University of California Press Pacific Historical Review

Cold War and Colonialism in Africa: The United States, France, and the Madagascar Revolt
of 1947
Author(s): Douglas Little
Source: Pacific Historical Review, Vol. 59, No. 4 (Nov., 1990), pp. 527-552
Published by: University of California Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3640238
Accessed: 21-03-2018 05:19 UTC
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Cold War and Colonialism in Africa:
The United States, France, and the
Madagascar Revolt of 1947
DOUGLAS LITTLE
The author is a member of the history department

in Clark University.
Just before midnight on March 29, 1947, seve

dred Malagasy guerrillas armed only with spears and
attacked a French garrison in northern Madagascar
island colony just off the east coast of Africa that F
annexed in 1896. Spurred on by the prospect of
independence and by rumors of United States su
rebellion swept through the rain forests along t
Ocean, leaving two hundred French soldiers and set
Within two weeks, the insurgents controlled an
the size of South Carolina with a population of o
lion. Although French Premier Paul Ramadier alr
one brutal colonial war in Vietnam and a grave
challenge from Communists inside his own coalitio
he swiftly dispatched 18,000 troops to crush the M
insurrection. When the shooting stopped in Decemb
90,000 Malagasy men, women, and children, nearly
cent of those living in the rebel zone, had died
combat, others in prison, but most from starvation
The author wishes to thank the American Historical Association, the Clark
University Faculty Development Fund, and the National Endowment for the
Humanities for financial support.
Pacific Historical Review ? 1990 by the Pacific Coast Branch American Historical Association 527
528 Pacific Historical Review
Few in Washington noticed the carnage in the

Ocean. Madagascar, like the rest of Africa south of th
was overshadowed during the late 1940s by more
concerns in Central Europe, the Eastern Mediterrane
the Far East. To be sure, strategic planners sought f
bases from West Africa to Ethiopia and coveted
continent's enormous mineral wealth, especially the
nium deposits of the Belgian Congo.' The administ
Harry S. Truman, however, had little understandi
interest in the rising tide of African nationalism th
sweep away European colonial rule during the nex
and a half. Indeed, the State Department would n
establish a Division of African Affairs until 1957. For most
foreign service officers, a tour of duty in Paris or London
a stepping stone toward the policymaking elite at Foggy
tom, while an assignment to Monrovia or Addis Ababa
nalled a career in decline. Not surprisingly, the promulg
of the Truman Doctrine on March 12, 1947, with all its im
cations not merely for Greece and Turkey but also for Fr
and Western Europe, was far more important to Amer
policymakers than the obscure Malagasy uprising that eru
half way around the world two weeks later. As a res
throughout the slaughter on Madagascar, U.S. officials si
ply looked the other way, relieved by the French display
imperial muscle and anticommunist elan.
The abortive Malagasy uprising has received little atte
tion in the English-speaking world, largely because schol
have focused on other more successful anticolonial strug
in South and Southeast Asia. Yet a closer look at the Mala-
gasy revolt confirms some unpleasant truths about U.S.
tudes toward decolonization and about the divergent rh
and reality of self-determination. In Madagascar, as
1. Waldemar A. Nielsen, The Great Powers and Africa (New York,

250-253. On the bases, see Melvyn P. Leffler, "The American Concep
National Security and the Beginnings of the Cold War 1945-48," Am
Historical Review, LXXXIX (1984), 350, 353. On uranium, see Gregg H
The Winning Weapon: The Atomic Bomb in the Cold War 1945-1950 (Ne
1980), 102-105, 240; and Jonathan E. Helmreich, Gathering Rare Ore
Diplomacy of Uranium Acquisition (Princeton, N.J., 1986), 15-41.
Cold War and Colonialism 529
many other parts of the colonial world, subject peop

believed that the Anglo-American Atlantic Charter of A
1941 and the United Nations Charter of May 1945 guara
postwar independence from a moribund European em
And like so many of their nationalist brethren, the Mal
were sorely disappointed. When a peaceful campaign sho
few signs of ending French rule in the months after V-J
Malagasy leaders like Joseph Raseta and Joseph Ravoahan
drifted toward more extreme solutions, inspired in so s
measure by Vietnam's Ho Chi Minh, whom they met
in Paris in 1946. With France teetering on the brink
left-wing cataclysm and with Malagasy nationalists li
however tangentially, to the communist Viet Minh, few
officials doubted in early 1947 that a French victory in M
gascar was in the best interests of the Free World.
Except for naturalists bedazzled by Madagascar's ex

flora and fauna and geologists intrigued by its brick-red
few Americans could have found the world's fourth larg
island on a map in 1947.2 The first U.S. contacts with
"Great Red Island," however, actually dated from the
eighteenth century. New England whalers were plyin
waters around Madagascar as early as the 1790s, and f
years later several American trading companies had of
in Tananarive, the Malagasy capital, from which they do
nated the local textile market.3 As the United States acceler-
ated its drive for commercial expansion during the late
nineteenth century, Madagascar, which lay along the sea lanes
connecting the South Atlantic and the Indian oceans, loomed
ever larger. Commodore Robert Shufeldt came close to obtain-
ing a coaling station on the island's northwest coast in 1879,
two years later Consul W. W. Robinson negotiated a commer-
cial treaty with Queen Ranavalona, and by the late 1880s
2. This is still very much the case. See Alex Shoumatoff, "Our Far-Flung
Correspondents (Madagascar)," New Yorker, LXIV (March 7, 1988), 62-83.
3. Chase Salmon Osborn, Madagascar: Land of the Man-Eating Tree (New
York, 1924), 74-76; Peter Duignan and L. H. Gann, The United States and Africa:
A History (New York, 1984), 68-69, 75.
American missionaries and explorers had begun to p

Madagascar's largely uncharted interior.4
Nevertheless, by the time Shufeldt and Robinson
on the scene, France was already in the final stages
hundred year quest to incorporate Madagascar into it
French efforts to impose a protectorate on the islan
1880s were thwarted by Rainilaiarivony, the Malaga
minister, who received quiet encouragement from U
cials in Tananarive and Washington. But the Queen
prime minister with their American friends were n
for the 3,500 man French invasion force which lande
on the northwestern coast of Madagascar. Within a ye
had fitted the final insular piece of its African emp
place despite some angry protests from the Unite
During the next half-century, the French colonialist
pered in relative isolation, working the island's rich
and mica deposits, planting coffee and rice, and putt
nationalist stirrings in 1915 and 1929. Even the fall o
in June 1940 had little initial impact on Madagascar,
late as December 1941 no anticolonial movement com
to those in Syria or Vietnam had emerged to chall
increasingly fragile French rule.6
In the days just prior to Pearl Harbor, howev
officials became alarmed over rumors that "Japanes
tion of Madagascar had been agreed to by the Vichy
ment under German pressure."7 Although France re
4. Walter LaFeber, The New Empire: An Interpretation of Ameri

sion, 1860-1898 (Ithaca, N.Y., 1963), 39-46; David Pletcher, The Awk
American Foreign Relations under Garfield and Arthur (Colombia,
227-230; Duignan and Gann, United States and Africa, 149-150, 176.
5. Phares M. Mutibwa, The Malagasy and the Europeans: Madaga
eign Relations, 1861-1895 (London, 1974), 236-237, 274-275; Pletcher
Years, 230-233; Russell Howe, Along the Afric Shore: An Historic Sur
Centuries of African Relations (New York, 1975), 52; Conrad Keller,
Mauritius, and the Other East-African Islands (1901; New York, 1969), 1
6. Raymond Kent, From Madagascar to the Malagasy Republic (N
1962), 63-86; Hubert Deschamps, "France in Black Africa and M
between 1920 and 1945," in L. H. Gann and Peter Duignan, eds., Col
Africa 1870-1960 (4 vols., Cambridge, Eng., 1970), II, 245-246.
7. Sumner Welles to William Leahy, Nov. 27, 1941, file 851W.00
Department Central Decimal File, Record Group 59, National Archives,
Washington, D.C. (hereafter cited as RG 59, NA).
vowed never to turn the huge island over to Japan, Frank

Roosevelt and Winston Churchill continued to worry that
the British Prime Minister put it on February 7, 1942, "t
Japanese might well turn up [at Madagascar] one of th
fine days, and Vichy will offer no more resistance there t
in French Indo-China." Tokyo would then be able to "p
lyse our whole convoy route both to the Middle and to
Far East."8 Determined "to prevent Madagascar from falli
into Japanese hands," U.S. and U.K. military planners d
up contingency plans on March 11 to seize Diego Suarez, t
deep water port at the island's northern tip. During the n
week, Roosevelt and Churchill agreed to move forward wi
the operation, code-named IRONCLAD.9
At first, Roosevelt insisted that the American role be
limited to over-the-horizon naval support and that the Mada-
gascar operation be presented as a purely British affair. The
United States, he told Churchill on April 3, was "the only
nation that can intervene diplomatically with any hope of
success with Vichy," and such influence might be critical to
the Anglo-American invasion of North Africa already being
planned for the fall.1o The return of the avowedly pro-Nazi
Pierre Laval as premier later that same month, however,
chilled considerably relations between Washington and Vichy.
On April 28 Roosevelt assured Churchill that IRONCLAD
would receive full public U.S. approval and, if necessary, the
support of American troops and warships as well.11 But to
8. Leahy to Cordell Hull, Nov. 29, 1941, file 740.0011 European War/
16959; Leahy to Hull, Feb. 27, 1942, file 740.0011 Pacific War/1994; memoran-
dum by Welles, March 1, 1942, file 851W.00/3-1142, RG 59, NA; Leahy to
Welles, March 12, 1942, U.S. Dept. of State, Foreign Relations of the United States,
1942 (3 vols., Washington, D.C., 1960-1962), II, 695-696; Franklin D. Roosevelt
to Winston Churchill, Jan. 29, 1942, and Churchill to FDR, Feb. 7, 1942, in
Warren Kimball, ed., Churchill & Roosevelt: The Complete Correspondence
(3 vols., Princeton, N.J., 1984), I, 334-335, 350.
9. Dwight Eisenhower to Welles, March 16, 1942, file 851W.20/2, RG 59,
NA; Churchill to FDR, March 14, 1942, and FDR to Churchill, March 16,
1942, in Kimball, ed., Churchill & Roosevelt, I, 404-406.
10. Churchill to FDR, March 27, 1942, and FDR to Churchill, April 3,
1942, in Kimball, ed., Churchill & Roosevelt, I, 433-434, 441; William Langer,
Our Vichy Gamble (New York, 1947), 389.
11. Julian G. Hurstfield, America and the French Nation, 1939-1945 (Chapel
Hill, N.C., 1986), 80-81; Churchill to FDR, and FDR to Churchill, April 28,
1942, in Kimball, ed., Churchill & Roosevelt, I, 475-477.
minimize the diplomatic fallout at Vichy as much as

when the British Tommies clambered ashore at Dieg
on May 5, 1942, the White house announced that
car will, of course, be restored to France after the w
privately assured the Laval regime that the island w
held in trust" like Syria and other parts of the French e
Although Britain managed to secure the port fac
Diego Suarez by mid-May, sporadic fighting again
forces continued throughout the summer. Becau
CLAD had "not resulted in adequate safeguards aga
penetration," on September 10 the United States gave
ing to a broader British plan to occupy the entire is
by early November Madagascar was finally un
control.l3
No sooner was the British occupation complete, however,
than General Charles de Gaulle pressed Whitehall to affirm
its intention to restore Madagascar to France by permitting
his own Free French regime to administer the island's inter-
nal affairs. Although both U.S. and U.K. officials worried
that such an arrangement might complicate the Allied war
effort in the Indian Ocean, Washington concurred in Lon-
don's Solomonic December 14, 1942, decision to retain its own
responsibility for Madagascar's defense but to transfer the
civil administration to the Free French.14 The awkward
arrangement at Tananarive was bound to exacerbate e
Anglo-American difficulties with De Gaulle, who r
the far-flung pieces of the Free French empire as ste
stones toward formal recognition as the legitimate
of France.'5 "What does recognize mean?" Churchil
12. "Occupation of Madagascar by the British, 4 May 1942," Dep
of State Bulletin (May 9, 1942), 391; Hull to Pinckney Tuck May 4, 194
Relations, 1942, II, 698-699; John Winant to Hull, May 7, 1942, file 85
RG 59, NA; Jean-Donald Miller, "The United States and Colonial Su
Africa, 1939-1945" (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Connecticut, 1981
13. Nigel Heseltine, Madagascar (London, 1971), 168-171; Lord
of Rodd, British Military Administration of Occupied Territories in Africa d
Years, 1941-1947 (London, 1948), 209-214; "British Military Operation
agascar, 10 September 1942," Department of State Bulletin (Sept. 12, 1942
14. Winant to Hull, Oct. 28, Nov. 18, and Dec. 14, 1942, files 851W.01/20,
/23, and /25, RG 59, NA.
15. Fortunately, De Gaulle appears never to have learned that Roosevelt
and Churchill had briefly placed Madagascar "under active consideration"
Roosevelt after one of De Gaulle's supercilious outburs

July 1943. "One can recognize a man as an emperor or
grocer." Yet both eventually agreed they had no choice bu
regularize the haughty general's control over the liber
portions of the French empire, "including Madagascar."1
No one on either side of the Atlantic appears ever to h
given the possibility of Malagasy independence a sec
thought. To be sure, the Office of Strategic Services
speculated as early as May 1942 that wartime disloca
might spark anticolonial protests, but U.S. intelligence t
comfort that Malagasy nationalism "hitherto has not
ously menaced French control.""7 Nevertheless, the A
occupation quickly dispelled any remaining illusions a
the invincibility of France among the island's nationa
who secretly contacted British and American officials du
1943 to discuss alternatives to the restoration of French
rule.18 In February 1944, Joseph Ravoahangy, a Tananar
physician, openly appealed for U.S. support for Malaga
independence, citing article three of the Atlantic Chart
American Consul Clifton Wharton, however, did "not expe
any important development from the Nationalists," an
warned Washington that to encourage their cause "would b
most ill-advised, because such action would not only be con
trary to our war effort, but might possibly retard the resto
tion of France and her colonial empire."19
Official U.S. policy toward the dark continent at the en
of World War II reflected Wharton's premise that, once th
Axis powers were defeated, the rehabilitation of Europe m
take precedence over the decolonialization of Africa. As ear
as August 1943, Assistant Secretary of State Henry Villa
as a possible postwar haven for Jewish refugees in Europe. See FDR to

Churchill, July 8, 1943, in Kimball, ed., Churchill & Roosevelt, II, 315-316.
16. Churchill to FDR, July 21, 1943, ibid., II, 334-335.
17. OSS Research and Analysis Report 733, "Madagascar," May 5, 194
in Paul Kesaris, ed., O.S.S./State Department Intelligence and Research Repor
Africa 1941-1961 (Microfilm edition, 11 reels, Washington, D.C., 1980), reel
18. Alain Spacensky, Madagascar: Cinquante ans de vie politique (Pari
1970), 39; Jacques Tronchon, L'insurrection malgache de 1947: essai d'interpretat
historique (Paris, 1974), 24.
19. Ravoahangy to Wharton, Feb. 25, 1944, enclosed in Wharton to Hu
April 24, 1944, file 851W.00/24, RG 59, NA.
had remarked that, the Atlantic Charter notwithstan

United States "will be less hasty in reaching conclusio
Africa" than our European allies feared or than our
friends hoped. Of course, African "self-governme
desirable goal." But because "instant liberation of all
encies from external control" would unleash "chaos and con-
fusion," Villard emphasized that Africa's "great masses
inexperienced people" must be prepared to accept continu
European tutelage along the road to independence.20 In
case of France, most Americans expected that road to be lo
As Ralph Bunche, the chief of the State Department's D
sion of Dependent Areas, put it in April 1944, De Gaulle w
operating "with the basic principle that French Africa belo
solely to France and is an exclusively French affair." T
Roosevelt administration affirmed this principle during t
following twelve months by scuttling plans for an ill-defin
system of mandates, by redeploying American forces fro
Africa to the Far East, and by acquiescing in the restorat
of French rule from Tunis to Tananarive.21
Ironically, it was De Gaulle's own efforts to minimize
local resistance to restored French rule, not loose American
talk about self-determination, that sparked a revolution o
rising expectations among African nationalists like Madagas
car's Ravoahangy in the final months of World War II. Rene
Pleven, the Free French colonial minister, had visited Tanan-
arive in December 1943 to discuss postwar power-sharing
with Malagasy leaders, and De Gaulle himself, in his cel
brated Brazzaville Statement a month later, pledged tha
Madagascar and other African colonies would receive rep
resentation in Paris once the Assembl'e Nationale was
reconstituted.22
20. Henry Villard, "American Relations with Africa," Aug. 19, 1943,
Department of State Bulletin (Aug. 21, 1943), 103-109.
21. William Roger Louis, Imperialism at Bay: The United States and the
Decolonization of the British Empire, 1941-1945 (New York, 1978), 43-47, 386-389.
Bunche is quoted on page 46.
22. Tronchon, L'insurrection malgache, 26-27; Deschamps, "France in Black
Africa & Madagascar," 248-249; D. Bruce Marshall, "Free France in Africa:
Gaullism and Colonialism," in Prosser Gifford and William Roger Louis,
eds., France and Britain in Africa: Imperial Rivalry and Colonial Rule, (New Haven,
Conn., 1971), 714-729.
During the next two years, Ravoahangy and Joseph

Raseta, another physician-turned-activist, worked ceaselessl
to transform Gaullist rhetoric into Malagasy reality. The
campaign for self-government moved into high gear in Oct
ber 1945, when Ravoahangy delivered a stirring speech i
Tananarive pointing to the Atlantic Charter and the United
Nations as the cornerstones of "a new world order where the
people will be sovereign." Four months later Raseta announced
the formation of the Mouvement Democratique de la Reno-
vation Malgache (MDRM), a nationalist coalition whose
gradualist program was, according to U.S. officials, loosely
modelled on FDR's "Four Freedoms." Later that spring the
MDRM won two-thirds of the seats in the newly created Mal-
agasy assembly, which in turn selected Ravoahangy and Raseta
as the island's representatives in Paris.23
By the time the two Malagasy deputies took their seats in
the Assembliee Nationale in the summer of 1946, the French
empire was visibly crumbling. With De Gaulle on the side-
lines after a bitter dispute with the architects of the Fourth
Republic, a series of center-left cabinets fought a losing battle
to retain French protectorates over Syria and Lebanon, strug-
gled to counter the rising tide of nationalism in Algeria and
Tunisia, and plunged ever deeper into a bloody jungle war
in Vietnam.24 Almost at once Ravoahangy and Raseta pressed
Colonial Minister Marius Moutet to implement Pleven's ear-
lier autonomy plan as a first step toward Malagasy indepen-
dence. Already under siege from Algiers to Hanoi, Moutet
was in no mood for further concessions at Tananarive, espe-
cially once he learned that the MDRM deputies had met
with Ho Chi Minh, who was also in Paris seeking a truce.
Frustrated by the lack of progress in France, during the
autumn of 1946 radical nationalists in rural Madagascar
23. Ravoahangy speech, Oct. 5, 1945, in Tronchon, L'insurrection malgache,
345-349; Kent, From Madagascar, 90-94; Roger Pascal, La r?publique malgache
(Paris, 1965), 34-36; Robert Fernald to State Dept., Feb. 25, 1946, file
851W.00/2-2546, RG 59, NA.
24. William Roger Louis, The British Empire in the Middle East: Arab
Nationalism, the United States, and Postwar Imperialism (New York, 1984), 147-156;
Alistair Horne, Savage War of Peace: Algeria, 1954-1962 (New York, 1977), 23-43,
69-79; R. E. M. Irving, The First Indochina War: French and American Policy,
1945-54 (London, 1975), 27-34.
began to organize "secret societies" composed mainly

agasy conscripts recently mustered out of the Fren
after serving ably in World War II. Although R
Ravoahangy in Paris cautioned their followers in Ta
against any resort to violence, early in the new yea
MDRM firebrands established contact with the secret socie-
ties, which were already preparing for the March uprising
U.S. officials viewed the Fourth Republic's struggle
retain its empire in Madagascar and elsewhere against
background of the rapidly unfolding Soviet-American
frontation in Europe. Washington had acquiesced in t
French return to Vietnam in early 1945 only with some r
tance, and as late as May of that same year the Truman adm
istration had struck an anticolonial pose and helped e
France out of Syria and Lebanon.26 Just twelve months la
however, Harry Truman and his top aides were prepared
airlift U.S. troops into Paris to prevent a communist c
and by late 1946 American policymakers regarded the Fr
presence in North Africa and Southeast Asia as critical to
emerging strategy of containment.27 American hopes fo
stable pro-Western France suffered a serious setback in Ja
25. Kent, From Madagascar, 108-109; Tronchon, L'insurrection malgac

29-36, 113-114; Maureen Covell, Madagascar: Politics, Economics and So
(London, 1987), 25-26. On the links to Ho Chi Minh, see the statement by
MDRM's Jacques Rabemananjara, April 21, 1947, in Tronchon, L'insurre
malgache, 335-337. Spacensky (Madagascar, 28, 52) claims that Malagasy na
alists had first encountered Ho in 1920 at Tours, where they worked with
to press for French decolonization in Africa and Asia.
26. On Roosevelt's reluctant decision to allow the French to reoccu
Indochina, see Walter LaFeber, "Roosevelt, Churchill, and Indochina, 1942-
1945," American Historical Review, LXXX (1975), 1287-1294. On the Truman
administration's opposition to French control of Syria and Lebanon, see
Phillip J. Baram, The Department of State in the Middle East, 1919-1945 (Philadel-
phia, 1978), 147-150; and memorandum by Joseph Grew, May 31, 1945, U.S.
Dept. of State, Foreign Relations, 1945, (9 vols., Washington, D.C., 1967-1969),
VIII, 1120-1121.
27. For American concerns about instability in metropolitan France, see
War Dept. to Joseph T. McNarney, May 3, 1946, and memorandum by John
Hickerson, May 6, 1946, U.S. Dept. of State, Foreign Relations, 1946 (11 vols.,
Washington, D.C., 1969-1972), V, 434-438. On North Africa, see Jefferson
Caffery to James Byrnes, Oct. 4, 1946; memorandum by Harry H. Schwartz,
Dec. 19, 1946; and Loy Henderson to Dean Acheson, [Dec. 19, 1946], Foreign
Relations, 1946, VII, 59-63. On Indochina, see Gary R. Hess, The United States'
Emergence as a Southeast Asian Power, 1940-1.950 (New York, 1987), 203-205.
ary 1947, when the Partie Communiste Fran?aise (

received five seats in Socialist premier Paul Ramadier's
coalition cabinet. Less than a month later, Jefferson Caff
the U.S. ambassador in Paris, warned that the PCF was act
seeking "to promote Soviet aims and ambitions" by "un
mining French authority in the colonies."28 The Viet Mi
ties with Moscow had long been common knowledge in W
ington, but fresh signs of "communist penetration" thro
out French North Africa were quite unsettling, as was a M
5, 1947, report that Malagasy nationalist leader Joseph R
was a former communist well acquainted with Ho Chi Mi
To be sure, MDRM leaders had been in frequent con
with U.S. officials in both Paris and Tananarive thro
out 1946, always taking pains to emphasize their mode
objectives and their opposition to communism. Ravoahan
for example, was eager to visit Washington to discuss a p
whereby "Madagascar would come under a 'U.N.O.'
teeship," while Raseta expressed considerable interest
"American capital to develop the resources of the isla
Nevertheless, Robert Fernald, the American consul at Ta
arive, grew increasingly alarmed by the left-wing overt
of Malagasy nationalism. As early as March 1946, he
warned "that whatever political developments take place
[in Madagascar], a finger in the pie will be placed by
Communists in France and the few local Communists." Seven
months later Fernald cited recent Malagasy jeremiads against
"French imperialism" as proof that the MDRM was "already
largely influenced by communists in France through Depu-
ties Ravoahangy and Raseta."31 Just three weeks before the
28. Steven P. Sapp, "The United States, France, and the Cold War:
Jefferson Caffery and American-French Relations, 1944-1949" (Ph.D. disser-
tation, Kent State University, 1978), 132-136, 141-143; Caffery to State Dept.,
Feb. 19, 1947, U.S. Dept. of State, Foreign Relations, 1947 (8 vols., Washington,
D.C., 1971-1972), III, 690-691.
29. Paul Alling to State Dept., Jan. 30, 1947, Foreign Relations, 1947, V,
673-674; Fernald to State Dept., March 5, 1947, file 851W.00/3-547, RG 59, NA;
Gary R. Hess, "The First American Commitment to Indochina: The Accep-
tance of the 'Bao Dai Solution,' 1950," Diplomatic History, II (1978), 331-336.
30. Fernald to State Dept., March 18 and Aug. 2, 1946, files 851W.00/3-1846
and /8-246, RG 59, NA.
31. Fernald to State Dept., March 18 and Oct. 18, 1946, files 851W.00/3-1846
and /10-1846, ibid.
March, 1947, uprising, Fernald reported that th

nationalists had openly expressed their willingness
help from French and Vietnamese Communists.
leaders," the American consul concluded, "everyth
apparently secondary to the aim of independence."
With Ramadier already embroiled in a bitte
with the PCF over the Vietnam war and with U.S. officials
preoccupied by the implementation of the Truman Doctr
the Malagasy insurrection caught both Paris and Washin
off guard. The first American reports attributed the outb
to "spontaneous combustion from too much Saturday nig
liquor" and tended to minimize communist influence.33
ing MDRM connections with Ho Chi Minh, however,
Quai d'Orsay insisted that the revolt was part of a m
broader Soviet plot to disrupt the empire and boost Com
nist strength in metropolitan France. Although Secretar
State George Marshall agreed that the Malagasy rebels m
have been "inspired by Vietminh example as test of Fren
strength," as late as April 11 he maintained that the "
munist link if any is not clear."34
But a series of pessimistic reports from Ambassa
Caffery during the next month forced Marshall to reass
his views. Most high-ranking officials in Paris regarded
Malagasy revolt as the "last straw to break the French c
nial camel's back," Caffery pointed out in mid-April,
were convinced that "should tranquility not be re-establ
soon in Madagascar, disturbances might then spread to N
Africa, and France, faced with policing operations in th
East and in North Africa as well as in Madagascar, w
soon witness the prompt dissolution of the new Fre
Union."35 A week later he reported that the Communists
walked out of a cabinet meeting to protest Ramadier's d
sion to revoke parliamentary immunity, arrest Raset
32. Fernald to State Dept., March 5, 1947, file 851W.00/3-547, ibid.

33. Fernald to State Dept., March 31 and April 1, 1947; Caffery
Marshall, April 2, 1947, files 851W.00/3-3147, /4-147, and /4-247, ibid.
34. Caffery to Marshall, April 2, 1947; Fernald to State Dept., Ap
1947; Marshall to James O. Sullivan, April 11, 1947, files 851W.00/4-247, /
and /4-847, ibid.
35. Caffery to Marshall, April 11, 1947, file 851W.00/4-1147, ibid.
Ravoahangy, and outlaw the MDRM. "It is now clear

the Madagascar problem has become an issue which c
lead to the fall of the Ramadier government," Caffe
warned, and the outcome would "depend largely on whe
or not the French Communist Party receives orders [
Moscow] ...to support independence movements in Fr
overseas areas."36
Before the Kremlin and the PCF could agree on how best
to exploit the Madagascar crisis, however, Ramadier expelled
the five Communists from his cabinet on May 7. Relieved by
this bold display of anticommunism, U.S. officials moved
swiftly to shore up Ramadier's new centrist coalition. Within
hours, Secretary of State Marshall announced that the United
States would ship an additional 187,000 tons of grain to France
on an emergency basis, while on May 9 World Bank presi-
dent John J. McCloy gave final approval to a $500,000,000
French loan request.37 But in the long run, only continued
"substantial outside support," both economic and psycholog-
ical, would allow moderates like Ramadier to outflank their
Communist critics and establish "a really strong and demo-
cratic France." Without such support, Caffery cautioned Wash-
ington on May 12, "Soviet penetration of Western Europe,
Africa, the Mediterranean and Middle East would be greatly
facilitated."38
The unveiling of the Marshall Plan just over a month
later addressed the economic side of Caffery's equation, while
fresh signs of U.S. support for the French empire during the
summer of 1947 provided precisely the psychological boost
he recommended. Fearful that North African independence
would play into the Kremlin's hands, Washington encour-
aged Paris to work out "something comparable to Dominion
status within [the] French Union" for Algeria and Tunisia.39
More certain than ever that Ho Chi Minh was a Soviet pup-
pet, American officials welcomed Ramadier's plan to create a
36. Caffery to Marshall, April 18, 1947, Foreign Relations, 1947, III, 699-701.
37. Caffery to Marshall, May 8, 1947, file 851.00/5-847, RG 59, NA;
Marshall to Georges Bonnet, May 7, 1947, and World Bank press release,
May 9, 1947, Foreign Relations, 1947, III, 707-709.
38. Caffery to Marshall, May 12, 1947, Foreign Relations, 1947, III, 709-713.
39. Marshall to Caffery, June 10, 1947, ibid., V, 686-689.
French-dominated "Free State" in Vietnam headed

Dai.4? And in Madagascar, there would be quiet A
support for Colonial Minister Moutet's "pacification p
despite evidence that "25,000 innocent (more or less)
ers were killed by the French" during the first six
the rebellion.41
News of brutal French reprisals against the Malagasy guer-
rillas had first reached Washington in early June. Because
France had fewer than 6,000 troops on the island on the eve
of the revolt, Ramadier had been forced to divert 12,000
Senegalese commandos originally bound for Vietnam to Mad-
agascar instead.42 The reinforcements landed at Diego Suarez
in mid-April and spearheaded a savage counteroffensive dur-
ing which French officers played on ethnic friction between
their African legionnaires and the Malagasy insurgents. Entire
villages were sacked and burned, and torture and wholesale
executions were commonplace. The French frequently loaded
prisoners-of-war into airplanes and tossed them out alive high
over areas supporting the insurrection, while the Senegalese
often returned from skirmishes displaying the ears or geni-
tals of their Malagasy victims.43 On June 3, Fernald con-
firmed from Tananarive that "probably thousands of rebels
have been killed in fighting [or] during the reprisals and
destruction of villages," and three weeks later he passed
along reports of "police tortures and Senegalese barbarities."
Yet far from expressing shock over such atrocities, U.S.
officials appear to have been relieved that France was on
the road to quick victory in Madagascar and not another
costly stalemate as in Vietnam. "The offensive is going
very well indeed," Fernald reported in mid-July, and "the
40. Marshall to Caffery, May 13, 1947, ibid., VI, 95-97; Sapp, "The United
States, France, & the Cold War," 189-196; George McT. Kahin, Intervention:
How America Became Involved in Vietnam (New York, 1986), 24-25; Lloyd C.
Gardner, Approaching Vietnam: From World War II through Dienbienphu (New
York, 1988), 76-77; U.S. Dept. of Defense, United States-Vietnam Relations, 1945-1967
(12 vols., Washington, D.C., 1971), I, A4-A5.
41. Fernald to State Dept., June 3 and 27, 1947, and Caffery to Marshall,
June 11, 1947, files 851W.00/6-347, /6-1147, and /6-2747, RG 59, NA.
42. U.S. Dept. of Defense, United States-Vietnam Relations, 1945-1967, I, A35.
43. Tronchon, L'insurrection malgache, 60-62, 74-79.
little war will end in early August instead of October o

November."44
Strident PCF and Kremlin criticism of both Ramadier's
repressive colonial policies and his deflationary domestic
program made the prospect of a swift French triumph at
Tananarive even more attractive to Washington. Well aware
that "the Madagascar movement seems to be wholly indige-
nous" and that the MDRM's Ravoahangy was only a "sly
dreamer... with his head in the clouds" and not a Malagasy
Lenin, American officials were nonetheless disturbed by grow-
ing signs of communist support for the revolt. Consul Fernald
warned early on that French reprisals would probably play
into the hands of "communists" both on the island and in
metropolitan France, while the U.S. embassy in Moscow con-
firmed on June 6 that the Soviet press was stepping up its
attacks on Ramadier's manhandling of the MDRM.45 Six
weeks later Ambassador Caffery reported from Paris that
"Communist support of the Malgache rebels, at first some-
what lukewarm,... has progressively developed" to the point
where it "is hardly distinguishable from that granted to the
Nationalist Independence Movements" in Southeast Asia and
other parts of the French empire.46
By the autumn of 1947, the little war in Madagascar was
beginning to siphon resources away from the big war in Viet-
nam and threatening to help tip the balance against Ramadier's
coalition in the October 19 French municipal elections. A
deepening economic crisis at home and nagging imperial
problems overseas were polarizing the French electorate
between the powerful PCF on the left and De Gaulle's newly
created Rassemblement du Peuple Frangais (RPF) on the
right. The Truman administration scrambled in early Octo-
ber to patch together a $150 million aid package to tide France
over until Congress completed its deliberations on the
44. Fernald to State Dept., June 3 and 27, and July 18, 1947, files
851W.00/6-347, /6-2747, and /7-1847, RG 59, NA.
45. Fernald to State Dept., June 3, 1947, and Elbridge Durbrow to State
Dept., June 6, 1947, files 851W.00/6-347 and /6-647, ibid.
46. Caffery to Marshall, July 22, 1947, file 851W.00/7-2247, ibid. On Viet-
nam, see Caffery to Marshall, July 31, 1947, Foreign Relations, 1947, VI, 127-128.
Marshall Plan.47 A U.S. Senate delegation arrived in P

October 17 to discuss long-term aid with Foreign M
Georges Bidault, who was asked "whether the Indochi
Madagascar campaigns were not proving to be a seriou
not only on French manpower but on French eco
resources." Admitting that "these campaigns were
in every respect," Bidault vowed that "the French
Communist forces shall triumph" on election day and
that "if France's pacification efforts do not succee
china will have a Communist government, and perhap
agascar as well." Lest there be any doubt about the
will to win, however, Bidault boasted that "the Mad
campaign is 'finished.'"48
As Bidault had predicted, the PCF suffered a hu
ing defeat at the polls ten days later, and before the y
out the French had broken the back of the Malagasy i
tion. Shortly after Christmas, Fernald confirmed "im
progress in pacification." The area under rebel cont
shrunk by two-thirds, over 200,000 Malagasy nationali
surrendered, and 2,500 MDRM activists were behind bars
charged with treason.49 "Two months of dry weather after the
rainy season ending in April," Fernald predicted early in the
new year, "will see the forests pretty well cleared of rebels."'
Not until the following December, however, did the last guer-
rillas surrender. By that time, Fernald estimated that 70,000
Malagasy "women, children, and active rebels" had "died of
hunger or from sorcerers' cures for sickness or while fighting."51
France placed the final Malagasy death toll at 80,000 in Feb-
ruary 1949, but four months later U.S. officials at Tananarive
47. Caffery to Marshall, Sept. 13 and 16, and Oct. 14, 1947; Douglas
MacArthur, Jr., to Woodruff Wallner, Oct. 10, 1947; and Robert Lovett to
Caffery, Oct. 15, 1947, Foreign Relations, 1947, III, 748-749, 750-751, 766-773,
775-776.
48. Caffery to Marshall, Oct. 17, 1947, file 851G.00/10-747, RG 59, NA;
Caffery to Marshall, Oct. 24, 1947, Foreign Relations, 1947, III, 786-790.
49. Fernald to State Dept., Nov. 8 and 29, and Dec. 27, 1947, files
851W.00/11-847, /11-2947, and /12-2747, RG 59, NA.
50. Fernald to State Dept., Feb. 27, 1948, file 851W.00//2-2748, ibid.
51. Fernald to State Dept., Oct. 13 and Dec. 8, 1948, file 851W.00/10-1348
and /12-848, ibid.
were still reporting that "bodies are now found in the stre
and roads or drowned in the rice and lotus swamps aro
the city."52 Indeed, Jacques Tronchon, the leading author
on the revolt, claimed in 1974 that the official French fig
was too low and argued that census data at the Colonial M
istry suggested that at least 90,000 Malagasy, or just over
percent of the island's population, died during the two ye
of guerrilla war.53
As order was restored to the island, France took steps
ensure there would never be another rebellion. The MDRM
was proscribed and its key leaders were sentenced to life in
prison. Furthermore, in December 1948 the French govern
ment earmarked $4.4 million from its recent allotment of
U.S. Marshall Plan aid to upgrade the road and rail grid in
rural Madagascar in order to facilitate troop movements in
the event of future hostilities.54 In addition, High Commis-
sioner Pierre de Chevigne, alarmed by subtle signs of Soviet
subversion, stepped up French surveillance of local com-
munists and met regularly with American Consul Fernald
throughout 1949 to discuss his findings.55 Yet Fernald was th
first to admit that greater Franco-American vigilance not
withstanding, "nationalist feeling is bound to grow as the
development of Madagascar moves ahead; [and] communist
nationalist collusion is similarly inevitable." To be sure, he
reported in March 1950, U.S. Point Four aid and French
assimilationist policies might create a pro-Western elite on
the island, but this could not obliterate Malagasy memorie
of the bloodbath three years earlier or stop their "flirtation
with communism." In short, he was convinced that the ghos
of the 1947 revolt would exacerbate the already enormou
"problems of developing Madagascar" in the years ahead. "It
52. Fernald to State Dept., Feb. 25 and June 23, 2949, file 851W.00/2-2549
and /6-2349, ibid.
53. Tronchon, L'insurrection malgache, 71-74.
54. Crawford Young, Ideology and Development in Africa (New Haven,
Conn., 1982), 52-53; Tronchon, L'insurrection malgache, 68-70; Pascal, La rdpubliqu
malgache, 38-39; Fernald to State Dept., Dec. 8, 1948, file 851W.00/12-848,
RG 59, NA.
55. Fernald to State Dept., May 3 and 11, June 16, Aug. 22, and Nov. 4,
1949, files 851W.00/5-349, /5-1149, /6-1649, /8-2249, and /11-449, RG 59, NA.
can probably be done," Fernald concluded, "but it is n

and it is not a one-night stand."56
The task was not made easier by lingering Mal
bitterness over what they regarded as the America
fice of 90,000 lives at the altar of a rejuvenated French
Ravaoahangy and Raseta, who had taken the rhetoric
Atlantic and the United Nations charters at face value,
from their jail cells that U.S. officials had given them
encouragement on the eve of the insurrection. Ta
copies of MDRM handbills proclaiming the imminent
of American aid were captured by French troops in 19
even as the last pockets of resistance were wiped out
and a half later, the myth that help was on the way f
United States persisted.57 Whatever sympathy A
officials may have had for Malagasy nationalism, h
was more than offset by their growing concern over
instability and communist subversion in France. Sadl
U.S. policymakers still knew so little about Madagasca
the possibility of the Truman administration press
French toward decolonization rather than imperial
sion was even more remote than during the last mon
World War II. The MDRM's defeat in Madagascar
welcome in Washington as the PCF's defeat in t
municipal elections, for each in its own way confirm
postwar France could serve as an effective partner
U.S. strategy of containment from Western Europe t
east Asia.
There was, of course, no guarantee that even by the sum-
mer of 1948 France was entirely out of the woods. Rober
Schuman, the politically moderate economic wizard who had
succeeded the exhausted Ramadier as premier the previou
November, had come under fire early in the new year from
the PCF, which toed the Kremlin line and tried to preven
French participation in the Marshall Plan. Later that spring,
the Gaullist RPF, increasingly unhappy with France's emerg
56. Fernald to State Dept., March 16, 1950, file 851W.00/3-1650, ibid.
57. Tronchon, L'insurrection malgache, 132-133, 342-343; Spacensky, Mad
agascar 64-65.
ing role as a very junior partner in the Western allia

joined the growing chorus of Schuman's critics.58 Schum
tough handling of a wave of left-wing strikes in July promp
French Socialists to withdraw their support for his cabin
which fell before the month was out and was eventu
replaced by a caretaker regime headed by Henri Queui
political nonentity. Queuille inherited a violent coal strik
home and a "steadily deteriorating situation" in Indoch
neither of which boded well for the long-term success of
Marshall Plan and the embryonic North Atlantic Treaty O
nization in France.59
A September 20, 1948, State Department study highlighted
the increasingly obvious contradictions implicit in American
policy toward France and its fragile empire. Washington
desired "both a strong and sound France and the advance-
ment toward self-government of dependent peoples." The
latter were "unready for complete self-government in most
cases," however, and might "play into the hands of the well-
organized Communist minorities which have been backing
the native nationalists." Therefore, the United States should
encourage the French to make "genuine political reforms in
the administration of many of [their] overseas possessions"
only insofar as such changes did not undermine "the stability
of the present non-Communist government in France."'6 In
practice, this meant uneasy acceptance of French foot-dragging
in North Africa, where nationalist leaders were "politically
immature, prone to schisms and not sufficiently aware of the
many deceptive shapes and forms of Moscow-directed inter-
national communist activities."61 It meant indirect support
for the French war in Vietnam, where "Communist control in
the nationalist movement" was working "to the advantage of
58. Caffery to Marshall, Jan. 14 and June 18, 1948, Foreign Relations, 1948
(9 vols., Washington, D.C., 1972-1976), III, 594-597, 637-639.
59. Marshall to Caffery, Aug. 30, 1948, Foreign Relations, 1948, VI, 40;
Caffery to Marshall, Sept. 2, 1948, ibid., III, 646.
60. "France: Policy Statement of the Department of State," Sept. 20, 1948,
ibid., III, 651-659.
61. "North African Conference, Paris, May 24-28, 1948: Agreed Findings
and Recommendations," ibid., III, 712.
the USSR and the detriment of the US."62 And it me

escence in the slaughter on Madagascar, where th
links to Ho Chi Minh provided a convenient rati
overwhelming was the French triumph and so thoro
the French repression that most U.S. officials doubte
Malagasy nationalists could successfully challenge
rule even with Communist help. In any case, they "d
Communist strength on the island" and took comfor
least in the short run, "the native independence mo
nationalistic- not internationalistic."'63
The rising tide of nationalism which swept Africa
the next decade, however, led some American policy
to speculate as early as the spring of 1950 that the
might in the long run find "a fertile field for Com
from Dakar to Tananarive. Although "Communism h
little headway..., with the possible exceptions of Ma
and French West Africa," Assistant Secretary of Stat
McGhee warned his superiors on April 12 that the
pathetic and unprogressive attitude" of France and
European colonial powers was eventually bound to "p
the hands of Communist agitators.""6 To be sure, th
later a State Department study concluded that "no
Tropical Africa are the Communists established as o
political parties, except Madagascar." As late as Janu
the African experts at Foggy Bottom remained c
that "Communist influence has thus far been slight
and only incidental to the rise of anti-colonial sentim
Once European colonial rule began to give way
late 1950s to such left-wing nationalists as Ghana
Nkrumah, however, the administration of Dwight D
hower feared the Kremlin would launch a fresh offensive
62. "Indochina: State Department Policy Statement," Sept. 27, 1948,

VI, 43-49.
63. Sidney Sobers to State Dept., April 22, 1948, file 851W.00/4-
RG 59, NA.
64. McGhee to Acheson and Webb, April 12, 1950, Foreign Relations, 1950
(8 vols., Washington, D.C., 1976-1980), V, 1516-1517.
65. IR 6390, "Conditions and Trends in Tropical Africa," Aug. 24, 1953;
IR 7103, "Africa: A Special Assessment," Jan. 3, 1956, both in Kesaris, ed.,
OSS/State Department Africa Reports, reel 4.
south of the Sahara. After a March, 1957, whirlwind tour

the dark continent, for example, Vice President Rich
Nixon reported that "Africa is a priority target for the in
national communist movement."66 A year later the S
Department confirmed that "after Stalin's death, the U
began to recognize the intrinsic importance of ... Afri
where nationalist leaders were "likely to become increasin
authoritarian, socialist in orientation, and neutralist on
policy."67 By 1960, a National Security Council report con-
firmed Soviet subversion not only in South Africa and the
Belgian Congo, but also in Madagascar, where "there exist
strong nationalist forces, some of which are deeply influ-
enced by Communist-oriented leaders who were exiled fol-
lowing a bloody and abortive insurrection against the French
in 1947."68
Ten years earlier as the French empire began to crumble
at the hands of anti-Western radicals in Vietnam and Algeria,
Madagascar had stood out as one of the few bright spots.
"The future of Madagascar," Colonial Minister Francois
Mitterand had confidently proclaimed in January 1951, "is
within the French Republic."69 The Great Red Island loomed
large in the Fourth Republic's imperial calculations not
merely as an entrep6t from which to shore up sagging French
influence in the Indian Ocean and Southeast Asia, but also as
a major source of uranium for nuclear research just getting
underway in metropolitan France. Americans supervising the
Manhattan Project had heard rumors of radioactive raw mate-
rials on Madagascar as early as 1944, but French determina-
tion to restore unilateral control over their empire thwarted
66. Richard Nixon, "The Emergence of Africa," April 7, 1957, Department

of State Bulletin (April 22, 1957), 635-640. See also minutes of the 335th National
Security Council meeting, Aug. 22, 1957, NSC Series, Ann Whitman Files,
Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library, Abilene, Kan. (hereafter cited
as DDEL).
67. IR 7650, "African Receptivity to Soviet Bloc Influence," Jan. 24, 1958,
in Kesaris, ed., OSS/State Department Africa Reports, reel 4.
68. NSC-6005/1, "U.S. Policy Toward West Africa," April 9, 1960, NSC
Series, Policy Papers Subseries, Office of the Special Adviser for National
Security Affairs, DDEL (hereafter cited as OSANSA, DDEL).
69. Mitterand quoted in Heseltine, Madagascar, 184.
U.S. efforts to tap the island's mineral wealth du

decade after World War II. Then, according to th
Atomic Energy Commission, "in 1954 a very rich ve
containing thorium and uranium... was discovered
gascar and several deposits are now being worked." B
Madagascar was producing 500 tons of uranium conc
per year, enough to supply a third of the new Fifth
lic's annual consumption.70
Not surprisingly, Mitterand and other like-mind
cials in Paris worked hard throughout the 1950s to c
pro-French Malagasy leaders such as Philibert Tsi
Social Democrat whose nationalism was tempered by
ceral anticommunism. As late as the autumn of 1959, both
French and American policymakers hoped that Tsiranana
would reject the radical path followed by Guinea's Sekou
Toure and accept something less than full independence for
Madagascar. But after left-wing nationalists swept the Octo-
ber municipal elections in Tananarive and Diego Suarez, the
Eisenhower administration believed that only the creation of
an independent Malagasy Republic could "put a brake on
the increasing influence of [the] Communists." So did the
French, who invited Malagasy moderates to Paris in Febru-
ary 1960 and granted the island its independence four months
later on June 26.71
Unlike many African nationalists, Tsiranana, who served
as president of the Malagasy Republic for twelve years,
adopted a pro-Western foreign policy. He developed extremely
close political and commercial ties with France, which agreed
to keep 7,500 troops on Madagascar to "provide the ultimate
stability."72 Tsiranana was also eager to cooperate with Wash-
ington in curbing Soviet influence south of the Sahara. "Com-
70. Helmreich, Gathering Rare Ores, 45-46, 69-70; Fernald to State Dept.,
Oct. 15 and 23, 1948, and Jan. 7, 1949, files 851W.00/10-548, /10-2348, and 1-748,
RG 59, NA; Commissariat de l'Energie Atomique, Progress and Developments
1945-1956 (Paris, 1956); 32; Commissariat de l'Energie Atomique, Progress and
Developments, 1945-1960 (Paris, 1960), 32, 35 (both reports in English).
71. NSC-6005, "U.S. Policy Toward West Africa," Feb. 29, 1960, NSC
Series, Policy Papers Subseries, OSANSA, DDEL.
72. U.S. Dept. of Defense, "Malagasy Republic," July 16, 1964, Declassi-
fied Documents Reference System 1984 (Washington, D.C., 1984), item 119 (here-
after cited as DDRS for the appropriate year).
munism is a cause for concern," Assistant Secretary of St

G. Mennen Williams told John Kennedy after an Aug
1961, visit to Tananarive. Fortunately, Tsiranana "has ask
for our assistance in combatting it," and "we should give i
him."73 The White House agreed, and during the next
years U.S. aid for Madagascar tripled from a mere $372
to a still modest $1,000,000. Tsiranana responded by allow
Washington to construct a large space-tracking station
outside Tananarive.74 By the time he arrived in Washingt
to meet Lyndon Johnson in July 1964, however, Tsira
was complaining that "the US has taken Madagascar f
granted." Impressed by the Malagasy leader's "strong a
Chicom [Chinese Communist] position," sympathetic Ame
can officials worked to increase U.S. imports from Madaga
-mostly graphite and vanilla-by a third between 1965
1971. But Tsiranana's own failing health and the island's f
ing economy sparked violent protests in March 1972,
he stepped down almost exactly twenty-five years after
1947 uprising.75
Tsiranana's successor, General Gabriel Ramantsoa, sp
the next three years reducing French influence and deve
ing a non-aligned foreign policy before he, too, was forced
resign in February 1975 by even more radical officers led
Captain Didier Ratsiraka. Dismissing both Tsiranana a
Ramantsoa as pawns of "western imperialism," the new reg
severed relations with France, Britain, and the United Stat
In short order, Ratsiraka embraced Marxism-Leninism, issu
a Malagasy "Red Book," and accepted a $20 million Sov
73. Williams to JFK and Rusk, "Reports on Second Trip to Africa

[August 1961], DDRS 1977, item 206B.
74. Ibid.; U.S. Dept. of Commerce, Foreign Grants and Credits by the Unit
States Government, Calendar Years 1961 and 1963 (Washington, D.C., 1962,
U.S. Dept. of State, "Tracking and Data Acquisition Facilities in Madagas
July 22, 1964, DDRS 1978, item 97B.
75. U.S. Dept. of Defense, "Malagasy Republic," July 16, 1964, DD
1984, item 119; U.S. Dept of State Background Paper, "Visit of Presid
Tsiranana," July 22, 1964, DDRS 1978, item 97A; Phillip M. Allen, "Rit
Passage in Madagascar," Africa Report, XVI (1971), 24-27; Harold Nelson et
Area Handbook for the Malagasy Republic (Washington, D.C., 1973), 149
Robert Archer, Madagascar depuis 1972: La marche d'une rdvolution (Paris,
42-57. On American imports from Madagascar, see U.S. Dept. of Comm
Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1974 (Washington, D.C., 1975), 794.
aid package, prompting much speculation in Washin

ing the late 1970s that Moscow, like Tokyo forty yea
had its eye on the deep water harbor at Diego Suare
Keeping the Russians out of Madagascar took o
importance in the early 1980s as the Indian Ocean
as a key naval staging area for the intensified sup
competition in the Middle East. To prevent Mosc
leap-frogging over the string of U.S. bases stretchi
Diego Garcia to Oman, Washington wooed Tanana
offers of economic aid. More recently, the Internati
etary Fund has helped Ratsiraka reschedule the islan
gering $2.8 billion foreign debt and the World B
pledged up to $630 million to assist Madagascar in
ing and diversifying its exports.77 Although Rats
temporarily toned down his anti-Western rhetor
also obtained nearly $300 million in Russian milit
ware, symbolized by the arrival of a squadron of M
in 1983.78 If as of 1990 the Soviets have yet to secur
rights they so covet at Diego Suarez, there is little
to suggest they will stop trying, or that Ratsiraka
listening.
Forty years ago, French troops tracking down Malagasy
guerrillas swept through Vatomandry, the sleepy Indian
Ocean port where Didier Ratsiraka was born in 1936. While
it is hard to imagine just how the 1947 revolt and its bloody
aftermath must have appeared through the eyes of a child, it
is safe to say that an eleven-year-old can have gained little
respect for either the victorious French or their American
allies. Indeed, Ratsiraka came to regard the abortive insur-
rection as the opening volley in his own successful revolution
three decades later. "In 1947, Malagasy nationalists... took up
76. Didier Ratsiraka, Charter of the Malagasy Socialist Revolution All-

Directional (Washington, D.C., 1975), 9-12; New York Times, Dec. 21, 1975, sec. 1,
p. 3:1; Crawford Young, Ideology & Development, 56-67; Archer, Madagascar
depuis 1972, 74-75, 124-128; Covell, Madagascar, 150-151.
77. Michael Griffin, "Ratsiraka's Volte-Face," Africa Report, XXXII (1987),
50-52.
78. Frederica Bunge et al., "Madagascar," in Frederica Bunge, ed., The

Indian Ocean: Five Island Countries (Washington, D.C., 1983), 122-123; Young,
Ideology & Development, 57-60; New York Times, June 12, 1983, sec. 1, p. 16:1,
and July 24, 1983, sec. 4, p. 5:3.
arms to expel the oppressors," he proclaimed in 1975. "

was the 'no' of the revolutionary to the domination and t
exploitation of the [West]." By revoking the American lea
on its space-tracking station, expelling French financial a
military advisers, and seeking Soviet assistance, Ratsir
professed merely to be completing the quest for Malag
independence begun by Ravoahangy and Raseta a gene
tion earlier.79
That Washington was as much a target of Ratsiraka's
Marxist obloquy as Paris should have come as no great sur-
prise to anyone familiar with the American role in the 1947
Malagasy insurrection. The Ramadier regime may have pro-
vided the military firepower to crush the revolt, but the
Truman administration supplied the economic and moral
support without which such victory would have been neither
quick nor cheap. Just two years after V-J Day, the rhetoric of
self-determination embedded in the Atlantic and United
Nations charters had come up against the harsh new realit
of the Cold War, and Washington was forced to choose betw
the aspirations of the Third World and the imperial prete
sions of Western Europe. To be sure, the United States
times chose wisely, as when American officials encoura
Britain's Labour government to withdraw from Burma
opposed Dutch efforts to retain control over Indonesia
both of these cases, however, U.S. policymakers judged
anticolonial movements in question to be sufficiently f
from the taint of communism and the metropolitan po
sufficiently resilient in the face of the Soviet menace to w
rant accepting the political risks involved in decolonization
France and its empire were an altogether different ma
ter, however. As early as 1942, Roosevelt had tried to l
Vichy leaders away from their Axis friends by promising
return all occupied French colonies after the war. Two yea
later he offered De Gaulle similar assurances to keep St
79. Ratsiraka, Charter of the Malagasy Socialist Revolution, 4; Bunge et

"Madagascar," 122-123.
80. On Burma, see Hess, United States as a Southeast Asian Power, 260-2
on Indonesia, see Robert J. McMahon, Colonialism and Cold War: The Un
States and the Struggle for Indonesian Independence, 1945-1949 (Ithaca, N
1981), 251-303.
from fishing in the troubled waters of liberated France

such policies would disillusion Vietnamese nationalist
led the fight against the Japanese in Southeast Asia, or
point their Malagasy brethren, who went hungry so th
island's rice could feed Allied armies in the Middle East,
mattered little when weighed against the likely impact of
decolonization on postwar France.
By 1947, the French empire was under siege from the
Gulf of Tonkin to the Indian Ocean. In each instance Ameri-
can officials detected tell-tale signs of communist subvers
That the Kremlin's ties to the Viet Minh were much stron
than to the MDRM was less important than the grow
American conviction that a French defeat in Madagas
might open the door to Soviet gains in Paris and Hanoi
the short run, the French suppression of the Malagasy in
rection, running as it did against the tide of imperial setb
in North Africa and Southeast Asia, suggested to U.S. o
cials that, with a stiff upper lip and enough firepower, W
ern troops were capable of defeating Third World guerri
In the long run, however, the 1947 bloodbath confirm
prophecy Ho Chi Minh had offered a year earlier. "Suffer
is a school for maturity," he had told Raseta and Ravoaha
in Paris in August 1946. "Freedom is the most precious th
for a people. It is difficult to acquire, and for a people
reach it, they must follow a long road."81 Had American o
cials learned this lesson in the rain forests of Madagas
they might have spared themselves a painful education in
rice paddies of Vietnam.
81. Ho quoted in statement by Jacques Rabemananjara, April 21, 1947

Tronchon, L.'insurrection malgache, 335-337.

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Cold War and Colonialism in Africa: The United States, France, and the Madagascar Revolt

The author is a member of the history department

Just before midnight on March 29, 1947, seve

Few in Washington noticed the carnage in the

1. Waldemar A. Nielsen, The Great Powers and Africa (New York,

many other parts of the colonial world, subject peop

Except for naturalists bedazzled by Madagascar's ex

American missionaries and explorers had begun to p

4. Walter LaFeber, The New Empire: An Interpretation of Ameri

vowed never to turn the huge island over to Japan, Frank

minimize the diplomatic fallout at Vichy as much as

Roosevelt after one of De Gaulle's supercilious outburs

as a possible postwar haven for Jewish refugees in Europe. See FDR to

had remarked that, the Atlantic Charter notwithstan

During the next two years, Ravoahangy and Joseph

began to organize "secret societies" composed mainly

25. Kent, From Madagascar, 108-109; Tronchon, L'insurrection malgac

ary 1947, when the Partie Communiste Fran?aise (

March, 1947, uprising, Fernald reported that th

32. Fernald to State Dept., March 5, 1947, file 851W.00/3-547, ibid.

Ravoahangy, and outlaw the MDRM. "It is now clear

French-dominated "Free State" in Vietnam headed

little war will end in early August instead of October o

Marshall Plan.47 A U.S. Senate delegation arrived in P

can probably be done," Fernald concluded, "but it is n

ing role as a very junior partner in the Western allia

the USSR and the detriment of the US."62 And it me

62. "Indochina: State Department Policy Statement," Sept. 27, 1948,

south of the Sahara. After a March, 1957, whirlwind tour

66. Richard Nixon, "The Emergence of Africa," April 7, 1957, Department

U.S. efforts to tap the island's mineral wealth du

munism is a cause for concern," Assistant Secretary of St

73. Williams to JFK and Rusk, "Reports on Second Trip to Africa

aid package, prompting much speculation in Washin

76. Didier Ratsiraka, Charter of the Malagasy Socialist Revolution All-

78. Frederica Bunge et al., "Madagascar," in Frederica Bunge, ed., The

arms to expel the oppressors," he proclaimed in 1975. "

79. Ratsiraka, Charter of the Malagasy Socialist Revolution, 4; Bunge et

from fishing in the troubled waters of liberated France

81. Ho quoted in statement by Jacques Rabemananjara, April 21, 1947

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