ABSTRACT
The continent of Africa offered of numerous examples indigenous state formation across swathes of space and time. However, the question of indigenous state origins in Madagascar had been left untouched by French archaeologists who directed their main efforts toward the off-island origins of the Malagasy population. Madagascar had been a former French colony, so after fieldwork on the island, a stopover on the 'Ile de France' seemed a temporary respite, and certainly understandable/excusable given the many documentary sources available there on Madagascar. The French agenda of liberte, egalite, fraternite for all was accompanied both by Jesuitical and anthropological studies of the complexity of belief systems along with Marxist theoretical venturing among both state and non-state societies in Africa. Additional culture-traits identified by nineteenth- and twentieth-century British and French 'researchers' also have Madagascar facing the alternative world of the islands and coasts of the Indian and Pacific Oceans.
