Originally published in 1985, this book examines the rising of the menalamba, the Red Shawls, against French colonial rule in Madagascar in the 1890s. Using the words of the Malagasy themselves and the archives of the Malagasy kings and queens, as well as European records, it tells from the inside the story of an Afro-Asian society at a moment of crisis. In the century before the French conquest, rising tensions between modernising kings, self-seeking Christian oligarchs and reactionary guardians of the ancient talismans had weakened the capacity of the kingdom to resist. But just two months after the French occupation of the capital the menalamba revivalist movement sought to restore the customs of the ancestors and expel the French from the island. The civil war of 1895–9, which was fully described here for the first time, has cast a shadow on Malagasy politics ever since.
- ISBN13 9780521262873
- Publish Date 14 March 1985
- Publish Status Inactive
- Out of Print 30 March 1998
- Publish Country GB
- Imprint Cambridge University Press
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 232
- Language English