Klara Boyer Rossol: History and Memories of the Makua in Western Madagascar, 19th to 20th Centuries

I propose to look back on more than a decade of research (2004–2015) on the Makua [Makoa, in Malagasy script], a group made up of the descendants of captives who were taken from South-East Africa (mainly from Mozambique) to Madagascar during the nineteenth century. They were named after the Makhuwa, the most important sociolinguistic group in present-day North Mozambique. While not all were Makhuwa from Mozambique, this name was used on the West coast of Madagascar to refer to all the slaves imported from East Africa, as well as their descendants born in the island. In Imerina, in the Central Highlands of Madagascar, they were called "Masombika", in reference to the port of Moçambique, an important center of slave trafficking.

In general, the terms "Mozambiques" or "Makua" were used in the nineteenth century to designate captives who were deported from South-East Africa to both the Atlantic (Brazil, Cuba, Louisiana) and the Indian Ocean (Mascarene Islands, Madagascar). Madagascar was a hub of the trade of "Mozambiques" in the South-West Indian Ocean. Several hundreds of thousands East African captives were thus introduced into Madagascar during the nineteenth century. A part of the East African captives was re-exported to neighboring islands, another part – the great majority – was enslaved within Malagasy societies. While the Masombika were declared free in 1877 in the territories of the kingdom of Madagascar, in the independent regions of the West the illegal slave trade and the enslavement of Makua continued at least until 1896, the year of the definitive abolition of slavery in Madagascar, which became a French colony.

Thus, depending on where and when they were introduced into the Big Island, the Makua have experienced different statuses and conditions. The Makua in Madagascar appeared to be a very heterogeneous group. However, the members of this group shared a common language and culture. In some regions of the West, the Makua identity and cultural practices were maintained for a long time. Some inhabitants of western coastal regions continued to reclaim Makua ancestors into the early years of the twentyfirst century. The witnesses I interviewed during the 2000s were among the descendants of the last East African captives deported to Madagascar during the second part of the nineteenth century. Their grandparents, sometimes even their own parents, had been born on the African continent.

To reconstruct the forced crossing of the Makua ancestors, I relied on a cross-referencing of oral and written sources from both sides of the Mozambique Channel, working on archive materials in five languages (French, English, Malagasy, Norwegian, Portuguese). I also explored material sources less familiar to historians, such as tombs, which are essential to understand the construction of ancestry by former slaves, and the persistence of servile practices in Madagascar.

My aim was to reconstruct the process of deportation and enslavement of East African captives who became "Makua" in Madagascar. They conducted a variety of group strategies, including on the issue of the return of the freed Makua to their countries of origin they situated in continental Africa. Their stigmatization finally highlights the limits of their social integration into West Sakalava society. The Makua appear to be the only descendants of slaves in Madagascar who were fully recognized as an ancestral group, having preserved and transmitted historical traditions and collective memories. One may wonder about the singularity of the Makua in the history of slavery in Madagascar.

Klara Boyer-Rossol holds a doctorate in African History. Her 2018 thesis, Entre les deux rives du Canal du Mozambique: Histoire et mémoires des Makoa de l’Ouest de Madagascar (XIXe – XXe siècles) (Between the Two Banks of the Mozambique Channel: History and Memories of the Makoa in Western Madagascar (Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries) was awarded the 2015–2016 Thesis Prize of the National Committee for the Memory and History of Slavery, France.

Klara Boyer-Rossol has contributed to several volumes on the history of slavery and on the history of Africa, among others, the collection edited by A. Bellagamba, S. E. Greene, and M. Klein, African Voices on Slavery and the Slave Trade, volume 1, 2013, Cambridge University Press; and to the UNESCO's General History of Africa, volume X, Africa and its Diaspora in the World, which is currently in press. She has co-directed and co-edited a volume entitled Les Esclavages en Afrique: Passé et présent, which will be published by Karthala editions (Paris) in 2021. At present, Klara Boyer-Rossol is continuing her research on the East African diasporas resulting from forced migrations in the South-West Indian Ocean during the long nineteenth century. She is a permanent member of the International Research Centre on Slaveries and Post-Slaveries.