the French trading post at Fort Dauphin.66
A few years later, the French sent another ship to explore the western coastline.67 In passing the region controlled by Andriandahifotsy, the French captain sent representatives to the shore, where the sailors met with some islanders. They appeared peaceful, so the French ship came to anchor along the coast. Around four or five hundred people approached the shoreline with refreshments and several of them asked for permission to see the ship. About fifty came aboard, including, Martin remarked, the wife of one of the local leaders. The captain remained onshore with some of his soldiers to sign a trading agreement with an unnamed local monarch, perhaps Andriandahifotsy.68 The people visiting the French ship suddenly seized the French pilot and fired the cannon on board the ship. At that sound, locals on the shore fell upon the French, who had not brought their weapons ashore, and massacred all of the unarmed men. On board, the visitors killed two French sailors and injured three or four others. As the sailors reached for their weapons, the islanders jumped into the ocean and swam ashore. The woman remained on board, but they quickly discovered she was a “slave,” wearing noble clothing as a disguise. How they determined this deception is unclear. The pilot quickly set sail from the coast with only six healthy sailors aboard. He returned to Fort Dauphin with news of the deaths and the French mourned the loss of their compatriots, especially the captain and commis (trade commissioner).69
The French narrator, Martin, retold these two events to provide an example of the problems Europeans encountered in negotiating with groups on the west-central coast of Madagascar and to serve as a warning to merchants. He probably had heard these stories secondhand, but they still served as cautionary tales to the French. In both episodes, the Sakalava ruler demonstrated his mistrust of Europeans, maybe arising from his knowledge of European conduct elsewhere on the island, as the French and English were both attempting colonies in Madagascar during these years. The story of the girl, if we accept Martin’s argument that she really was a slave dressing as a noblewoman, suggests recognition of shared European and Sakalava ideas of hierarchy.
Martin’s account concludes on a more peaceful note. Shortly after the second massacre, a Sakalava king sent a troop of soldiers and representatives overland to Fort Dauphin, where they had an audience with French colonial officials. Following negotiations, the ruler apparently made peace with the French and agreed to welcome them as traders into his territory.70 Indeed, by the end of his reign, the king known as “Lightfoot” supplied hundreds of captives to at least five European slave ships.71
THE EXPANSION OF THE SAKALAVA
At the close of the seventeenth century, a newly enthroned Sakalava king, Andriamanetriarivo (“Rer Timmononngarevo,” “Timovareva,” ruling from roughly 1685 to 1712), decided to use military force to expel both of his brothers from the Menabe region.72 Rather than continue fighting for control of the kingdom, one of the brothers led a group of armed supporters south to St. Augustin Bay. Battles between the Sakalava and people who lived near the bay had begun decades earlier, during earlier periods of Sakalava expansion, but this new incursion brought fresh waves of violence to the region.73 Known as the “northern enemy,” the Sakalava continued to attack communities near St. Augustin Bay into the early eighteenth century, when Drury himself observed the clashes.74 The repeated efforts by Sakalava rulers to conquer the south, rather than
