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African island country in the Indian Ocean
Madagascar, officially the Republic of Madagascar, is an island country in the Indian Ocean that includes the island of Madagascar and numerous smaller peripheral islands. Lying off the southeastern coast of Africa, it is the world's fourth-largest island, the second-largest island country, and the 46th-largest country overall. Its capital and largest city is Antananarivo.
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Text from the Wikipedia article “Madagascar”, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Madagascar, officially the Republic of Madagascar, is an island country in the Indian Ocean that includes the island of Madagascar and numerous smaller peripheral islands. Lying off the southeastern coast of Africa, it is the world's fourth-largest island, the second-largest island country, and the 46th-largest country overall. Its capital and largest city is Antananarivo.
Following the prehistoric breakup of the supercontinent Gondwana, Madagascar split from Africa during the Early Jurassic period, around 180 million years ago, and from the Indian subcontinent approximately 90 million years ago. This isolation allowed native plants and animals to evolve in relative seclusion. As a result, Madagascar is a biodiversity hotspot and one of the world's 17 megadiverse countries, with over 90% of its wildlife being endemic. The island has a subtropical to tropical maritime climate.
Madagascar was first permanently settled during or before the mid-first millennium CE (roughly 500 to 700) by Austronesian peoples, presumably arriving on outrigger canoes from present-day Indonesia. These were joined around the ninth century by Bantu groups crossing the Mozambique Channel from East Africa. Other groups continued to settle on Madagascar over time, each one making lasting contributions to Malagasy cultural life. Consequently, there are 18 or more classified peoples of Madagascar, the most numerous being the Merina of the central highlands.
Until the late 18th century, the island of Madagascar was ruled by a fragmented assortment of shifting sociopolitical alliances. Beginning in the early 19th century, most of it was united and ruled as the Kingdom of Madagascar by a series of Merina nobles. The monarchy was ended in 1897 by France's annexation of Madagascar, from which the country gained independence in 1960. It has since undergone four major constitutional periods, termed republics, and has been governed as a constitutional democracy since 1992. Following a political crisis and military coup in 2009, Madagascar underwent a protracted transition towards its fourth and current republic, with constitutional governance being restored in January 2014. In 2025, a series of mass protests resulted in a military coup and the installation of Michael Randrianirina as president of a military junta.
Madagascar is a member of the United Nations (UN), the African Union (AU), the Southern African Development Community (SADC), and the Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie. Malagasy and French are both official languages of the state. Christianity is the country's predominant religion, with a significant minority still practicing traditional faiths.
Madagascar is classified as a least-developed country by the UN. Ecotourism and agriculture, paired with greater investments in education, health, and private enterprise, are key elements of its development strategy. Despite substantial economic growth since the early 2000s, income disparities have widened, and quality of life remains low for the majority of the population. As of 2021, 68.4% of the population was considered to be multidimensionally poor.
In the Malagasy language, the island of Madagascar is called Madagasikara (Malagasy pronunciation: [madaɡasʲˈkʲarə̥]) and its people are referred to as Malagasy. The origin of the name is uncertain, and is likely foreign, having been propagated in the Middle Ages by Europeans. If this is the case, it is unknown when the name was adopted by the inhabitants of the island. No single Malagasy-language name predating Madagasikara appears to have been used by the local population to refer to it, although some communities had their name for part or all of the lands they inhabited.
One hypothesis relates Madagascar to the word Malay, referring to the Austronesian origin of the Malagasy people in modern-day Indonesia. In a map by Muhammad al-Idrisi dating from the year 1154, the island is named Gesira Malai, or "Malay island" in Arabic. The inversion of this name to Malai Gesira, as it was known by the Greeks, is thought to be the precursor of the island's modern name. The name "Malay island" was later rendered in Latin as Malichu, an abbreviated form of Malai Insula, in the medieval Hereford Mappa Mundi as the name of Madagascar.
Another hypothesis is that Madagascar is a corrupted transliteration of Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia and an important medieval Indian Ocean port. This would have resulted from the 13th-century Venetian explorer Marco Polo's confusion of the two locations in his memoirs, in which he mentions the land of Madageiscar to the south of Socotra. This name would then have been popularized on Renaissance maps by Europeans. One of the first documents written that might explain why Marco Polo called it Madagascar is in a 1609 book on Madagascar by Jerome Megizer. Megizer describes an event in which the kings of the sultanates of Mogadishu and Adal traveled to Madagascar with a fleet of around 25,000 men in order to invade the wealthy islands of Taprobane and Sumatra. However, a tempest threw them off course and they landed on the coasts of Madagascar, conquering the island and signing a treaty with its inhabitants. They remained for eight months and erected eight pillars at different points of the island on which they engraved Magadoxo, a name which later, by corruption, became Madagascar. Jan Huyghen van Linschoten, a Dutch traveler who copied Portuguese works and maps, confirmed this event by saying, "Madagascar has its name from 'makdishu' (Mogadishu)" whose "shayk" invaded it.
The name Malagasikara, or Malagascar, is also historically attested. An English state paper in 1699 records the arrival of 80 to 90 passengers from "Malagaskar" to what eventually became New York City. An 1882 edition of the British newspaper The Graphic referred to "Malagascar" as the name of the island, stating that the word was etymologically of Malay origin and might be related to the name of Malacca. In 1891, Saleh bin Osman, a Zanzibari traveler, referred to the island as "Malagaskar" when recounting his journeys, including part of the Emin Pasha Relief Expedition. In 1905, Charles Basset wrote in his doctoral thesis that Malagasikara was the way the island was referred to by its natives, who emphasized that they were Malagasy, and not Madagasy.
Traditionally, archeologists have estimated that the earliest settlers arrived in successive waves in outrigger canoes from South Borneo, possibly throughout the period between 350 BCE and 550 CE, whereas others are cautious about dates earlier than 250 CE. In either case, these dates make Madagascar one of the most recent major landmasses on Earth to be settled by humans, predating the settlement of Iceland and New Zealand. It has been proposed that Ma'anyan people were brought as laborers and slaves by Javan and Sumatran-Malays in their trading fleets to Madagascar. Dates of settlement of the island earlier than the mid-first millennium CE are not strongly supported; however, there is scattered evidence for much earlier human visits and presence.
Upon arrival, early settlers practiced slash-and-burn agriculture to clear the coastal rainforests for cultivation. The first settlers encountered Madagascar's abundance of megafauna, including 17 species of giant lemurs; the large flightless elephant birds (including possibly the largest bird to ever exist, Aepyornis maximus); the giant fossa; and several species of Malagasy hippopotamus, which have since become extinct because of hunting and habitat destruction. According to the General History of Africa, these first settlers, the tompontany (masters of the soil/land), are thought to have been the Kimosy in south-central Madagascar, the Antevinany in the southeast, the Antankoala and Kajemby in the northwest, and the Rasikajy in the northeast. Newer arrivals formed marriage alliances with the tompontany, facilitating their gradual assimilation.
By 600 CE, groups of these early settlers had begun clearing the forests of the Central Highlands. According to the General History of Africa, by the 8th century the Vazimba (a "way of life" rather than ethnic group) had absorbed or violently displaced the first settlers, and had come to refer to themselves as tompontany. Malagasy popular belief, however, regards the Vazimba as the island's first inhabitants.
Arab traders first reached the island between the 7th and 9th centuries, and introduced Islam and the Arabic script (adapted as sorabe for the Malagasy language). Indian Ocean trade along Madagascar's Northwestern Coast came to be controlled by the Antalaotra, Muslim Swahili-speakers who had migrated to the region around the 10th century and intermarried with the locals, forming city-states such as Mahilaka and Irodo.
A wave of Bantu-speaking migrants from southeastern Africa arrived around the year 1000. Around this time, zebu cattle from South India were first brought, intermingling with sanga cattle found in East Africa.
By 1100, all regions of Madagascar were inhabited, although the total population remained small. Societies, driven by hasina organized, after which they competed with one another over the island's estuaries and bridgeheads. Oral histories describe bloody clashes and earlier settlers were often pushed along the coast or inland. An Arab geographer wrote in 1224 that the island consisted of a great many towns and kingdoms, with kings making war on each other. Assisted by climate change, the peoples gradually transformed the island from dense forest to grassland for cultivation and zebu pastoralism.
The period from 1500 to 1800 saw Madagascar's populations go from being mobile and unsettled to being organized largely into states. On the northern coast, Mahilaka was abandoned and replaced by Vohemar in the 15th century as one of the island's main trading ports, accompanied by Mazalagem Nova in the late 16th century. Portuguese navigators reached Madagascar around 1500, and sacked the port city of Sada (part of the Guingemaro kingdom) in 1506. Over the following centuries, the slave trade grew in importance as slaves were traded for firearms. In the late 17th century, Madagascar had an influx of pirates who had been expelled from the Caribbean, some of whom participated in local wars and married local women, although they were routed by the British navy in the 1720s.
The origin of the Maroserana, the dynasty of the Sakalava Empire, is uncertain, with Sakalava traditions holding that they originated from overseas and migrated to southwest Madagascar. The proto-Sakalava are thought to have originated from Sadia (located at the mouth of the Manambolo River). Historian Solofo Randrianja considers the Maroserana to have lived in south-central Madagascar, whereas Raymond Kent thought they originated in the southwest and first came to power among the Mahafaly.
Mahafaly tradition has Olembetsitoto as the first Maroserana sacred ruler in the 16th century, who was protected by an ombiasy (priest). Prior to 1600, only the north of the island was integrated into Indian Ocean trade; but in the mid-to late-16th century, European merchants (vazaha; "foreigners") began using the newly-named St. Augustine Bay in the southwest as a stopping point and traded with the communities there. The British attempted to found a colony at the Bay in 1645 but were expelled by the Malagasy.
Kent considered the Maroserana to have migrated and met the proto-Sakalava near the Mangoky River, who all traditions agree were skilled warriors. Sakalava traditions detail how a kingdom was founded along the Morondava River before 1600, called Menabe ("very red") after the red soil. In the late 16th or early 17th century, Andriamandazoala centralized the Kingdom of Menabe. Andriandahifotsy expanded the state and monopolized coastal trade. After initial hostility, he established relations with European merchants.
Around 1685, a succession dispute brought Andriamanetriarivo to power in Menabe when he expelled his brother Andriamandisoarivo. Taking this opportunity to expand north with his followers, Andriamandisoarivo conquered port cities along the coast, capturing Mazalagem Nova and killing the Antalaotra sultan, establishing his commercial capital at Majunga in the early-18th century and founding the Kingdom of Boina. How the Sakalava acquired territory in the south is disputed. Jane Hooper considers another expelled brother to have expanded south and founded Toliara in the Fiherenana Valley as an Andrevola tributary, whereas Randrianja thought the Maroserana to have come to rule there during their initial migration. Kent considered a brother, Andriamandresy, to have migrated east and founded the Antesaka kingdom on the southeast coast in accordance with Antesaka tradition. Hooper writes that Andriandahifotsy re-established relations with his brothers as the Sakalava came to control Madagascar's west coast and dominate trade.
In the southwest and south, conflict between the Mahafaly and Antandroy kingdoms in the mid-17th century caused the death of two Antandroy kings and saw Mahafaly split in two: Menarandra and Sakatovo, with Menarandra soon splitting further to produce Linta. In the early 18th century, a Menarandra king expanded east to conquer the Western Antandroy, though yet another split produced Onilahy. On the East Coast, when the Antemoro settled their lands they found Muslim settlers, the Zafiraminia, already there since around 1500. A conflict between the two broke out, and the Zafiraminia had come to rule the Antemoro kingdom by the mid-16th century.
In the southeast, the French founded Fort Dauphin in 1642. They intervened in local conflicts and raided for cattle, provoking insecurity. The Antanosy attacked the colony, although they were defeated by Flacourt's forces. Another attack destroyed the colony and resulted in the killing of French settlers who remained in 1674.
In the Central Highlands, Merina traditions hold that they encountered the Vazimba when gradually settling the highlands from the southeast, thought to have been completed by the 15th century. After peacefully coexisting for several generations, the Alasora king Andriamanelo, son of a Vazimba queen and a Merina man, launched a campaign to conquer the Vazimba.
Text from the Wikipedia article “Madagascar”, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.