European desires and imaginings of Madagascar did not conform with reality and, despite lofty aspirations, attempts to possess the island failed repeatedly. After all, many of those advocating colonization had never seen Madagascar. English poet William Davenant had only visited Madagascar in a dream, yet penned a lengthy poem about the landmass.17 In her book on English piracy, Margarette Lincoln notes that this “distant island” served as a sort of blank slate in the English imagination for “a range of topical debates.”18 But Madagascar was not really a blank slate, as it was home to a large indigenous population. Island rulers encouraged early European perceptions of the island’s bays as safe shelters for their ships. Given the long history of maritime trade there, Europeans found valuable goods already for sale on Madagascar’s shores when they arrived. From the beginning, however, colonists faced opposition from coastal leaders who were favorable to trade but would not allow Europeans to control their land or labor, particularly in areas of relative food scarcity such as the southern portion of the island. English and French settlers in these areas struggled to survive. European settlements also failed to thrive elsewhere on the island. The plans of Hunt were shattered after his proposed “plantation” and its settlers disappeared entirely from northwestern Madagascar.
Despite the shortcomings of their accounts, descriptions from early visitors provide us with some of the first glimpses of populations on the island. Portuguese, Dutch, French, and English traders, priests, and settlers wrote reports and letters about their successes and, especially, failures in dealing with island communities. For example, between 1648 and 1655 the French colonial governor Flacourt recorded lengthy observations about the islanders he encountered, including outlines of social customs, religious beliefs, and political structures, many of them hostile to French rule in the region. French officials were still referring to Flacourt’s influential writings more than a century later.19
Through their attempted settlements, European trading companies gained extensive knowledge of the island, and such information encouraged them to continue visiting Madagascar in search of provisions. Competition between the Portuguese, Dutch, French, and English for continued access to food and slaves lay just beneath the surface in European interactions with the islanders. These rivalries rarely developed into overt conflict, but instead encouraged Europeans to carve out separate spheres of influence and frequent a wide variety of regions. This story of failed colonial attempts and continued optimism explains how the island became a center for provisioning during the late seventeenth century and remained so throughout the following century.20
THE PORTUGUESE IN EAST AFRICA
Within a few years of sailing into the Indian Ocean in 1498, Portuguese sailors stumbled upon the island of Madagascar. In 1500, a ship commanded by Diego Diaz sailed off course to the west coast of Madagascar on the day of Saint Lawrence. While ashore, Diaz discovered he could obtain supplies of water and fish, as well as other provisions, from the islanders in return for knives, iron, cloth, and mirrors.21 Subsequent voyages of the Portuguese to the island of “São Lourenço” were similarly unintentional, as their ships landed on the island following harsh storms in the Mozambique Channel. Later voyages were sometimes intended to discover any survivors from shipwrecks.22 For the first decades of Portuguese exploration and trade in the Indian Ocean, Madagascar remained firmly outside of European commercial and military interests.
Portuguese vessels tried to fight against the powerful Agulhas currents that pushed southward around both sides of Madagascar. The debris left by the Portuguese ships on the southern shores of the island, an area that lacks natural harbors, was a testament to the power and danger of these currents.23 As European vessels entered the Indian Ocean, they were forced to choose between the inner or outer passage around Madagascar on their way to the northern Indian Ocean; both choices offered challenging sailing conditions.24 The Portuguese frequently opted for the inner passage, despite it being fraught with unpredictable winds and currents. By contrast, taking the outer passage around Madagascar meant fewer chances of running aground or losing time on their way to Asia, but the route presented dangers to the passengers on board, who usually required additional food and water by this point in the journey. To take the outer passage meant “the almost certain death of many,” according to one sixteenth-century Portuguese observer.25 Many Portuguese captains preferred to brave the channel and stop on the East African coast before continuing their voyages.26 Even after ships arrived safely at Mozambique Island (Ilha de Moçambique), their route to India was not assured. From November to January, monsoon winds blow from the northern Indian Ocean toward eastern Africa and then reverse between April and August.27 The Portuguese quickly discovered that to be caught in the southwestern Indian Ocean at the wrong time of year could mean slowed travel or deadly encounters with cyclones.28
MAP 2.1. Indian Ocean
Ships from the Portuguese Estado da Índia rarely visited Madagascar at first, but after the gradual accumulation of information about the large island, so close to their settlements on the East African coast, Portuguese explorers and traders expressed interest in visiting it more frequently.29 They hoped to find untapped supplies of spices and precious metals on the “very large island” so close to their East African trading posts.30 In 1507, Afonso de Albuquerque, the second viceroy of Portuguese India, wrote a letter celebrating the ready availability of cloth, gold, silver, and rice on the island.31 One man they encountered even suggested that clove trees grew along the northwest coast of Madagascar.32 In an effort to gain support from the Portuguese crown for further expeditions, Albuquerque asserted that the ginger in Madagascar was superior to that of India.33 Another Portuguese official later reinforced Albuquerque’s contentions, promising “that, if a caravel is brought to these parts [Madagascar and the Comoros] in the monsoon, great service will be done to Your Highness and that much gain will come to you.”34 In Madagascar, officials believed, the Portuguese could purchase “things which made them imagine they had reached India.” Once there, they would find that the “good people” on the island sold a type of pepper, as well as scented wood and wild cinnamon, in return for iron goods and cloth.35
For Europeans residing in East Africa, there were far more practical (and realistic) reasons to visit the island. Provisions had to be acquired continually for the many soldiers and merchants who lived in Portuguese forts and trading posts. The Portuguese could purchase rice, millet, sugar, and cattle from key trading centers in East Africa near Sofala and Kilwa Island, but these exchanges were prone to disruption thanks to frequent (often Portuguese-instigated) conflict in the region. Over the long term, these supplies were insufficient for the Portuguese military as well as their small, but growing, settler population.36 As early as 1506, Portuguese officials in charge at Kilwa Island complained they were unable to feed not only the men at the fortress, but also sailors left ashore by shipwrecked vessels, and African leaders were refusing to provide them with food.37 The Portuguese colony at Mozambique Island, a dry and largely barren island, faced similar challenges as it grew, especially after the building of a hospital for sick sailors by the middle of the sixteenth century.38
The Portuguese believed that large quantities of food could be obtained from northwest Madagascar, especially rice and livestock.39 This belief was reinforced when they became aware of frequent commercial traffic across the Mozambique Channel. Since the tenth century, ports in the north of Madagascar, home to an Islamized population, had attracted merchants and migrants from East Africa, the Middle East, and even the Far East.40 At least a dozen ports were identified in northern Madagascar by the late fifteenth century by the Arab geographer Ibn Mājid.41 The most prominent, at least according to sixteenth-century Europeans, was Massaliege (also referred to as Mazalagem, Mathaledge, etc.). The port was home to six or seven thousand people, many of them Muslim with ties to East African populations.42 Ports throughout northwest Madagascar functioned as entrepôts for the fertile interior of the island, as the bays on this coastline, such as Boina, were connected