This book highlights the role played by the large Indian Ocean island in European oceanic trade between 1600 and 1800, as well as the consequences of these relations for the populations of Madagascar. This trade was not limited to rare products. While Madagascar occupied a relatively marginal place in the oceanic trade in enslaved human beings, external commercial connections played an important role in the island's society and economy.
The originality of the book is that Jane Hooper, the author, who earned a doctorate from Emory University and is currently a professor at George Mason University, illuminates the process of European globalization in the larger region and specifies Madagascar's role in it. Madagascar is almost as large as the largest state of the United States, Texas. In the seventeenth century, the local population probably did not exceed two million inhabitants. At its core, the book explores how and why the passage of more than 800 European boats over more than 200 years influenced the peoples of this vast area and considers how those people took part in global commerce.
Hooper focuses specifically on the island's role in providing foodstuffs for the crews of boats sailing on major shipping routes that passed through East African ports and led further east to Asia. This focus is unprecedented. Many previous researchers have called attention to this dynamic, but this trade has long been considered a minor force in the region in comparison to the trade in enslaved human beings, for example, or to the geopolitical rivalries involving European states and long-distance trade. What interests the author is not so much the enslaved people transported from Madagascar to distant markets or the luxury goods sought after by local elites. Rather, Hooper is concerned with those goods that are consumed in Madagascar and exported to boats which help to support long distance trade. This commerce involves a wide web of social, economic, and political networks and draws inland producers, especially those who grow rice, into the larger market. That circuit of production and trade gave shape to European globalization and drew in a significant portion of the Malagasy population, even those who were not in direct contact with European traders. This book relies on diverse primary sources, which are necessarily so, given the multitude of historical actors involved in ‘feeding globalization’ from Madagascar. Indeed, the nine chapters composing this book take place across about 175 pages and are supported by an impressive 109 pages of footnotes. The majority of these notes refer to primary sources, including Den Haag's Dutch archives material, particularly the fascinating merchant boats’ Dagregister of the Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie. This impressive work also leans on previous historians’ research. The abundant bibliography led the author through secondary sources that cover places as varied as Réunion, Mauritius, Cape Town, Paris, Aix-en-Provence, Oxford, Kew Gardens, Holland, and so on. Globalization obliges this sort of reach and span.
Various Indian Ocean thalassocracies, or states whose power derives from the seas, preceded the one upon which the author focuses, such as the Austronesian one which lasted several centuries. These other thalassocracies all participated in the shaping of Madagascar and certainly influenced later interactions and the period under study in this book. There are no doubt perspectives that could be gained from those realms, local ways of understanding and domesticating the burden of the larger outside world, that could help to place this particular chapter of globalization in a deeper historical context, what could be referred to as the longue durée perspective.
Paying tribute to the little-known works of some Malagasy authors, such as Gilbert Ratsivalaka, does not make up for considering that wider oceanic and historic context.Footnote 1 A focus on predominantly European sources risks skewing the events that took place in those distant times. The author focuses on violence as much as contacts and their respective consequences on Madagascar and its population, as well as the ways they were affected in one way or another by long distance trade.
It is also unfortunate that the author did not draw upon Malagasy oral sources, although she speaks the Malagasy language. After all, Madagascar and its inhabitants, even at that time, are at the centre of the study. These criticisms should not, however, detract from the interest of the book, which proves to be an insightful and exciting read. This book furthermore has the merit of opening future promising avenues of research.
As a conclusion, the author raises two fundamental points: why is it that Madagascar, which had served as a rice granary for ships for several centuries, can no longer feed its present-day inhabitants? For the author, this dynamic lies at the roots of Madagascar's chronic contemporary political instability. The second process relates to the role of globalization in the persistent resulting tragedy, for violence seems to be its lasting legacy.
