Madagascar
Madagascar, officially the Republic of Madagascar,[a] is an island country comprising the island of Madagascar and numerous smaller peripheral islands. Lying off the southeastern coast of Africa, it is the world's fourth largest island, the second-largest island country and the 44th largest country in the world.[14] Its capital and largest city is Antananarivo.
This article is about the island nation. For the island itself, see Geography of Madagascar. For the film franchise, see Madagascar (franchise). For other uses, see Madagascar (disambiguation).
Republic of Madagascar
- 84.7% Christianity
- 45.8% Protestantism
- 38.1% Catholicism
- 0.8% other Christian
- 84.7% Christianity
- 7.3% no religion
- 4.7% traditional faiths
- 3.1% Islam
- 0.3% others
Unitary semi-presidential republic
c. 1540
6 August 1896
14 October 1958
26 June 1960
5,501 km2 (2,124 sq mi)
0.9%
47.7/km2 (123.5/sq mi)
2023 estimate
2023 estimate
42.6[11]
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Following the prehistoric breakup of the supercontinent Gondwana, Madagascar split from Africa during the Early Jurassic, around 180 million years ago, and split from the Indian subcontinent around 90 million years ago,[15] allowing native plants and animals to evolve in relative isolation; consequently, it is a biodiversity hotspot and one of the world's 17 megadiverse countries, with over 90% of wildlife being endemic. The island has a subtropical to tropical maritime climate. Madagascar was first settled during or before the mid-first millennium AD by Austronesian peoples,[16] presumably arriving on outrigger canoes from present-day Indonesia.[17][18][19] These were joined around the ninth century AD by Bantu migrants crossing the Mozambique Channel from East Africa.[20] Other groups continued to settle on Madagascar over time, each one making lasting contributions to Malagasy cultural life. Consequently, there are 18 or more classified peoples of Madagascar, the most numerous being the Merina of the central highlands.
Until the late 18th century, the island of Madagascar was ruled by a fragmented assortment of shifting sociopolitical alliances. Beginning in the early 19th century, most of it was united and ruled as the Kingdom of Madagascar by a series of Merina nobles. The monarchy was ended in 1897 by the annexation by France, from which Madagascar gained independence in 1960. The country has since undergone four major constitutional periods, termed republics, and has been governed as a constitutional democracy since 1992. Following a political crisis and military coup in 2009, Madagascar underwent a protracted transition towards its fourth and current republic, with constitutional governance being restored in January 2014.
Madagascar is a member of the United Nations (UN), the African Union (AU), the Southern African Development Community (SADC), and the Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie. Malagasy and French are both official languages of the state. Christianity is the country's predominant religion, with a significant minority still practising traditional faiths. Madagascar is classified as a least developed country by the UN.[21] Ecotourism and agriculture, paired with greater investments in education, health and private enterprise, are key elements of its development strategy. Despite substantial economic growth since the early 2000s, income disparities have widened, and quality of life remains low for the majority of the population.
Etymology
In the Malagasy language, the island of Madagascar is called Madagasikara (Malagasy pronunciation: [madaɡasʲˈkʲarə̥]) and its people are referred to as Malagasy.[22][23] The origin of the name is uncertain,[24] and is likely foreign, having been propagated in the Middle Ages by Europeans.[25] If this is the case, it is unknown when the name was adopted by the inhabitants of the island. No single Malagasy-language name predating Madagasikara appears to have been used by the local population to refer to the island, although some communities had their name for part or all of the lands they inhabited.[26]
One hypothesis relates Madagascar to the word Malay, referring to the Austronesian origin of the Malagasy people in modern-day Indonesia. In a map by Muhammad al-Idrisi dating from the year 1154, the island is named Gesira Malai, or "Malay island" in Arabic. The inversion of this name to Malai Gesira, as it was known by the Greeks, is thought to be the precursor of the modern name of the island.[27] The name "Malay island" was later rendered in Latin as Malichu, an abbreviated form of Malai Insula, in the medieval Hereford Mappa Mundi as the name of Madagascar.[28][27]
Another hypothesis is that Madagascar is a corrupted transliteration of Mogadishu, the capital of Somalia and an important medieval Indian Ocean port. This would have resulted from 13th-century Venetian explorer Marco Polo confusing the two locations in his memoirs, in which he mentions the land of Madageiscar to the south of Socotra. This name would then have been popularized on Renaissance maps by Europeans.[25][26] One of the first documents written that might explain why Marco Polo called it Madagascar is in a 1609 book on Madagascar by Jerome Megiser.[29][30] Jerome Megiser describes an event in which the kings of Mogadishu and Adal traveled to Madagascar with a fleet of around twenty-five thousand men in order to invade the wealthy islands of Taprobane and Sumatra. However, a tempest threw them off course and they landed on the coasts of Madagascar, conquering the island and signing a treaty with its inhabitants. They remained for eight months and erected at different points of the island eight pillars on which they engraved "Magadoxo", a name which later, by corruption became Madagascar.[31][29][32][30] Jan Huyghen van Linschoten, a Dutch traveler who copied Portuguese works and maps, confirmed this event by saying "Madagascar has its name from 'makdishu' (Mogadishu)" whose "shayk" invaded it.[33][29]
The name Malagasikara, or Malagascar, is also historically attested. A British state paper in 1699 records the arrival of eighty to ninety passengers from "Malagaskar" to what would eventually become New York City.[34] An 1882 edition of the British newspaper The Graphic referred to "Malagascar" as the name of the island, stating that it is etymologically a word of Malay origin, and may be related to the name of Malacca.[35] In 1891, Saleh bin Osman, a Zanzibari traveler, refers to the island as "Malagaskar" when recounting his journeys, including as part of the Emin Pasha Relief Expedition.[36] In 1905, Charles Basset wrote in his doctoral thesis that Malagasikara was the way the island is referred to by its natives, who emphasized that they were Malagasy, and not Madagasy.[37]
