Madagascar: Early French Colonialism (1896-1945)

Updated November 2005

The first French governor-general, General Joseph Gallieni, sketched out the lines on which colonial governance of Madagascar was to proceed until the end of World War II in his nine year term of office (1896 to 1905). He finally suppressed slavery, laid the foundations for a free healthcare system, established a state schooling system to extend (and secularise) the education provided by missionaries and founded the Malagasy Academy. However, these efforts were not geared at stimulating Madagascan language and cultural life, but rather at overwhelming it with "superior" French culture (Thomson Corporation 2005).

Although the Merina monarchy had been abolished in 1896, when Madagascar was declared a French colony, administrators were recruited almost exclusively from the Merina elite and marginalised the other ethnic groups, especially the people of the coast (côtiers). This was partly due to necessity, for the Merina had enjoyed the bulk of the educational and administrative opportunities available in the latter years of the monarchy. Moreover the use of the Merina, as a minority group, provided the opportunity for France to practice the divide-and-rule strategy favoured by the European colonial powers of the time (Marcus 2004, Columbia Encyclopedia 2005).

Since the colony was expected to be self-financing as far as possible, infrastructural and social development expenditures were kept to a minimum and closely tied to the extraction of raw materials to fuel French industry. Gallieni imposed heavy taxes and replaced private slavery with state labour conscription to minimize the costs of and raise revenue for colonial projects (World History 2004, Library of Congress 1994).

Efforts by Gallieni's successors, less able than he, at developing the economy of Madagascar were stymied by the outbreak of the First World War and the Great Depression as well as irreducibles such as Madagascar's remoteness from European and American markets and its lack of easily exploitable resources (Thomson Corporation 2005). Economic development measures were concentrated around Tananarive which was both the capital of the Merina heartland and of the colony (Marcus 2004). The capital was connected to the coast by a railway to the port of Toamasina. French settlement was encouraged, though settlers never amounted to more than a tiny fraction of the total population (Library of Congress 1994).

The development of Malagasy nationalism amongst the Merina was the direct result of their past domination of the island and their history of sustained resistance to the imposition of French rule. Access to educational opportunities in Europe exposed them to European notions of nationalism and socialism which supplied them with new intellectual underpinnings for their hopes of national restoration. Thus nationalism emerged unusually early by comparison with other colonies in Africa and Asia, which generally had their first real stirrings after World War II. The Iron and Stone Ramification secret society that emerged in 1913 from the intellectual ferment in the capital, and which was dedicated to Malagasy cultural renewal, was suppressed with brutality in 1916 (Library of Congress 1994, Columbia Encyclopedia 2005).

World War I gave impetus to the nascent nationalist movement, for Madagascan troops served France in North Africa and France itself. This raised demands, after the war, from intellectuals in the French League for Madagascar that Madagascans be given equal citizenship rights in recognition of their contribution to the defence of France. In Madagascar these sentiments were echoed, with additional calls for social justice, the abolition of forced labour and trade union rights. Veterans of the war who had remained in France were directly exposed to the anti-colonial positions of the French left (US State Department 2005, Library of Congress 1994).

Madagascar found itself under the rule of the German puppet Vichy government, after France fell to the Nazis in the early stages of World War II, and in was seized by a British force in 1942 to forestall Japanese occupation. It was handed over to the Free French in 1943 (US State Department 2005, Columbia Encyclopedia 2005).

The Brazzaville Conference of 1944 was an attempt by the Free French under Charles de Gaulle to place the relationship between France and its colonial subjects on a new footing. The conference was attended primarily by top-ranking French administrators and was thus only a discussion amongst the French rulers about the future of the peoples of their Empire. Traditional paternalistic notions such as France's civilizing mission and the eventual integration of the subjected peoples into the French polity, which had marked French colonial ideology hitherto, were reaffirmed; the principle of self-determination for all peoples was explicitly repudiated (Baptiste 1996/7, Assié-Lumumba 2003).

Instead what was envisaged was a degree of decentralisation and democratisation. The abolition of forced labour, the extension of trade union rights and the opening of higher government posts to colonials, a greater emphases on health, education and the cultural assimilation of the colonial subjects and more state investment in the economic development of the colonies, in particular the development of the agricultural sector, were the reforms that were contemplated (Baptiste 1996/7, Assié-Lumumba 2003).

References

ASSIÉ-LUMUMBA, NT 2003 "Historical Perspectives on the Conflict in Côte d'Ivoire" IN Africa Update 10(3) [www] http://www.ccsu.edu/afstudy/upd10-3.html#historical [opens new window] (accessed 14 Jun 2010).

BAPTISTE, FA 1996/7 "Methodological Issues Related to African Studies" IN Africa Update 4(1), [www] http://www.ccsu.edu/afstudy/afuw9697.html#lk4 [opens new window] (accessed 14 Jun 2010).

COLUMBIA ENCYCLOPEDIA 2005 "Madagascar", Sixth edition, [www] http://www.bartleby.com/65/ma/Madagasc.html [opens new window] (accessed 14 Jun 2010).

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 1994 "Colonial Era, 1894-1960" IN Country Study: Madagascar [www] http://lcweb2.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/r?frd/cstdy:@field(DOCID+mg0014) [opens new window] (accessed 14 Jun 2010).

MARCUS, RR 2004 "Political Change in Madagascar: Populist Democracy or Neopatrimonialism by another name?", Institute of Security Studies, Occasional Paper 89, [www] http://www.iss.co.za/pubs/papers/89/Paper89.htm [opens new window] (accessed 14 Jun 2010).

THOMSON CORPORATION 2005 "Madagascar: History" IN Encyclopedia of the Nations, [www] http://www.nationsencyclopedia.com/Africa/Madagascar-HISTORY.html [opens new window] (accessed 14 Jun 2010).

WORLD HISTORY AT KMLA 2004 "Madagascar, 1896-1918" IN History of Madagascar [www] http://www.zum.de/whkmla/region/eastafrica/madagascar18831918.html [opens new window] (accessed 14 Jun 2010).

US STATE DEPARTMENT 2005 "Background Note: Madagascar" [www] http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/5460.htm [opens new window] (accessed 14 Jun 2010).