ABSTRACT
Virtually a continent Madagascar has been administratively unified and culturally homogeneous for over a century without achieving a Malagasy nation state. The 1960 Republic had learned from its French predecessor to govern Madagascar by disciplined local administrations under central political control. Beginning in the latter seventeenth century, Madagascar experienced a consolidation of regional realms and chiefdoms into a larger state. From a Malagasy perspective, Madagascar is itself only a congeries of discrete "islands" strewn across a rugged landscape. The anomalies of Malagasy society multiplied under French authority. France had succeeded simultaneously in aggravating internal Malagasy hostility and stimulating Merina nationalism through as many outlets of expression as that vigorous people could find. Malagasy assiduity was to be exploited systematically by a new metropole convinced of the importance of its cultural message to overseas interlocutors. Potentially productive, reasonably organized, astute, Tsiranana's Malagasy Republic began to be unable to make its own living.
