The bloody queen of Madagascar

Like most of the African continent, the island of Madagascar was an independent nation at the start of the 19th century, governed by its own indigenous people. But by the end of the century, the island had fallen under French colonial rule. This is the story of the last queen of Madagascar and her efforts to resist French encroachments.

The woman who would one day become Queen Ranavalona III of Madagascar was born as Princess Raza Findrahiti on the 22nd of November, 1861, in the village of Ampareb near the city of Antananarivo. She was the niece of Queen Ranavalana II, who had ruled the Merina Kingdom since 1868. And as such, young Raza Findrahiti had a claim to succeed the throne.

Princess Rasafindrahiti was raised as a ward of the royal court and was given a Christian education. Her aunt had adopted the religion of the Europeans who had spread out across Africa during the 19th century. An intelligent student, the princess was soon married at a young age to Andriana, a member of the Malagasy blood nobility. Though this man named Ratrimo later died in a suspected poisoning, this was shortly before Queen Ranavalona II died herself in the summer of 1883. She did not have a clear and direct successor, and as a result, Princess Raza Findrahiti succeeded her aunt at the age of 21, becoming Queen Ranavalona III.

Ranavalona became the ruler of a kingdom that was at a political and cultural crossroads in the 19th century. For centuries, Madagascar did not have a centralized unitary ruling power but was divided among competing peoples and small states. This began to change in the 15th century when the Merina or Hova people entered the central plateau of the island and established a small kingdom there. The Merina soon began expanding, in part owing to the organization of a vast irrigation system that allowed them to drain local marshes and cultivate large amounts of wet rice in irrigated paddies. With increasing crop yields, the flourishing Merina Kingdom was able to support a great number of people as well as a more powerful bureaucratic state with a large army.

From its inception, the Merina Kingdom was headed by queens rather than kings, a peculiarity by European standards but a relatively normal feature of politics in the Indian Ocean at this time. One of these early rulers, Queen Rafalhi, began expanding Merina rule outside the central plateau of Madagascar in the 16th century. The power of the state was further strengthened in the late 18th century when King Andreanampoina Merina, also known as Nampoina, became the first Merina monarch to consolidate his power. While his armies, commanded by his son Radama, managed to secure control over much of the highland regions of the island, the process of expansion was then completed by Radama when he became king in 1810. He managed to make tributaries or vassals of the other kingdoms of Madagascar, thus largely uniting the remainder of the island under Merina rule.

But just as the Merina Kingdom was reaching the peak of its powers, a threat emerged from outside. European contact with Madagascar had been relatively limited until the 19th century. The climate and the prevalence of tropical diseases made the island unwelcoming to potential rivals from Europe. However, as elsewhere in Africa and Asia, the 19th century saw Europeans encroaching into the most remote parts of the globe for the first time. Native peoples had two options: they could try to maintain their traditional way of life and quickly get conquered and colonized by Europeans armed with guns and industrial technology, or they could attempt to adopt European culture in ways that would allow them to defend themselves.

Radama chose the latter option and gradually began implementing a policy of westernization and modernization in Madagascar. This latter policy was quickly reversed by his wife and successor, Queen Ranavalona I, who reigned from 1828 to 1861. A possibly fatal move during a lengthy reign of over 30 years. Although her successors attempted to modernize the Merina Kingdom again, it was not in a position to withstand any European nation that decided it wanted to take possession of the island. This was the situation in Madagascar just as Ranavalona III became queen in 1883 and just as the French began to take a particular interest in the island.

[Music] The young queen was crowned on her 22nd birthday, the 22nd of November, 1883. Shortly thereafter, she concluded a political marriage with the Malagasy prime minister, Rainilaiarivony. With the westernization of the Merina Kingdom during the 19th century, the power of the monarch had been reduced, and increasing authority lay with a cabinet-style government of ministers. Thus, in the years that followed, Ranavalona would primarily play a ceremonial role in the Merina Kingdom while her new husband, the prime minister Rainilaiarivony, largely ran the government.

Accounts of Ranavalona from the 1880s and early 1890s depict a woman who was strangely caught between two worlds. At royal ceremonies, she would be surrounded by the trappings of traditional Merina society, such as soldiers who fought with spears. But in private, she was a woman who had become accustomed to much of the court society of Europe. She would bring needlework and her latest crocheting project to cabinet meetings and imported most of her clothes from Paris or London.

But these outside influences had a sinister hue. For much of the 19th century, both Britain and France had viewed Madagascar as a target for colonization, with its rich natural resources and its strategic position on the sea routes of the Indian Ocean between the Cape of Good Hope in southern Africa and the Indian subcontinent. The island was of significant importance. The French had been given concessions to exploit the mineral wealth and forests of Madagascar by Radama II, who ruled between 1861 and 1863, according to the so-called Lambert Charter. But when the Merina government attempted to revoke this in the early 1880s, it became the pretext for French military intervention in Madagascar, just around the time of Ranavalona's succession.

The resulting Franco-Hova Wars would last for the next 13 years. The first Franco-Hova War, or the First Madagascar Expedition, began