An Economic and Political History of the region

Precolonial History: The Bemazava-Sakalava^[4]

When French military troops arrived in the Sambirano in 1896, this valley was indisputably the territory of the Bemazava, the northernmost dynastic branch of Sakalava speakers, who today form the fifth largest of the eighteen officially recognized ethnic groups of Madagascar (Covell 1987: 12).^[5] The Sakalava as a whole are organized as a collection of kingdoms occupying the island’s west coast, having been formed as a result of disputes over succession and the subsequent movement north by new founding dynasties.^[6] The Bemazava-Sakalava trace their origins to Boina, the royal and sacred capital that lies near Mahajanga on the central part of the western coast. The Bemazava dynasty was established by Andriantompoeniarivo (see figures 2.3, 2.4).^[7] According to oral tradition, he left Boina following a dispute over royal succession. Andriantompoeniarivo was accompanied by his followers and by a powerful moasy (HP: ombiasy) or herbalist named Andriamsara. As they traveled they carried with them royal relics, and among these was a container of sacred water. When the party reached the river valley, however, they discovered that the container had run dry. While trying to decide whether or not to turn back or to use the local river water to replenish their supply, Andriantompoeniarivo is said to have remarked, “it makes no difference, they are each/both water” (samy ny rano). Thus the Sambirano River was named, and it is here where they chose to settle.^[8]

In the nineteenth century, just prior to French conquest, the Bemazava lived in small villages that were scattered throughout the Sambirano. They farmed plots of dry rice and manioc, banana, and other fruits, but the majority of the land of this fertile alluvial plain was used to graze herds of zebu cattle (see Dury 1897). The Bemazava of the Sambirano appear to have been united into a loose confederation under a common ruler (ampanjakabe) who was the living successor of the tromba or spirits of the royal ancestral dead. An important royal duty involved the ruler serving as the representative for his or her living subjects in ritual contexts. It was the ruler, with the help of assistants (male assistant: ngahy; female assistant: marovavy or ambiman̂angy) and tromba mediums (saha), who invoked the royal spirits. The ruler also served as a mediator and judge in secular disputes. The Bemazava ruler lived in the coastal village of Ankify, while the island of Nosy Faly served as the sacred ground where royal dead were entombed and where the mediums for the greatest of the royal tromba spirits resided. On Nosy Faly the first Bemazava king, Andriantompoeniarivo, was laid to rest, along with his successors and other members of the royal family (ampanjaka). Today both Andriantompoeniarivo and Andriamsara are regarded by the Bemazava as their founding ancestors. They are the most important of the local Bemazava tromba spirits, and their mediums live on the sacred island of Nosy Faly. As will become clear in Part 2, these spirits and their mediums wield much power in the Sambirano.

2.3. Sakalava Dynasties of Madagascar. Sources: De Foort (1907: 130); Feeley-Harnik (1991: 80) after Guillain (1845); Ramamonjisoa (1986: 101).

Prior to 1896, the Bemazava were well aware of the existence of the French, who had been active in the north for approximately sixty years. The queen of another branch of Sakalava—the Bemihisatra of Nosy Be—had previously invited the French to her island. In so doing, she sought to gain a powerful ally against her enemy, the Merina of the central high plateaux (see Mutibwa 1974 for a discussion of Merina expansion in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries). She extended this invitation to the French only after she had failed to acquire firearms from the Sultan of Muscat: giving way to his conditions, she and other Bemihisatra royalty agreed to convert to Islam, but the Sultan only sent velvet hats, not arms (Dalmond 1840). In 1840 the French established their first permanent settlement on Nosy Be, and the members of this party included Jesuit missionaries and planters. The latter started sugar cane plantations that still exist today (they are administered from the town of Djamanjary). Although the Sambirano was not far from Nosy Be, contact between Bemazava and Europeans remained fairly limited due to the relative difficulty of traveling to the interior, and to the reputation of the fierceness of Bemazava warriors.

The Establishment of French Control

The end of the nineteenth century marks the beginning of the colonial era in Madagascar. In 1895 Madagascar was declared a protectorate and, in the following year, a colony of France. Under the direction of the military strategist Général J. S. Galliéni, the Merina monarchy was abolished and the queen, Ranovalona III, exiled to Réunion. French troops marched from one end of Madagascar to the other as part of Galliéni’s pacification program. Galliéni sent military expeditions to comb the entire island, collecting enormous quantities of data of strategic import, making note of relevant social and cultural institutions, and eventually setting up a network of military posts. From records made by commanding officers, it appears that the Sambirano was visited twice, one battalion moving west from the Tsaratanana ridge to Nosy Be, the other moving up from the ancient northern Sakalava capital of Boina (Boucabeille 1897; Brown 1978: 236ff; Dury 1897; Galliéni 1900, 1908; Raolison 1966; see also David-Bernard 1943). Lieutenant S. V. Dury, who led the battalion from the east, described the Sambirano as follows:

Dans ces plains [Sambirano and neighboring ones] l’herbe est abondante en toute saisons, ce sont des pâturages magnifiques, qui nourrissent les troupeaux les plus beaux et les plus nombreaux qui existent de la Mahajomba [Mahajanga] au Sambirano. Les boeufs y sont superbes et donnent de 100–150 kilos de viande; on les vends sur place 20 Francs du maximum.…Cette region du Sambirano est donc aussi très riche. Le débouché vers la mer, qui donne dans la large baie de Passandava, est commode et la construction d’une route simplement. (Dury 1897: 443, 445)

It was in 1896 that the first military post, under the command of Captain Verdure, was established in the Sambirano area in the village of Ambato. Ambato lay near the coast en route to the sacred island of Nosy Faly, the location of the Bemazava-Sakalava royal tombs. Within a few years, military men—some with families—had started to farm in the area, and by the turn of the century the Sambirano had become attractive to planters from the neighboring islands of Nosy Be, Réunion, and the Seychelles. In 1903 the French moved the military post to a more advantageous location inland and upstream and situated on a high hill that provided a spectacular view not only of the river but of the entire valley. Placed strategically at a major crossroads, it is around this post that the town of Ambanja eventually grew. From the buildings constructed by the French one may now look down upon the oldest quarter of town which encircles the bazarbe. Throughout the colonial era the post’s buildings served as the residence for French colonial officers; since Independence they have been used to house local Malagasy civil authorities.

By the late 1890s, the government of France began to grant land titles to foreign-born planters, titles that were authorized by Galliéni and issued from the national capital of Antananarivo. Within a few years the majority of the land that previously had been used and occupied by Bemazava had been transformed into large private plantations. Much of this land was acquired through purchases of communal grazing lands, transactions the Bemazava misunderstood. Many Bemazava were forced out of the choicest areas of the valley and onto indigenous reserves (FR: reserves indigènes), often pushed up against steep hillsides that were difficult to farm and unsuitable for grazing cattle. This policy of designating territory as indigenous reserves was unique to the northern and western provinces of Antsiranana (in which Ambanja is located), Mahajanga, and only a few areas of the high plateaux. Furthermore, Nosy Be and the Sambirano each had over twenty reserves, while Mahajanga had only two (Service Topographique, Nosy Be, n.d.). This period is also marked by a large exodus of Bemazava to the drier Mahavavy area that lies one hundred kilometers to the north in Antakarana territory. By the 1920s the Sambirano Valley had developed into one of the most prosperous areas of Madagascar. Merchants with origins as diverse as southern China, southern India, and Yemen came and settled permanently in the town, establishing a large market (the bazarbe) beside the river and just below the military post.

The Development of the Sambirano

It is important to realize that the development of Ambanja into a town and commercial center occurred as a result of, first, French occupation of the region and, second, the subsequent activities of the early plantations. Although it is possible that there was a Bemazava village at this location prior to the arrival of the French, a surveyor’s map drawn at the turn of the century depicts simply a military post with a flagpole to mark it. As the town has grown, it has developed along a clear axis, sandwiched between the fields of the large plantation fields of the enterprises that flank it to the east and west (figure 2.2).

The activities of a number of other foreigners reveal that Ambanja was growing rapidly into an important cosmopolitan center. The Catholic Holy Ghost Fathers from France were soon active here: in 1921 they performed their first Catholic marriage, and in 1936 they completed the construction of the cathedral. By 1927, surveyors were employed to measure property systematically and lay down landmarks for both private individuals and the owners of plantations, who thus acquired official deeds to their lands. An early road map of Madagascar, published in 1938, categorizes Ambanja as a commercial center, complete with a post office and lodging for weary travelers.

The development of the Sambirano into a plantation area was shaped primarily by two men, Louis Millot and Guy de la Motte St. Pierre. By 1905, each had acquired land grants from France which together covered nearly all of the Sambirano Valley. In the next few years Millot and de la Motte St. Pierre also bought out other smaller planters when their efforts to farm failed.^[9] By the 1920s a third plantation had become active in the Sambirano, one that is now known as the Compagnie Nosybéenne d’Industries Agricoles (CNIA). This was an extension of Djamanjary Sugar in Nosy Be.

Both Millot and de la Motte St. Pierre began by planting what was locally available. Millot chose his fields carefully, and it is said that he sent soil samples back to Europe for analysis before making large investments in his lands. He began by planting coconut palms, rice, and manioc for the production of tapioca. By the the 1930s, he had imported cocoa plants from the Ivory Coast, and today cocoa remains the dominant crop on Millot lands. In more recent years, this enterprise has also planted some pepper, as well as fields of perfume plants. De la Motte St. Pierre also started with coconuts, but soon switched to sugar. With the arrival of CNIA in the 1920s, sugar remained the dominant crop of the Sambirano until the 1940s.

After World War II, when the price of sugar fell on the world market, it was decided that the sugar companies on Nosy Be, near Ambilobe, and in other regions of Madagascar were sufficient to satisfy the exports needed from Madagascar. As a result, plantations in the Sambirano cut back on sugar production, cocoa production was expanded, and coffee was introduced as a new crop. Eventually cocoa and coffee replaced sugar altogether as the major export crops of this region. Although French planters maintained a monopoly over cocoa production, by the 1950s the government was also encouraging private farmers who had small plots to grow coffee as a cash crop. Tapioca production continued to be a major industry in the Sambirano until the 1970s, when the last factory shut down in response to a diminishing market. Meanwhile, within the last two decades, cashews—which grow wild in the drier areas to the north and west—have joined coffee and cocoa as one of the region’s three major export crops. As will become clear, coffee and cashews are important in Bemazava-Sakalava constructions of their local history. The meanings associated with common historical experience are played out through tromba possession, where coffee and cashews figure as prominent symbols (see Part 2).

Following the Socialist Revolution in 1972, all of the large plantations except E. Millot were seminationalized.^[10] Millot and the now combined businesses of CNIA/SOMIA (Sociéte Malgache d’Industrie et d’Agriculture) are the largest and most impressive enterprises in the Valley.^[11] These have grown out of the original farms of the two men, Millot and de la Motte St. Pierre. The plantation E. Millot had more than seven thousand hectares at its height in the 1940s, although it is now down to two thousand. CNIA/SOMIA, which possesses much of de la Motte St. Pierre’s original lands, at one time boasted close to a million hectares.^[12] In the Sambirano there are also a number of smaller enterprises, small private farms, and companies (referred to as concessions) which buy agricultural produce and prepare them for export.

The labor requirements of the cash crops grown in this region demanded a large and reliable workforce, since each had specific needs for both seasonal and general year-round upkeep and care. The plantations in other regions nearby—such as Djamanjary Sugar of Nosy Be—recruited prison labor from the south in the early 1920s.^[13] In contrast, the Sambirano quickly became well known throughout the island for the availability of wage labor, and so the plantations of the Sambirano did not find it necessary to engage in an aggressive recruitment of workers from other areas of the island.^[14] Unlike the Bemazava, who had (and still have) a reputation for being a fixed population, peoples from the high plateaux and the arid south left their homelands and settled in the Sambirano. For example, Betsileo—who are famous in Madagascar for their skills as rice farmers—came and settled on CNIA property as land tenants, developing the area around Antsakoamanondro, just north of Ambanja, into fertile irrigated paddy land. Antandroy, Antaimoro, and other peoples of the economically depressed south and southeast also came to work as manual laborers in the fields.

Effects on Land Tenure

Although many of the Bemazava had been alienated from their original territory through relocation, this same policy enabled them to maintain access to arable land throughout the twentieth century. In addition, numerous small villages and private family plots remained scattered throughout the Sambirano, interspersed with plantation lands. A perusal of colonial property records reveals that subsequent transactions of land involving Malagasy were uncommon during the colonial period, so that migrants were unable to acquire land when sales did occur. Instead, priority was given to members of the Bemazava royal family. This was an important trend during the colonial period, whereby the French granted royalty special privileges, assuming that if they could control the Bemazava rulers they could control their subjects. For example, the father of one of my informants was a member of the royal family and was among those royalty (ampanjaka) who were in the direct line of succession; in addition, he was a favorite among a number of French colonial officers. As a result, he was able to purchase several large plots throughout the Sambirano during his lifetime, including one in the 1930s which was nearly fifty hectares in size. Throughout the colonial period, pieces of land of this magnitude generally only went to Bemazava royalty and foreign-born planters.

To some extent, French colonial law favored all local Bemazava, and this enabled commoners as well to maintain control over valuable parcels of land in the valley, albeit smaller in size than those owned by royalty. Among those Bemazava commoners who remained landed, a bilateral rule of inheritance prevailed. Land was generally divided fairly equally among the spouse and male and female offspring when the parent (biological or classificatory) was either too old to farm or had died. For example, two of my informants (one male, the other female) owned two and four hectares of land each, where they grew primarily dry rice. Each had inherited their land from their mothers. The man was an only child whose father had died when he was very young, and previously his mother had inherited land, along with her mother and siblings, when her own father had died. My female informant could trace land inheritance among her kin through six generations. Each time someone died their land was divided fairly equally among their children (sometimes including favorite classificatory offspring) and their surviving spouse. In her kin group land was also acquired in four other ways: as gifts from royalty for performing royal service (fanompoan̂a), as previous residents of indigenous reserves, by periodically purchasing plots of two to three hectares each, or as a result of Napoleonic law, which honors the land rights of squatters who make productive use of land. These methods of land acquisition helped to offset the common trend whereby the size of inherited plots grows smaller with each generation.

Today, tera-tany continue to be favored over vahiny as a result of government reforms following Independence in 1960 and, to a lesser extent, from the sales or confiscation of large private holdings through the nationalization of large private estates that followed the 1972 Socialist Revolution. In the Sambirano, those who own land are truly at an advantage, for even plots rejected by foreign planters give high yields. Land, however, continues to become increasingly scarce, and, as the story below illustrates, it is a source of much contention among kin.

Zaloky’s Homestead

Zaloky estimates her age to be about fifty years old, although she looks as though she could be another twenty. She is Sakalava tera-tany, born and raised in an area which, in her childhood, lay on the outskirts of town; within the past twenty years, however, it has become a thriving neighborhood. She lives on a small patch of land (approximately one quarter of a hectare) which she inherited from her widowed mother. In the past she had a garden on an adjacent plot of land but now she is boxed in on all sides by new houses, several of which are concrete. She now farms a small field in her mother’s native village, which lies eighteen kilometers from town. Zaloky was married at age sixteen and she had four children. At age thirty-five her husband died; five years later she remarried (by common law) a Tsimihety vahiny named Marcel who would come each year to the Sambirano for the harvest season. He now works off and on at the enterprises. Because he is old and suffers from a bad back, however, it is difficult for him to find steady work. In 1987 he also worked as a night watchman.

The homestead on which Zaloky and Marcel live is dusty and in disarray; rather than having a neatly swept yard bordered by flowers, like most Sakalava homes, it is littered with metal scrap and old papers that get swept up by the wind and caught in the fence. Marcel sells these items when he can as a way to supplement their income; Zaloky also has two scrawny chickens that she keeps so she can sell the eggs. Their income is meager at best, and nearly every day they beg for food from their neighbors and the Lutheran church that is behind their house.

Her homestead is one that is a source of much conflict: ever since her first husband’s death her children have fought to have rights over this land. Since she married Marcel, two of her children (a son and a daughter) have filed a case in court to take it away from her. As Zaloky explains, her children believe that Marcel only married her for her land, and she states flatly that she certainly would rather give it to him than to them! Within the last year a disco has also been built next door, and the proprietor threatens them several times a week, saying he wants them to die so he can expand into their yard. He has already tried to tear down the fence, and so each day Zaloky and Marcel check to make sure it is in its proper place.

Zaloky’s problems are extreme: a tale such as this, involving children seeking to evict their mother from her land, is one most Sakalava in Ambanja would listen to in disbelief. Nevertheless, it is instructive, since it reveals the severity of tensions underlying the scarcity of land in the Sambirano. The fact that her second spouse was not tera-tany, but a migrant, brought familial conflicts to the fore. Zaloky’s story is one that threads its way invisibly through the following chapters, for she had at one time been a medium for a prestigious tromba spirit, and it was through this work that she met Marcel, who had often consulted her in times of personal crisis. The continuation of her story will appear in chapter 10, for ten years ago she converted to Lutheranism, a choice that (as the next chapter will illustrate) is an unusual one for Sakalava. As tensions with her children, and now her neighbor, have worsened, Zaloky has recently decided to give her land to the church, and the pastor has solicited the national center for funds to pay the surveyor’s and lawyer’s fees that will enable them to make a formal and legitimate claim.