Madagascar

• 1. Introduction

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  Madagascar appears on a map drawn by Muhammad al-Idrisi in 1154 under the name Gesira Malai, Arabic for Malay island. That is a strange label for a place off the southeastern coast of Africa. Today the Republic of Madagascar is the world's fourth-largest island and its second-largest island country, with Antananarivo as its capital and largest city.

  Why would a medieval mapmaker tie this island to Southeast Asia? How did a landmass this big come to hold plants and animals found nowhere else on Earth? And how did a patchwork of rival kingdoms become a French colony, then a country that has passed through four republics and a military takeover as recently as 2025? The answers begin with a name that nobody has fully explained.

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• 2. A Contested Name

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  On the medieval Hereford Mappa Mundi, the island appears as Malichu, a Latin shortening of Malai Insula, which again means Malay island. The Greeks knew the same name in the inverted form Malai Gesira, and that version is thought to be the precursor of the modern name. Another hypothesis points in a very different direction.

  Marco Polo, the Venetian explorer of the 13th century, mentions a land called Madageiscar to the south of Socotra in his memoirs. Some scholars suggest he confused the island with Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia and an important medieval port on the Indian Ocean. European mapmakers of the Renaissance would then have spread the muddled name across their charts.

  A book on Madagascar published in 1609 by Jerome Megizer offers a tale that might explain Polo's confusion. Megizer describes the kings of the sultanates of Mogadishu and Adal sailing with a fleet of around 25,000 men to invade the wealthy islands of Taprobane and Sumatra. A tempest threw them off course and onto the coasts of Madagascar. They conquered the island, signed a treaty with its inhabitants and stayed for eight months. At eight points around the island they raised pillars engraved with the word Magadoxo, which later corrupted into Madagascar.

  Jan Huyghen van Linschoten, a Dutch traveler who copied Portuguese works and maps, confirmed this event. He wrote that "Madagascar has its name from 'makdishu' (Mogadishu)" whose "shayk" invaded it.

  Other spellings turn up in surprising places. An English state paper of 1699 records the arrival of 80 to 90 passengers from "Malagaskar" in what eventually became New York City. An 1882 edition of the British newspaper The Graphic wrote "Malagascar" and claimed the word was of Malay origin and might be related to the name of Malacca. In 1891 Saleh bin Osman, a Zanzibari traveler, used the spelling "Malagaskar" when recounting his journeys, including part of the Emin Pasha Relief Expedition.

  In the Malagasy language the island is called Madagasikara and its people are the Malagasy. No single earlier name seems to have covered the whole island, although some communities had names for the lands they lived on. The origin of Madagasikara is uncertain and probably foreign, spread by Europeans in the Middle Ages. In 1905 Charles Basset wrote in his doctoral thesis that islanders themselves said Malagasikara and stressed that they were Malagasy, not Madagasy. Long before any of these spellings existed, though, the island had been shaping life that existed nowhere else.

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• 3. The Eighth Continent

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  Around 180 million years ago, in the Early Jurassic period, Madagascar split from Africa as the supercontinent Gondwana broke apart. It parted from the Indian subcontinent approximately 90 million years ago. That long seclusion let native plants and animals evolve with little outside competition, and roughly 90% of the island's wildlife is endemic. Conservation International classes Madagascar as a biodiversity hotspot, it counts among 17 megadiverse countries, and some ecologists call it the "eighth continent".

  Of Madagascar's 14,883 plant species, more than 80% grow nowhere else, including five whole plant families. The family Didiereaceae, with four genera and 11 species, is limited to the spiny forests of the southwest. Six of the world's nine baobab species are found here, as are three-fourths of the island's 860 orchid species. Four-fifths of the world's Pachypodium species are endemic. Around 170 palm species grow on the island, three times as many as on all of mainland Africa, and 165 of them are endemic.

  The Madagascar periwinkle gave medicine the drugs vinblastine and vincristine. These vinca alkaloids are used to treat Hodgkin lymphoma, leukemia and other cancers. The traveler's palm, called Ravenala locally and native to the eastern rainforests, appears in the national emblem and on the logo of Madagascar Airlines.

  Conservation International has called lemurs "Madagascar's flagship mammal species". With no monkeys or other competitors around, these primates spread into a wide range of habitats and split into numerous species. An official count lists 103 species and subspecies of lemur, and zoologists described 39 of them between 2000 and 2008. Almost all are rare, vulnerable or endangered. The catlike fossa is another mammal found only on the island.

  Over 300 bird species have been recorded, and more than 60% of them are endemic, including four families and 42 genera. The few reptile groups that reached the island diversified into more than 260 species, over 90% of them endemic. Two-thirds of the world's chameleon species live here, including the smallest known. All 651 species of terrestrial snail are endemic, as are a majority of the butterflies, scarab beetles, lacewings, spiders and dragonflies. Invertebrates remain poorly studied, so the full tally of the island's unique life is still open.

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• 4. Settlers and Forest

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  Archaeologists have traditionally placed the first settlers' arrival between 350 BCE and 550 CE, in successive waves of outrigger canoes from South Borneo. Others are cautious about any date before 250 CE. Either way, humans reached Madagascar before they reached Iceland or New Zealand, which makes it one of the most recently settled major landmasses on Earth.

  According to the General History of Africa, those first settlers were the tompontany, meaning masters of the soil. The work names the Kimosy in south-central Madagascar, the Antevinany in the southeast, the Antankoala and Kajemby in the northwest, and the Rasikajy in the northeast. Newcomers formed marriage alliances with them. By the 8th century the Vazimba, a way of life rather than an ethnic group, had absorbed or violently displaced the first settlers and begun calling themselves tompontany. Malagasy popular belief, by contrast, regards the Vazimba as the island's first inhabitants.

  Arab traders reached the island between the 7th and 9th centuries and brought Islam and the Arabic script, which was adapted as sorabe for writing Malagasy. The Antalaotra, Swahili-speaking Muslims who migrated to the northwest around the 10th century, came to control trade along that coast. A wave of Bantu-speaking migrants from southeastern Africa arrived around the year 1000. Around the same time zebu cattle came from South India and mixed with the sanga cattle of East Africa. DNA research shows the average Malagasy person carries a roughly equal blend of Southeast Asian and East African genes.

  By 1100 every region of the island had people living in it, though the population stayed small. In 1224 an Arab geographer wrote that the island held a great many towns and kingdoms, with kings making war on one another.

  The first settlers met 17 species of giant lemurs, the giant fossa, several species of Malagasy hippopotamus and the large flightless elephant birds. One of these, Aepyornis maximus, may have been the largest bird that ever lived. All of them have since died out through hunting and habitat destruction. The elephant birds were gone by the 17th century or earlier, most likely because people killed the adults and took their huge eggs for food.

  Tavy, a traditional slash-and-burn method of farming, came with the earliest settlers and drives much of the forest loss. Since humans arrived roughly 2,350 years ago, Madagascar has lost more than 90% of its original forest. Farmers keep the practice because it carries associations with prosperity, health and ancestral custom, known as fomba malagasy. Clearing accelerated around 1,400 years ago, and by the 16th century the Central Highlands had largely lost their forests. Cattle herds, charcoal for cooking and coffee as a cash crop added pressure. A conservative estimate says about 40% of the original forest cover disappeared between the 1950s and 2000.

  In 2003 Marc Ravalomanana announced the Durban Vision, a plan to more than triple the island's protected land to over 60,000 km2, or 10% of the territory. Protected areas have included five Strict Nature Reserves, 21 Wildlife Reserves and 21 National Parks. In 2007 six of the parks, Marojejy, Masoala, Ranomafana, Zahamena, Andohahela and Andringitra, were declared a joint world heritage site called the Rainforests of the Atsinanana.

  Collecting precious timber from national parks was banned from 2000 to 2009, then re-authorized in January 2009. A July 2012 assessment found 90% of lemur species threatened with extinction, the highest share of any mammal group, with 23 critically endangered. A 2023 study in Nature Communications found that 120 of the 219 mammal species found only on Madagascar were threatened. Timber merchants still harvest scarce rosewood from protected rainforest in Marojejy National Park and export it to China for luxury furniture and musical instruments.

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• 5. Kings, Queens, and Pirates

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  Portuguese navigators reached Madagascar around 1500 and sacked the port city of Sada, part of the Guingemaro kingdom, in 1506. The slave trade grew over the following centuries, with captives exchanged for firearms. The French founded Fort Dauphin in 1642. The British tried to found a colony at St. Augustine Bay in 1645 but were expelled by the Malagasy. In 1674 an attack destroyed the French colony and killed the settlers who remained. Late in the 17th century pirates expelled from the Caribbean arrived, and some joined local wars before the British navy routed them in the 1720s.

  Menabe, meaning "very red" after the color of its soil, was founded along the Morondava River before 1600 by the Sakalava. Around 1685 a succession dispute let a new ruler expel his brother. Seizing the chance to expand north, Andriamandisoarivo conquered port cities along the coast, captured Mazalagem Nova and killed its Antalaotra sultan. He founded the Kingdom of Boina with its commercial capital at Majunga. By 1720 the Boina king Toakafo was considered the most powerful ruler in Madagascar.

  Ratsimilaho, the son of an English pirate and a Malagasy woman, rose on the northeast coast after the Tsikoa invaded the Antavaratra around 1710, hoping to seize their lucrative ports. He united the Antavaratra, drove the Tsikoa south and founded the Betsimisaraka Confederation. By the 1730s he was one of the most powerful kings on the island, but the state fell apart soon after his death in 1754.

  In the Central Highlands, Merina tradition says the Merina settled gradually from the southeast, finishing by the 15th century. King Andriamanelo, son of a Vazimba queen and a Merina man, launched a campaign against the Vazimba. Ralambo founded the Merina Kingdom, and Andrianjaka completed the expulsion and absorption of the Vazimba by the early 17th century. Andrianjaka also founded Antananarivo around 1610 or 1625, on the hilltop of Analamanga, the site of a captured Vazimba capital. Tradition says the conquest was driven by a need for rice land, while archaeology places its start in the 14th century.

  King Andriamasinavalona expanded the kingdom, then abdicated and split it among four of his sons. A fierce civil war followed, marked by slave-raiding and slave-trading. In the 1790s Andrianampoinimerina reunited the kingdom through conquest and diplomacy and ruled from the Rova of Antananarivo.

  His son Radama I, who reigned from 1810 to 1828, came close to bringing the whole island under one crown. In 1817 he signed a treaty with the British governor of Mauritius. He agreed to abolish the slave trade in return for British military and financial help and recognition as "King of Madagascar". Missionaries of the London Missionary Society began arriving in 1818. They set up schools, wrote Malagasy in the Roman alphabet and translated the Bible. By 1828 Radama controlled two-thirds of the island, though resistance never stopped.

  Queen Ranavalona I, who reigned from 1828 to 1861, answered British and French influence by banning Christianity and pressing most foreigners to leave. She relied on fanompoana, forced labor paid as tax, and kept a standing army of 20,000 to 30,000 Merina soldiers. Subjects could accuse one another of theft, Christianity or especially witchcraft, and the poison ordeal called tangena was routinely required. Between 1828 and 1861 it caused about 3,000 deaths a year. The island's population is estimated to have fallen from around 5 million to 2.5 million between 1833 and 1839.

  Prince Radama II signed a controversial trade agreement called the Lambert Charter with the French adventurer Joseph-Francois Lambert. As king he tried to soften his mother's policies but was overthrown after two years. Queen Rasoherina then accepted a power-sharing deal and married Prime Minister Rainivoninahitriniony, before deposing him and marrying his brother Rainilaiarivony. In his 31 years as prime minister, Rainilaiarivony made schooling mandatory, outlawed polygamy and reformed the legal codes on the basis of British common law. Christianity became the official religion of the court in 1869. He also married Queen Ranavalona II and then Queen Ranavalona III, the last monarch, who would face the French guns.

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• 6. Conquest and Independence

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  In 1883 France opened the First Franco-Hova War by bombing Majunga. Madagascar endured a blockade and diplomatic isolation, ignored by the British, who were nominally its allies. The ambiguous peace treaty of 1885 let each side read it its own way. Madagascar saw its sovereignty affirmed, while France saw a protectorate. Britain accepted a full French protectorate in 1890, but the Malagasy government never acknowledged French authority.

  In December 1894 the French bombarded and occupied the harbor of Toamasina, and in January 1895 they did the same at Majunga. A French military flying column then marched on Antananarivo and lost many men to malaria and other diseases. Reinforcements came from Algeria and Sub-Saharan Africa. When the column reached the city in September 1895, it shelled the royal palace with heavy artillery. The attack caused heavy casualties and Queen Ranavalona III surrendered.

  The Menalamba rebellion against the capture of the capital broke out in December 1895 and was not put down until the end of 1897. France annexed Madagascar in 1896 and declared it a colony the following year. The Merina monarchy was dissolved, and the royal family was sent into exile on Reunion and in Algeria. The French campaign of pacification lasted more than 15 years, and the Antandroy and Mahafaly yielded only in 1904. The repression cost several tens of thousands of Malagasy lives.

  Slavery was abolished in 1896, freeing approximately 500,000 people, although many stayed on as servants or sharecroppers in their former masters' homes. Strong prejudice against the descendants of slaves persists in many parts of the island today. The colonial administration made education mandatory from age 6 to 13, centered on the French language and practical skills. It also granted huge mining and forestry concessions to large companies. Forced labor built a railway and roads linking coastal cities to Antananarivo, and taxation pushed peasants toward wage work in the concessions.

  Independence movements grew during this period, among them the Vy Vato Sakelika and the Democratic Movement for Malagasy Renovation, known as the MDRM. Major demonstrations took place in Antananarivo in 1927, and in 1939 the colonial administration, which sided with the Vichy regime, dissolved these organizations. Malagasy troops had fought for France in World War I. In the 1930s Nazi political thinkers drew up the Madagascar Plan, which named the island as a possible site for deporting Europe's Jews. In World War II the Battle of Madagascar pitted the Vichy French against an Allied expeditionary force.

  The occupation of France in the Second World War damaged the colonial administration's prestige and fed the Malagasy Uprising of 1947. The MDRM was blamed for the revolt and met violent repression. In 1956 the Loi Cadre, or Overseas Reform Act, set up reformed institutions. The Malagasy Republic was proclaimed on the 14th of October 1958 as an autonomous state within the French Community. Full independence followed on the 26th of June 1960, and the United Nations admitted Madagascar on the 20th of September that year.

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• 7. Republics and Coups

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  Philibert Tsiranana, the French-appointed president of the First Republic from 1960 to 1972, kept strong ties with France. French expatriates held many high-level technical posts, and French teachers, textbooks and curricula stayed in schools. Resentment of this "neo-colonial" arrangement sparked farmer and student protests that toppled his administration in 1972.

  Major General Gabriel Ramanantsoa took over as interim president but stepped down in 1975 amid low public approval. Colonel Richard Ratsimandrava, his appointed successor, was assassinated six days into his tenure. General Gilles Andriamahazo ruled for four months before Vice Admiral Didier Ratsiraka began the Marxist-Leninist Second Republic, which lasted from 1975 to 1993. Ratsiraka aligned the country with the Eastern Bloc and turned the economy inward. From 1976 to 1991 he required all young citizens, regardless of sex, to perform armed or civil national service. Those policies, plus the 1973 oil crisis, left the country bankrupt by 1979, and Ratsiraka accepted IMF and World Bank conditions in exchange for a bailout.

  In 1991 presidential guards fired on unarmed protesters during a rally. Within two months a transitional government was in place under Albert Zafy, who won the 1992 presidential election and opened the Third Republic. Its constitution created a multi-party democracy and stressed human rights. Zafy was impeached in 1996 amid economic decline and corruption allegations, and Norbert Ratsirahonana served as interim president for three months. Ratsiraka then won a second term that ran from 1996 to 2001.

  The contested 2001 election, won by Antananarivo's mayor Marc Ravalomanana, led to a standoff in 2002 with Ratsiraka's supporters. Bridges were bombed and buildings burned, and the country lost millions of dollars in tourism and trade revenue. The military declined to back either candidate. Under Ravalomanana national GDP grew by an average of 7% a year, and in 2004 he created BIANCO, an anti-corruption bureau. Later observers accused him of growing authoritarianism and corruption.

  In early 2009 the new Antananarivo mayor Andry Rajoelina led a protest movement that pushed Ravalomanana from power. More than 170 people were killed, and a segment of the army defected to Rajoelina's side, breaking its tradition of neutrality. The unconstitutional transfer of power was widely condemned as a coup, and the African Union suspended Madagascar in March 2009. That same month the Supreme Court declared Rajoelina president of the High Transitional Authority. A 2010 referendum adopted a constitution creating the Fourth Republic.

  Hery Rajaonarimampianina won the 2013 election, which the international community judged fair and transparent. Rajoelina won the second round of the 2018 election, and in January 2019 the High Constitutional Court declared him the winner. Ravalomanana refused to accept the result over fraud allegations. Rajoelina's supporters took 84 of the 151 seats in the June 2019 parliamentary elections, and observers noted he could rule as a strongman. Politics also carries the legacy of 19th-century Merina rule over coastal peoples, and tension between highland and coastal communities has periodically flared into violence.

  A severe drought brought the 2021-2022 famine, which left hundreds of thousands facing food insecurity and over one million on the verge of famine. In November 2023 Rajoelina was re-elected with 58.95% of the first-round vote amid an opposition boycott. Turnout was 46.36%, the lowest in the country's presidential history. Power and water cuts, and general distrust of his administration, sparked protests in 2025 that ended with his flight and impeachment and with the military taking control. Colonel Michael Randrianirina was sworn in as president on the 17th of October 2025. The economy he inherited is that of a country the United Nations classifies as least developed.

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• 8. Vanilla and Hardship

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  Vanilla earned Madagascar US$894 million in 2017, making it the top export that year. Nickel metal brought in US$414 million, cloves US$288 million, knitted sweaters US$184 million and cobalt US$143 million. The island is the world's principal supplier of vanilla, cloves and ylang-ylang, and it supplies 80% of the world's natural vanilla.

  Sapphires discovered near Ilakaka in the late 1990s meant that by 2001 the island provided half the world's supply. Madagascar also holds one of the world's largest reserves of ilmenite, a titanium ore, plus chromite, coal, iron, cobalt, copper and nickel. Major projects include Rio Tinto's ilmenite and zircon mining at the Mandena mine and Sherritt International's nickel mine at Ambatovy near Moramanga. Madagascar Oil is developing giant onshore heavy oil deposits at Tsimiroro and Bemolanga.

  An estimated 365,000 tourists visited in 2008, but only 180,000 came after the political crisis that followed. By 2016 arrivals had recovered to 293,000, a 20% rise over 2015. Tourism focuses on the niche ecotourism market built around lemurs, national parks and unspoiled habitats. Fishing represents US$800 million, or 6% of GNP, and directly employs 200,000 people. In 2023 lychees sold abroad reached 18,000 tons, of which 16,000 tons went to Europe.

  The country's GDP in 2015 was estimated at US$9.98 billion, or $411.82 per person. In 2021-68.4% of the population was multidimensionally poor, according to the United Nations Development Programme. By 2025 poverty touched approximately 80% of people, measured by a daily income threshold of $2.15, and nearly 1.94 million were projected to face high levels of acute food insecurity in the lean season. Madagascar ranks fourth globally for chronic malnutrition, with nearly one in two children under five stunted. WaterAid estimated that in 2021 approximately 12 million people lacked safe drinking water.

  In 2010 the island had about 7617 km of paved roads, and most roads are unpaved, with many impassable in the rainy season. As of 2023 the World Bank estimated that 17 million rural residents live more than 2 km from an all-season road. Construction began in December 2022 on the Antananarivo-Toamasina toll highway, a project of about US$1 billion. Jirama, the national utility, reaches only a fraction of the country. Hydroelectric plants supply 56% of the power, diesel generators the other 44%, and only 11% of the rural population had electricity in 2023. Radio remains the main source of news.

  In March 2004 Cyclone Gafilo became the strongest cyclone ever recorded to hit the country. It killed 172 people, left 214,260 homeless and caused more than US$250 million in damage. In February 2022 Cyclone Batsirai killed 121 people, weeks after Cyclone Ana killed 55 and displaced 130,000. A 2022 analysis found that Madagascar would have to spend 15% of its GDP to adapt to climate change and avert its environmental consequences.

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