ABSTRACT
For three-fourths of the twentieth century, Madagascar subsisted in dependent obscurity, removed from international intercourse. Although more authentically Malagasy, the second republic remained dependent on external technology, capital, and markets—hence on the institutions of the triumphant West. By 1990, the revolution of 1972-1975 had evaporated under the pressures of dependence. Entering a third republican epoch, Madagascar remains a profoundly Third World country, its national destiny still bedeviled by indigence. The task of conquering Madagascar dominated French strategy for many months after the capture of Antananarivo by General Duchesne's forces. The ratcheting interaction between colonial policy and Malagasy nationalism evolved through a continuum of incidents, gestures, and policies that manage virtually to tell their own story. Malagasy nationalism was born as a struggle by the Merina to recover their lost suzerainty; after a generation of French rule, that struggle generalized itself as anticolonialism beyond particular Merina aspirations.
