Feeding Globalization - Jane Hooper Indian Ocean Studies Series

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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 venturing into the more fertile interior of the island, may have been prompted both by opportunity (perhaps there were stronger opponents to be found in the more populated interior) as well as a desire to benefit from the export trade from St. Augustin Bay.75

      Following the conquest of southwestern Madagascar, European visitors to the region in 1698 noted a dramatic change.76 When they arrived at St. Augustin Bay, the merchants were directed to trade at Toliara to the north for the first time.77 In the bay and at Toliara, Europeans now dealt with two rulers, holding the ceremonial titles of “King Baba” (also written as “Kinne Baba,” “Barbar,” “Baubau,” or “Bawbaw”) and “Prince William” (“Will” or “Ouil”). From his home in Toliara along the Fiherenana River, King Baba had access to stores of rice and slaves. The ruler in St. Augustin Bay, Prince William, was subservient to King Baba. As one observer noted later, Prince William “appears to me to be appointed by and to derive his authority from the king of Baba.”78 In spite of this dependent relationship, Prince William was still a powerful merchant in his own right. He was responsible for supplying Europeans with water, cattle, and miscellaneous other food items such as fish, poultry, and fruit, although he rarely had quantities of rice or slaves for sale. For those, Europeans learned that they had to negotiate with King Baba in Toliara.

      The titles of Prince William and King Baba appear to have been hereditary and adopted to reflect European (particularly English) terms of nobility.79 The titles of prince and king were conscious choices, as the words are not related to Malagasy or East African words for king or ruler. It is hard to be sure of the exact origin of these titles, as we have little evidence beyond European observations.80 Given the long history of Euro-American visits to this part of the island and the presence of English speakers among the islanders, it would be hard to believe that the use of the titles was accidental. It seems far more likely that their use was a conscious effort at “similitude,” to use Jeremy Prestholdt’s terminology. Prestholdt deploys the term to describe how people in the Comoros strategically adopted cross-cultural practices, for instance in echoing the European political formations that they wanted their visitors to acknowledge.81 In southwestern Madagascar, the titles of Prince William and King Baba were readily adopted by European visitors, who would request to see these rulers upon their arrival at the island.

      Judging by the frequency and size of food exports from Toliara, as well as comments made by the king himself, King Baba had access to the production of large tracts of land in the interior worked by laborers, including slaves, who grew food and oversaw the herding of cattle.82 The growth of the provisioning commerce following Sakalava conquest suggests that the king also drew upon trade routes and tributaries in the interior of the island to provide him with reliable supplies of desirable exports. The firearms, gunpowder, and bullets King Baba and Prince William acquired from the Europeans spread far into the southern interior of the island throughout the eighteenth century, further confirming that trade routes stretched across portions of southern Madagascar.83 Without these routes, the coastal rulers would have been unable to sell rice or other foodstuffs to European merchants, but we know little about the apparatus for this trade.84 It does seem that the export of food and slaves typically went hand-in-hand in this part of Madagascar, as slaves would carry food to the coasts and then would be sold to visiting slavers, although fewer slaves were exported from this (less populated) part of the island than elsewhere in Madagascar.85

      European observers also described frequent wars between King Baba and neighboring groups.86 The close proximity of antagonistic neighbors to the south and east, along with the need to secure trade routes in the region, meant that King Baba and Prince William had to be able to raise a strong army of supporters and build fortifications.87 Prince William tried to prevent Europeans from trading with the Mahafaly “Prince Grimm” who lived to the south of the Onilahy River.88 Even when Europeans were able to strike up a trading agreement with the Mahafaly leader, they discovered that he lacked the supplies of provisions and slaves commanded by Prince Will and King Baba.89 Archeological findings confirm that warfare was frequent in southwestern Madagascar and some communities moved to more defensive locations in the drier interior of the island, fearing attacks by coastal groups. Evidence provided by European observations, paired with the construction of larger earthwork forts throughout southern Madagascar by the eighteenth century, suggests that coastal leaders were trying to protect themselves against rivals who may have wished to control exchanges with European visitors themselves.90

      It does not seem, however, that King Baba went to war frequently with the Sakalava of Menabe. During the eighteenth century, most Europeans did not recognize any connections between the rulers of the Menabe region and those to the south, although Toliara was described as the most southern limit of the Sakalava Empire in European sources by the nineteenth century.91 Sakalava traditions recorded during the nineteenth century assert that the rulers in these regions were blood relatives and thus allied.92 Earlier European sources appear to confirm the existence of an alliance between the rulers of these two regions, although we know little about the networks of trade and migration that crossed western Madagascar.93

      Far more is known about the connections between Sakalava rulers in west-central and northwestern Madagascar. While one brother ruled

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