Challenge: Industrialize Madagascar
- Thread starter Dargonaut
- Start date
First step would be to keep the British from renouncing their claims to Madagascar, I suppose. Try to keep a Thailand situation where the local government plays the British and French off of each other. Otherwise, avoid Radama II from signing the Lambert Charter and keep him a bit more moderate in terms of reforms, and that should be a fair start, if it has to be a 19th century POD.
On behalf of the rest of the board I’d like to thank you for not naming this thread ”could Madagascar pull a Meiji?"
Could Madegascar becoming a European settler colony ala USA, New Zealand, Brazil, Chile be a change that might allow for greater industrialization?
Maybe the highlanders could be moved to the land of other ethnic groups over time assimilating them?
Not a world power, but it could certainly end up as an important local player (and along with Ethiopia and Liberia if you count it, the only African nation to maintain independence). It could end up as the Thailand of Africa, maybe even beating a lesser European power in some mini Russo-Japanese War equipment.
Probably, but at the cost of getting an apartheid/Rhodesia-type situation where some Europeans, probably no more than 10% of the population (who have already no doubt massacred and stolen their way into getting the land in central Madagascar) rule over the majority of Malagasy who are just as poor as ever.
The Merina were much more vulnerable to malaria than lowland Malagasy groups.
Probably, but at the cost of getting an apartheid/Rhodesia-type situation where some Europeans, probably no more than 10% of the population (who have already no doubt massacred and stolen their way into getting the land in central Madagascar) rule over the majority of Malagasy who are just as poor as ever.
The Merina were much more vulnerable to malaria than lowland Malagasy groups.
They'd be killed
That happened OTL and to this day Merina on the coast are seen as privileged people
She was focused on forcing the entire island to submit to her and she was a mess.
Start earlier, Ratsimilaho and the zana-malata unife the Western, eastern and northern coasts.
Intergrated the technologies that pirates and sailors would possibly know: casting of cannons, guns, bullets, creating gunpowder, etc...
Conquer the Merina and Bestileo (who were actively being enslaved at the time by the East Coast anyways) and centralize the power in Tana
I just want to note that I don't mean a bunch of half Europeans conquer Madagascar, what I see is the Zana-Malata being like the Topasses of Timor who are "European" in the sense that they integrate European clothing, Creole language and alignment with their ethnic identity.
They don't have to direct descend from Europeans.
Thailand was an "asian tiger" by the end of the 20th century
I don't see Madagascar having a developmental timeline ahead of this
I don't see Madagascar having a developmental timeline ahead of this
It has a substantial amount of agricultural potential, as well as mining resources. Combined with its isolated position off the coast of Africa, and Madagascar could definitely have a much better economy than OTL.