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ENSLAVED MALAGASY AND ‘LE TRAVAIL DE LA PAROLE’ IN THE PRE-REVOLUTIONARY MASCARENES

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 November 2007

PIER M. LARSON
PIER M. LARSON
Affiliation:
The Johns Hopkins University
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Abstract

Malagasy speakers probably formed the single largest native speech community among slaves dispersed into the western Indian Ocean between 1500 and 1900. In the eighteenth-century Mascarenes, Malagasy parlers (dialects) served as a contact language, understood both by persons born in Madagascar and by those with no direct ties to the island. Catholic missionaries working in Bourbon and Île de France frequently evangelized among sick and newly disembarked Malagasy slaves in their own tongues, employing servile interpreters and catechists from their ecclesiastical plantations as intermediaries in their ‘work of the word’. Evangelistic style was multilingual, in both French and Malagasy, and largely verbal, but was also informed by Malagasy vernacular manuscripts of Church doctrine set in Roman characters. The importance of Malagasy in the Mascarenes sets the linguistic environment of the islands off in distinctive ways from those of Atlantic slave societies and requires scholars to rethink the language and culture history of the western Indian Ocean islands, heretofore focused almost exclusively on studies of French and its creoles.

Keywords

Madagascaridentityculturalslavery
Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of African History , Volume 48 , Issue 3 , November 2007 , pp. 457 - 479
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2007

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References

1 Archive designations employed in this article: ACCL.SC.SGGL=Auckland City Central Library (New Zealand), Special Collections, Sir George Grey Library; ACM=Archives de la Congrégation de la Mission (rue de Sèvres, Paris); BL.MD=British Library (London), Manuscripts Division; LMS=London Missionary Society Archives, School of Oriental and African Studies Library, Special Collections: AO=Africa Odds, ILMAU=Incoming Letters Mauritius; MNA.HB=Mauritius National Archives, Series HB; NAB.CO=National Archives of Britain, Colonial Office.

2 ‘L'Isle Dauphine est aussi peuplée que la France’, went a typical seventeenth-century observation about Madagascar's population. Gabriel Dellon, Nouvelle relation d'un voyage fait aux Indes orientales, contenant la description des isles de Bourbon & de Madagascar, de Surate, de la côte de Malabar, de Calicut, de Tanor, de Goa, &c. Avec l'histoire des plantes & des animaux qu'on y trouve, & un Traité des maladies particulieres aux pays orientaux & dans la route, & de leurs remedes (Amsterdam, 1699), 23. For the population of Madagascar in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, see Alexis Marie de Rochon, Voyage à Madagascar et aux Indes orientales (Paris, 1791), 20 (4 million); Boucher to M. le Vicaire général, Pamplemousses [Mauritius], 10 décembre 1805, ACM, Recueil 1504, 259v (3 million); R. T. Farquhar to Earl of Liverpool, Port Louis, Mauritius, 28 July 1812, NAB.CO.167.10, not paginated (4 million); J. J. Freeman to Revd. William Orme, Port Louis, 14 June 1830, LMS.ILMAU.3.3.B (5 million); William Ellis (ed.), History of Madagascar: Comprising also the Progress of the Christian Mission Established in 1818, and an Authentic Account of the Persecution and Recent Martyrdom of the Native Christians (2 vols). (London, 1838), I, 113–14 (4.45 million). By comparison, Norman Etherington has estimated the combined eighteenth-century population of the Xhosa-, Nguni- and Sotho-speaking regions of southeastern Africa at 550,000. These estimates suggest that more people spoke Malagasy in the early nineteenth century than spoke Kiswahili and all of the South African languages combined. Norman Etherington, The Great Treks: The Transformation of Southern Africa, 1815–1854 (Harlow, 2001), 25.

3 Inter-intelligibility among Malagasy speech varieties was reported as early as 1658 by Étienne de Flacourt, who wrote that ‘La langue est vnique & seule dans toute l'Isle’. Etienne de Flacourt, Histoire de la grande îsle Madagascar (Paris, 1658), ii v. See also Barthélemy Huet de Froberville, ‘Essai théorique sur la langue madécasse’, Port Louis, 28 octobre 1815, BL.MD.Add.Mss.18131, 5r.–5v. A plethora of modern studies and the experiences of Malagasy travelers generally support these conclusions about the past. However, some recent research suggests that the diversity of Malagasy speech varieties may be understated in the literature and that the Big Island's parlers have been diverging significantly over the last two centuries. See especially Leoni Bouwer, ‘The viability of official Malagasy in the language ecology of southern Madagascar with particular reference to the Bara speech community’ (Doctor Litterarum et Philosophiae, Department of Linguistics, University of South Africa, Pretoria, 2003).

4 This estimate includes both the East African and Red Sea slave trades departing the African coast, but excludes persons heading into Zanzibar and Pemba or into the Atlantic from Southeast Africa. Pier M. Larson, ‘African diasporas and the Atlantic’, in Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra and Eric R. Seeman (eds.), The Atlantic in Global History, 1500–2000 (Upper Saddle River NJ, 2007), calculated from Table 1, 134. The estimates summarized here are essentially aggregates of those found in the various chapters of Paul E. Lovejoy, Transformations in Slavery: A History of Slavery in Africa (2nd ed., Cambridge, 2000).

5 See Larson, Pier M., ‘Colonies lost: God, hunger, and conflict in Anosy (Madagascar) to 1674’, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 27 (July 2007), 345–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 Philippe-Albert Caulier, ‘Notes sur Bourbon par M. Caulier, 1764’, ACM, Recueil 1504, 55r.; Auguste Brunet, Trois cents ans de colonisation: La Réunion (Paris, 1948), 29; Hubert Gerbeau, ‘Histoire oubliée, histoire occultée? La diaspora malgache à La Réunion: entre esclavage et liberté’, in Ignace Rakoto (ed.), L'esclavage à Madagascar: aspects historiques et résurgences contemporaines (Antananarivo, 1997), 4–9; Sudel Fuma, ‘L'esclavage et le métissage: l'exemple d'une famille réunionnaise au XIXe siècle’, in Benoît Jullien (ed.), Île de la Réunion: regards croisés sur l'esclavage, 1794–1848 (Saint-Denis, 1998), 114–18; Gerbeau, Hubert, ‘L'Océan Indien n'est pas l'Atlantique: la traite illégale à Bourbon au XIXe siècle’, Outre-Mers: Revue d'Histoire, 89 (2002), 82–3CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 Robert Chaudenson, Le lexique du parler créole de la Réunion (2 vols.) (Paris, 1974), I, 462.

8 Théophile Frappaz, ‘Notice sur les vents, les courans et les atterrages de la côte sud-est de l'île de Madagascar, par Frappaz, M., enseigne de vaisseau’, Annales Maritimes et Coloniales, 12 (1820), 692–700Google Scholar; Donque, Gérald, ‘Le contexte océanique des anciennes migrations: vents et courants dans l'Océan Indien’, Annales de l'Université de Madagascar, Série Lettres et Sciences Humaines (1965), 43–Google Scholar.

9 Allen, ‘The Mascarene slave-trade’, 41.

10 Philip Baker and Chris Corne, Isle de France Creole: Affinities and Origins (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1982), 147 (Ile de France, 66 per cent in 1725); J. V. Payet, Histoire de l'esclavage à l'île Bourbon (Paris, 1990), 17 (Bourbon, 59 per cent in 1735). See also Jean Barassin, ‘Aperçu général sur l’évolution des groupes ethniques à l'île Bourbon depuis les origines jusqu'en 1848’, in Catherine Méhaud (ed.), Mouvements de populations dans l'océan Indien (Paris, 1980), 245–57.

11 Allen, ‘The Mascarene slave-trade’, 41.

12 Larson, Pier M., ‘La diaspora malgache aux Mascareignes (XVIIIe et XIXe siècles): notes sur la démographie et la langue’, Revue Historique de l'Océan Indien, 1 (2005), 143–55Google Scholar.

13 Philippe-Albert Caulier to Monseigneur L'archevêque de Paris, en la maison de Saint-Lazare à Paris, 20 juillet 1773, ACM, Recueil 1504, 220r.

14 Cited in Edward A. Alpers, ‘Becoming “Mozambique”: diaspora and identity in Mauritius’, in Vijayalakshmi Teelock and Edward A. Alpers (eds.), History, Memory and Identity (Port Louis, 2001), 134.

15 Contact languages in the form of pidgins and creoles are associated with trade and labor migration and the need for individuals with no language in common to communicate with each other. Fanakalo, Kituba, Lingala, Pidgin Ewondo, Shaba Swahili and Town Bemba are examples of other contact languages of importance in African history. John A. Holm, Pidgins and Creoles (2 vols.) (Cambridge, 1988), esp. I, 1–70; Salikoko S. Mufwene, ‘Contact Languages in the Bantu Area’, in Derek Nurse and Gérard Philippson (eds.), The Bantu Languages (London, 2003), 195–208.

16 Philippe-Albert Caulier to M. T. H. Pave, Saint-Denis, îsle Bourbon, 25 février 1764, ACM, Recueil 1504, 182r. Emphasis added.

17 See Pier M. Larson, ‘The colonial street: Ratsitatanina and Mascarene Créolité’, Slavery & Abolition (forthcoming, 2008).

18 Ranaivo Gilbert Ratsivalaka, Les malgaches et l'abolition de la traite européene des esclaves, 1810–1817: histoire de la formation du royaume de Madagascar (Antananarivo, 1999 [2001]), 36; Pier M. Larson, History and Memory in the Age of Enslavement: Becoming Merina in Highland Madagascar, 1770–1822 (Portsmouth NH, 2000), 53–4, 154; Gwyn Campbell, An Economic History of Imperial Madagascar, 1750–1895 (Cambridge, 2005), 226, 229–32.

19 Gustave Jacques Henri Julien, ‘Influence de la langue malgache dans la dénomination des localités de l'île de la Réunion’, Bulletin de l'Académie Malgache (4e trimestre, 1902), 163–85; Chaudenson, Le lexique; Baker and Corne, Isle de France Creole; Annegret Bollée, Dictionnaire étymologique des créoles français de l'Océan Indien: Deuxième partie, Mots d'origine non-française ou inconnue (Hamburg, 1993).

20 Chaudenson, Le lexique, I, 462, 465.

21 Megan Vaughan, Creating the Creole Island: Slavery in Eighteenth-Century Mauritius (Durham NC, 2005), xiv, 122, 207, 226.

22 Baker and Corne, Isle de France Creole.

23 David Johns to William Ellis, Port Louis, 9 Sept. 1836, LMS.ILMAU.2.1.C, 3.

24 David Ratsarahomba to J. J. Freeman, Port Louis, 6 Jan. 1849, LMS.AO.2.3.B; J. J. Freeman to Revd. Dr. Tidman, Port Louis, 20 Aug. 1850, LMS.AO.2.5.B, 2. See also Hardyman, James Trenchard, ‘Malagasy refugees to Britain, 1838–1841’, Omaly sy Anio, 5–6 (1977), 141–89Google Scholar.

25 Dictionnaire malgache—français rédigé selon l'ordre des racines par les missionnaires catholiques de Madagascar, et adopté aux dialects de toutes les provinces (Île Bourbon, 1853); Joseph Webber, Grammaire Malgache, rédigée par les missionnaires catholiques de Madagascar (Île Bourbon, 1855); Hevero tsara ny teny-anatra aminy ity taratasy ity: fa hampiala anao aminy fahotana sy hampihavana anao aminy Zanahary, ny fihevera’ nao azy. Le nouveau Pensez-y bien, traduit dans la langue de Madagascar (Île de la Réunion, 1861).

26 For the origins of the order see Pierre Coste, La Congrégation de la mission dite de Saint-Lazare (Paris, 1927); Pierre Coste, Monsieur Vincent: le grand saint du grand siècle (3 vols.) (Paris, 1932).

27 Local parish records remain an underexploited resource, however, and I have not employed them here.

28 When the letters were copied into the registers is not altogether clear, but references in them along with the same scribe's handwriting, make clear that it was after the Revolution. The copies preserve the original orthography, or at least attempt to. A careful reader will notice inadvertent slips into modern spellings.

29 Paul Durand, Histoire de la Mission des Lazaristes à Madagascar, vol. IX: Mémoires de la Congrégation de la Mission (Paris, 1866); Henri Froidevaux, Les Lazaristes à Madagascar au XVIIe siècle (Paris, 1902); Claude Allibert, ‘Tradition et modernité à Madagascar, présentation de l'oeuvre d'Etienne de FLACOURT’, Histoire de la grande isle Madagascar, édition annotée et présentée par Claude Allibert (Paris, 1995), 11–85; Noël Gueunier, J., ‘Le Catéchisme de Flacourt comme témoin des relations linguistiques dans le sud-est de Madagascar au milieu du XVIIe siècle, suivi du lexique du Catéchisme de 1657’, Etudes Océan Indien, 23–4 (1997), 67–147Google Scholar.

30 For reports of vernacular work, see especially ‘Lettre Escritte de Madagascar le 10e Janvier 1656 A Mons.r Vincent de Paul Superieur General de la Congregation de la Mission par M.r Bourdaise prestre de la mesme Congregation’, ACM, Recueil 1501; ‘Lettre écrite de l'Isle de Madagascar le 15. Januier 1664. par Mr Estienne prestre de la Congregation de la Mission a Monsieur Almeras Superieur General de la mesme Congregation’, ACM, Recueil 1501. Note that accents are missing in the originals.

31 The Propaganda Fide coordinated Catholic mission efforts around the world and was involved in many decisions concerning the allocation of various mission orders to evangelistic work in the Indian Ocean.

32 Caulier, ‘Notes sur Bourbon’, 54r. Claude Wanquet provides slightly higher numbers: thirteen priests in 1763 and eleven in 1789. Claude Wanquet, Histoire d'une révolution: La Réunion 1789–1803 (3 vols.) (Marseille, 1980–1), I, 72–4.

33 This amended provision was also part of the modified Code noir issued for Louisiana one year later, in 1724. Hubert Gerbeau, ‘La liberté des enfants de Dieu: quelques aspects des relations des esclaves et de l'Église à la Réunion’, in Jean-Louis Miège (ed.), Problèmes religieux et minorités en Océan Indien: table ronde (Aix-en-Provence, 1981), 51; Louis Sala-Molins, Le Code Noir, ou le calvaire de Canaan (Paris, 1993), Article 2, 94–5.

34 Peabody, Sue, ‘“A dangerous zeal”: Catholic missions to slaves in the French Antilles, 1635–1800’, French Historical Studies, 25 (Winter 2002), 61–2CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

35 Caulier to Monseigneur L'archevêque de Paris, 20 juillet 1773, 217v. See also Caulier, ‘Notes sur Bourbon’, 54v.

36 Gerbeau, ‘La liberté des enfants de Dieu’, 45–95; Claude Prud'homme, Histoire religieuse de La Réunion (Paris, 1984), 11–37; Amédée Nagapen, ‘Le catholicisme des esclaves à l'Ile Maurice’, in U. Bissoondoyal and S. B. C. Servansing (eds.), Slavery in South West Indian Ocean (Moka, 1989), 138–57. See also Vaughan, Creating the Creole Island, 171.

37 See Caulier, ‘Notes sur Bourbon’, 53v; Philippe-Albert Caulier to M. T. H. Pave, Saint-Denis, îsle Bourbon, 25 février 1764, ACM, Recueil 1504, 182v.

38 Caulier, ‘Notes sur Bourbon’, 55r.–55v.

39 Caulier to Pave, 25 février 1764, 181r.

40 Ibid., 184v.

41 Philippe-Albert Caulier, ‘Directoire des paroisses de l'Isle de Bourbon pour l'Isle de France’, 1 octobre 1763, ACM, Recueil 1504, not foliated; Nagapen, ‘Le catholicisme’. What follows on catechetical instruction is similar to what Vaughan writes in her recent book; both our studies are drawn from the same documentation: Vaughan, Creating the Creole Island, 217–22.

42 On catechetical instruction, Caulier to Monseigneur L'archevêque de Paris, 20 juillet 1773, 220r.; Raymond Brodeur and Brigitte Caulier (eds.), Enseigner le catéchisme: autorités et institutions, XVIe—XXe siècles (Quebec, 1997).

43 Catéchisme historique, contenant en abrégé l'histoire sainte & la doctrine crétienne, first published in about 1689; Fleury's catechism was later banned as heretical.

44 Caulier, ‘Directoire des paroisses’, manuscript not foliated.

45 Caulier to Monseigneur L'archevêque de Paris, 20 juillet 1773, 220r.

46 Caulier also composed a catechism in French creole. Vaughan, Creating the Creole Island, 218.

47 Teste to ‘Monseigneur’, Isle de Bourbon, 1 mars 1762, ACM, Recueil 1504, 189r.

48 Allen, ‘The Mascarene Slave-Trade’, esp. 37–9.

49 Caulier to Monseigneur L'archevêque de Paris, 20 juillet 1773, 220r.

50 Etienne de Flacourt, Petit catéchisme avec les prières dv matin et dv soir, que les missionnaires font & enseignent aux néophytes & cathecumènes de l'isle de Madagascar (Paris, 1657); Etienne de Flacourt, Dictionnaire de la langve de Madagascar (Paris, 1658).

51 Igou to Noiret [île Bourbon], 1734 ou 1735, ACM, Recueil 1504, 235v.

52 Caulier, ‘Observations sur les derniers écrits de M. Ante. Davelu, Curé de la Paroisse de S. Paul, à l'île de Bourbon’, [Paris], 6 mai 1785, ACM, Recueil 1504, 240r.

53 Ibid.

54 Caulier to Monseigneur L'archevêque de Paris, 20 juillet 1773, 217v.

55 Document entitled ‘Il y a à l'Isle de France cinq Paroisses’, no author, no date, ACM, Recueil 1504, 246r.

56 Charles Grant, The History of Mauritius, or the Isle of France, and the Neighbouring Islands, from their First Discovery to the Present Time, ed. Charles Grant (London, 1801), 466.

57 Gerbeau, ‘La liberté des enfants de Dieu’, 52.

58 In the French Antilles, the Jesuits and Dominicans maintained ecclesiastical plantations, while the Capuchins, who took stricter vows of poverty, normally enjoyed household servants but did not accumulate property in slaves and land. Peabody, ‘A dangerous zeal’, 70. For Catholic ecclesiastical plantations and mission slaveholding in other contexts see William Francis Rea, The Economics of the Zambezi Missions, 1580–1759 (Rome, 1976), 117–31; Dauril Alden, The Making of an Enterprise: The Society of Jesus in Portugal, its Empire, and Beyond, 1540–1750 (Stanford, 1996), 502–27; Thomas Richard Murphy, ‘“Negroes of ours”: Jesuit slaveholding in Maryland, 1717–1838’ (Ph.D. thesis, University of Connecticut, 1998); Margaret M. Olsen, Slavery and Salvation in Colonial Cartagena de Indias (Gainesville, 2004), 14–16.

59 Igou to Noiret, 236r.

60 Document entitled ‘Existence des missionnaires à l'île de France’, no place, no date [c. 1780], ACM, Recueil 1504, 244r.–248r.

61 Caulier, ‘Observations sur les derniers écrits de M. Ante. Davelu’, 242v.

62 Ibid. 243r.–243v., 247r. Attempted escapes to Madagascar litter the archive. See Prosper Eve, Les esclaves de Bourbon: la mer et la montagne (Paris, 2003).

63 Paul Olagnier, Le gouverneur Benoist Dumas: un grand colonial inconnu (Paris, 1936), 130; Wanquet, Histoire d'une révolution, I, 575–83; Nagapen, ‘Le catholicisme’, 138–57; Amédée Nagapen, Histoire de l'Église: Isle de France – Ile Maurice, 1721–1968 (Port Louis, 1996).

64 Teste to ‘Monseigneur’, Isle de Bourbon, 189v.

65 Caulier to Monseigneur L'archevêque de Paris, 20 juillet 1773, 221v, 222r.

66 The language is from Caulier, ‘Directoire des paroisses’.

67 These are the words Caulier used to describe the evangelistic technique. Philippe-Albert Caulier to Monseigneur L'archevêque de Paris, 20 juillet 1773, 220v.

68 Philippe-Albert Caulier, Catéchisme abrégé en la langue de Madagascar, pour instruire sommairement ces peuples, les inviter et les disposer au baptême (Rome, 1785), ‘Avis au Lecteur’, 3. This publication is discussed in Larson, Pier M., ‘Malagasy at the Mascarenes: publishing in a servile vernacular before the French Revolution’, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 49 (July 2007), 582–610CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

69 Caulier to Monseigneur L'archevêque de Paris, 20 juillet 1773, 220r.

70 Ibid. 221v.

71 Ibid. 220r., 222v.

72 Approximately 25 per cent of slaves disembarked at the Cape arrived from Madagascar as compared to some 40 per cent at the Mascarenes. For the ethnic structure of the Cape slave population (which included far more Asians than at the Mascarenes: some 50 per cent as compared to10 per cent or less) see Shell, ‘The Tower of Babel’, 11–39; Nigel Worden, ‘Indian Ocean slavery and its demise in the Cape colony’, in Gwyn Campbell (ed.), Abolition and its Aftermath in Indian Ocean Africa and Asia (London, 2005), 29–49.

73 Malagasy and their language at the Cape are the subject of forthcoming publication by this author. See also Bee Jordaan, Splintered Crucifix: Early Pioneers for Christendom on Madagascar and the Cape of Good Hope (Cape Town, 1969), 123–4; Vincent Huyghues-Belrose, Les premiers missionnaires protestants de Madagascar, 1795–1827 (Paris, 2001), 188–211.

74 Teste to ‘Monseigneur’, Isle de Bourbon, 189r.

75 Peabody, ‘A dangerous zeal’, 60–1, 66–7.

76 Alonso de Sandoval, Naturaleza policia sagrada y profana, costumbres y ritos, disciplina i cathecismo evangélico de todos Etiopes (Seville, 1627); Alonso de Sandoval, Un tratado sobre la esclavitud, ed. Enriqueta Vila Vilar (Madrid, 1987 [1627]); Olsen, Slavery and Salvation, esp. 68–9.

77 Linda M. Heywood, ‘Introduction’, in Linda M. Heywood (ed.), Central Africans and Cultural Transformations in the American Diaspora (Cambridge, 2002), 13. The contributors to this volume do not seem to agree on the ease of interlingual communication among Central Africans in the Americas.

78 ‘Catéchisme abrégé à l'usage des Insulaires de Madagascar, par M. l'Abbé Ante. Flageollet’, BL.MD.Add.Mss.18131.133r.–158v. For more on this catechism see Razoharinoro, Randriamboavonjy, ‘Fikarohana momba ny teny malagasy tamin'ny taonjato faha-XVIII’, Tantara, 9 (1980), 42–109Google Scholar.

79 Claude Bernard Challan, Vocabulaire malgache, distribué en deux parties, la première françois et malgache, la seconde malgache et françois, Par Mr. Challan, prêtre de la Mission & curé de la paroisse St. Louis, à l'Isle de France (Isle de France, 1773); Caulier, Catéchisme abrégé. For a study of these two works see Larson, ‘Malagasy at the Mascarenes’.

80 For the identity and role of these works in biblical translation, see Hamilton, W. J., ‘Abstract of MSS. Books and Papers respecting Madagascar during the possession of the Mauritius by the French. Presented by Sir W. M. Farquhar to the British Museum’, Journal of the Royal Geographical Society, 20 (1850), 75–88Google Scholar; William Edward Cousins, ‘Among old Malagasy books in the British Museum: the “Great Dictionary of Madagascar” by M. De Froberville’, Antananarivo Annual and Madagascar Magazine, (1889), 65–72.