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An industrial experiment
in pre‐colonial Africa: the
case of imperial Madagascar,
1825–1861
a
Gwyn Campbell
a
Department of Economic History , University of
the Witwatersrand ,
Published online: 24 Feb 2007.
To cite this article: Gwyn Campbell (1991) An industrial experiment in pre‐colonial

Africa: the case of imperial Madagascar, 1825–1861, Journal of Southern African
Studies, 17:3, 525-559, DOI: 10.1080/03057079108708290
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Journal of Southern African Studies, Vol. 17, No, 3, September 1991
An Industrial Experiment in Pre-colonial

Africa: The Case of Imperial Madagascar,
1825-1861
GWYN CAMPBELL
(Department of Economic History, University of the Witwatersrand)
The last two decades have witnessed a lively debate over the preconditions for
industrialisation, and the causes and consequences of the failure to industrialise.
This paper attempts to widen the scope of the debate, which has concentrated upon
European case studies, to include an industrial experiment in Imerina, a central
province of Madagascar, between 1825 and 1861. This occurred in an
overwhelmingly rural society, based on irrigated riziculture and possessing a small
number of full-time artisans. The Merina state initiated the drive to industrialise,
on the basis initially of textile manufacture but later on the production of
armaments, and on the processing of raw materials, notably sugar, tobacco and
animal products. By the mid nineteenth century, many of the preconditions for
successful industrialisation had been met. Lacking capital, the Merina crown
promoted industry through labour intensive means, organising and directing its
labour resources through the institutions of fanompoana, for the 'free' population,
and through slavery. It formed both skilled and unspecialised, full- and part-time
labour units. Education, considered vital in moulding an efficient industrial
workforce from a rural agricultural population, was promoted by the crown to the
degree that possibly 7 per cent of the adult Merina population were literate. At the
same time, wage costs, critical to the competitiveness of industrial products were
minimised; Malagasy workers were unremunerated whilst the salaries of foreign
workers were met through extraordinary taxation. By 1950 the Merina state had
succeeded in creating several industrial sites, the largest of which, Mantasoa,
comprised five factories with blast furnaces, plus numerous workshops, employing
5,000 workers and producing a wide range of manufactured goods including cannon,
muskets, glass, tiles, clothes and leather.
Nevertheless, the industrial experiment failed. In the first instance, low wage
costs were largely cancelled out by high transport costs due to the Merina state's
This paper was first presented at the Economic History of Southern African Conference, Port
Elizabeth, July 1990. Abbreviations: Unless otherwise stated, references to Raombana are found in
the Archives de l'Acade'mie Malgache, Antananarivo, Madagascar; AHH = Archives de la Vice-
Province S.J. de Madagascar - Antananarivo, Madagascar.
526 Journal of Southern African Studies
deliberate neglect of roads and their refusal to implement transport innovations — a

policy aimed at deterring possible invaders. More important were the opportunity
costs of transferring possibly 35 per cent of the Merina workforce from agriculture
to unremunerated industrial employment. Minimal earnings for this workforce
shrank domestic demand for the products of Merina industry already barred from
international markets by exorbitant transport costs. In addition, the lack of material
incentive resulted in large numbers of workers abandoning through flight from the
industrial sites and employment, as well as in industrial sabotage. Such action
effectively paralysed the industrial experiment. Of greater consequence was the long
term damage this inflicted upon the Merina economy as, in the attempt to avoid the
intolerably harsh fanompoana régime, artisans abandoned their trade and petty
farmers abandoned the land, thus undermining the rural economy, the very strength
of which, at the start of the nineteenth century, had made feasible the attempt to
industrialise.
Introduction
The period 1820-61 witnessed an industrial experiment in the Merina empire,

Madagascar, which is possibly unique in tropical Africa for four main reasons: It
occurred in the precolonial era, was contemporaneous with industrial experiments
in Western Europe and North America, it was a result of indigenous enterprise, and
it involved large scale factory machine-based production. This paper examines the
rise and nature of this industry and analyses the reasons for its failure. The debate
about proto-industrialisation and the question of the role of the state in initiating
manufacturing, both generate issues useful in considering the origins of the
industrial experiment in nineteenth century Madagascar. It is here contended that, in
the ultimate analysis, the state played the decisive role, but the opportunity cost of
industrialisation, namely the undermining of the agricultural sector upon which the
total economy depended, was too high and doomed the industrial experiment to
failure.
Origins of the Industrial Experiment
Proto-industrialisation ?
Since the appearance of Mendels' 1972 article1 there has been lively debate over the
concept of 'proto-industrialisation' as a necessary transitional phase between a
traditional rural and a modern industrial economy. Neo-Marxists have even
identified a proto-industrial 'mode of production' immediately preceding the
capitalist 'mode of production'.2 A proto-industrial era is defined by Mendels as:
1
F.F. Mendels, 'Proto-industrialisation. The First Phase of the Industrialisation Process'
Journal of Economic History, 32,1 (1972), pp. 241-61.
2
P. Kriedte, H.Medick and J.Schlumbohm, Industrialisation Before Industrialisation
(Cambridge, 1981).
An Industrial Experiment in ... Imperial Madagascar, 1825-61 527
the simultaneous occurrence of three ingredients within the framework of a region:

rural industries, external destinations, and symbiosis of rural industry within the
regional development of a commercial agriculture3
In focussing upon the development of export-oriented woollen, linen and hemp

textiles in Europe during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the proto-
industrialisation school posit a critical role for rural handicrafts in preparing the
path to full industrialisation. It is argued that they led to uncontrolled population
growth within the rural handicraft sector, inter-regional specialisation, and
facilitated the entry of capitalist forces into a feudal agrarian structure. Ultimately,
however, the tendency for the population of rural handicraft workers to rise
irrespective of the state of the manufacturing industry, and the obstacle their
traditional value system presented to the growth of large scale modern industry,
meant that the agrarian manufacturing system was doomed to failure, it either
transformed itself into a capital intensive modern manufacturing sector, or it
experienced pauperisation and 'de-industrialisation'. The proto-industrialisation
school has attracted severe criticism, notably for its negligence of the role of other
rural industries, of the dynamics of urban industry, of regional and international
differences in the structure of industries, and of the complexities of demographic
trends in the immediate preindustrial era.4
Despite being derived from the western European experience, the idea of proto-
industrialisation provides a useful conceptual context within which to discuss the
industrial experiment in Imerina in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth
centuries, provided that the major criticisms of the theory are taken into account.
Mendels' definition of proto-industrialisation may at first appear applicable to
Madagascar where it could be argued that the concept has potentially greater
relevance because the island was overwhelmingly rural and characterised by an
almost total absence of urban industry. Kriedte et al. posit that proto-
industrialisation was more likely to develop in infertile mountainous areas than
elsewhere because the inability to gain a sufficient income from agriculture in such
regions forced the small farmer to supplement the family income through recourse
to handicraft industry.5 Although some rural industry was practised throughout
Madagascar in the late eighteenth century, it was most concentrated and developed
in the interior region of Imerina where the small cultivator was obliged by a
temperate climate, infertile soil and mountainous terrain to be versatile within
agricultural production, whilst the seasonal nature of agricultural effort permitted
the practice of other tasks during the slack season. By the late eighteenth century a
considerable sexual division of labour had developed on the plateau in industry. The
male was skilled in the use of the axe, hammer and chisel, could fell, shape and
3
quoted in D.C. Coleman, 'Proto-Industrialisation: A Concept Too Many', Economic History
Review 36.3 (1983), p. 437.
4
Coleman, 'Proto-industrialisation', pp. 435-48.; P. Jeannin, 'La proto-industrialisation:
développement ou impasse? (Note critique)', Annales -économies - sociétés - civilisations 35, 1
(1980), pp. 52-65.
5
Coleman, 'Proto-industrialisation', pp. 438, 440-1.
carry trees for lumber and fuel, join timber, and construct and thatch houses, quarry,
shape and transport large stones, and build tombs. In her turn the female wove silk,
cotton, and vegetable fibres into cloth, mats and baskets, and manufactured pottery,
utilising in both cases a number of designs and dyes. It would appear that both
sexes could construct stills and produce alcohol, primarily from sugar cane.6
Two major famines in the early and mid 1700s may well have resulted in the
emergence or growth of a number of full-time rural artisans. For example, males of
the Zanadoria and Zanadralambo communities of northern Imerina wove the highly
valued red silk shrouds used to bury those of noble status, members of the
Andrianando specialised in the repair of foreign musketry and manufactured musket
balls, and there existed groups of smiths some specialising in gold, silver and
copper, producing jewellery, weapon ornamentation and coinage, whilst others

specialised in iron. Iron ore was excavated at Miarinarivo, 35 miles south-east of
Antananarivo, Ambatolaivy, near Lake Itasy in western Imerina, and southern
Antsihanaka, 40-50 miles north of Antananarivo, but the chief iron smelting
district was Amoronkay ('on the borders of the burnt land') so called because it lay
on the fringes of the eastern forest which was exploited for charcoal and, at
Marorangotra and Andrangoloaka, for ore.7 They used sandstone furnaces four feet
deep and two in diameter, in which the charcoal fire was fanned by two manually
operated bellows: Mayeur commented in 1785 that between four and five hours of
smelting produced approximately 45 lbs of iron, whilst Hastie observed in 1817
that 'five men and two boys can convert ore into 48 lbs of iron and the iron into 8
spades per day'. 8 Much iron and iron-products, mainly tools such as spade heads,
axes, hammers, chisels, scissors, knives, needles, hinges, square nails, planes,
awls, anvils, tripods and pots, but also chains and railings, were sold openly on the
domestic market, and were a staple of internal long-distance trade, and there also
existed a heavy state demand for weaponry, notably bayonets and spear heads.9
Moreover, the scale of the iron manufacturing unit was in several cases
6
G.S. Chapus and Dandoau, 'Les anciennes industries malgaches' Bulletin de l'Académie
Malgache, 30 (1951-2), pp. 45-78; R.Baron, 'Notes on the Economic Plants of Madagascar',
Antananarivo Annual and Madagascar Magazine, 22 (1898), pp. 218-23; G.Campbell, 'The Role of
the London Missionary Society in the Rise of the Merina Empire, 1810-1861' Ph.D. University of
Wales (1985), pp. 40-42, 47-54.
7 S.P. Oliver, Madagascar: An Historical and Descriptive Account of the Island and its Former
Dependencies I (London, 1886), pp. 492, 494; Chapus, Quatre-vingts années, p. 206; Madagascar
Times, 1, 9 (17 June 1882), p. 52.
8
J. Hastie, 'Diary' (1817), p. 186 - CO.167/34 PRO; see also ibid, p. 182; Mayeur, 'Voyage au
pays d'ancove, par le pays d'ancaye autrement dit des Baizangouzangoux' (1785), p. 210 - Add.
18128, British Museum; Madagascar Times, 1, 9 (17 June 1882), p. 52.
9
Hastie, 'Diary' (1817), pp. 182, 186 - CO.167/34 PRO; Mayeur, 'Voyage au pays d'ancove,
autrement dit des hovas ou Anboilamba dans l'intérieur des terres, Isle de Madagascar' (1777), pp.
167, 175; idem, 'Voyage au pays d'ancove, par le pays d'ancaye autrement dit des
Baizangouzangoux' (1785), pp. 210, 228 - Add. 18128, British Museum; Anon, 'Mémoire
historique et politique sur l'ile de Madagascar' (1790), p. 58 - Add. 18126, British Museum; Oliver,
Madagascar II (London, 1886), pp. 90-91; A and G Grandidier, Histoire physique, naturelle et
politique de Madagascar vol.IV T.IV (Paris, 1928), p. 294; Chapus and Dandoau, 'anciennes
industries malgaches', p. 64; R.Decary, Coutumes geurrières et organisation militaire chez les
anciennes malgaches I (Paris, 1966), pp. 22-7, 31-2, 37, 49; Campbell, 'Role of the London
Missionary Society', pp. 48, 51-3.
considerable. If one accepts as one standard definition of 'factory' industry a single

production unit employing a minimum of fourteen workers10, the workshops on
the iron ore fields of eastern Imerina qualified as a factory industry as early as 1817
when Hastie visited a location comprising furnaces, each of which would employ
seven labourers, and two workshops containing 18 and 32 forges respectively."
Mendels argues that the greater the percentage of time a family devoted to
handicrafts, the greater its premium upon children as 'human capital' investment,
and the greater its dependence upon external provisions. Hence the development of a
symbiotic relationship between rural industry and agriculture leading to regional
specialisation. 12 It is impossible to quantify the number of people engaged in
major or full-time handicraft production in Imerina in the eighteenth century. The
famines alluded to above were caused by natural disasters which devastated the grain
crop, rather than to the emergence of a sizeable handicraft population which strained
agricultural resources. However, the famines stimulated improvements in
agricultural techniques which permitted intensive cultivation and provided two
crops annually. This in turn resulted in the emergence of regular surpluses for the
first time in Imerina's history, and the ability to sustain a substantial non-
agricultural population.13
This did lead to intra and inter regional specialisation, characterised by the
commercialisation of agriculture and the sale of the products of Merina rural
industry outside the province as well as in the local market. Unlike Russia in its
'proto industrial' stage, domestic demand in Imerina at the start of the nineteenth
century was served by a well developed market network. The market system was
first organised on a permanent basis by king Andrianamboatsimarofy (1773-95).
Each province possessed its own markets which rotated on a daily basis and
interlocked into the networks of neighbouring provinces, whilst members of the
Tsiarondahy, a caste of royal slaves, were appointed as market stewards. The
system was extended and regularised by Andrianampoinimerina following the close
of the Merina Civil Wars in the late 1790s with the introduction of standard
weights and measures.14 Imerina formed the centre of an island wide long distance
trade network which fostered inter regional specialisation. Piastres were the accepted
money in the main commercial centres, comprising the larger ports and the markets
straddling the main long distance trade routes. Cloth, piastres and, except in
10 O. Crisp, 'Labour and Industrialisation in Russia' in Cambridge Economic History of Europe,

VII, 2 (Cambridge, 1978), p. 342.
11
Hastie, 'Diary' (1817), pp. 169-70 - CO.167/34, PRO; Grandidier, Histoire vol. IV T.I (Paris,
1908), pp. 368-9 and idem vol. IV T.IV (Paris, 1928), pp. 182-3.
12
Mendels, 'Proto-industrialisation', p. 245.
13
G.Campbell, 'Slavery and Fanompoana: The Structure of Forced Labour in Imerina
(Madagascar), 1790-1861' Journal of African History, 29 (1988), p. 467.
14 Mayeur, 'Voyage au pays d'ancove, autrement dit des hovas ou Amboilamba dans l'intérieur
des terres, Isle de Madagascar' (1777), pp. 172, 175-6, 181-2 and idem, 'Voyage au pays d'ancove
par le pays d'ancaye autrement dit des Baizangouzangoux' (1785), pp. 213, 226-7 - Add.18128,
British Museum; Hugon, 'Aperçu de mon dernier voyage à ancove de l'an 1808', 18 - Add.18137,
British Museum; R.Decary, Coutumes guerrières et organisation militaire chez les anciens
malgaches (Paris, 1966), p. 128.
Imerina where it was a royal monopoly, gunpowder, acted as currencies. In the

south of the island coral beads and salt also performed the role of currencies, whilst
in the areas removed from the main commercial networks barter was also used. In
summary, although the island as a whole may be described as possessing a
'peripheral' market from which its inhabitants could have withdrawn, this would
have entailed considerable political and economic turmoil, whilst in some
economic regions, notably Imerina, the market principle dominated.15
The Role of the State
The proto-industrialisation school have generally relied on the British experience as

a model of the successful transition from rural textile handicraft production to

modern industry based on factory machine manufacture. However, Jeannin and
Coleman have underlined the importance of considering other industries, notably
mining and metal working which involved a greater concentration of capital.16
Vandenbroeke, reconsidering the issue of proto-industrialisation in eighteenth
century Flanders, the region upon which Mendels based his theory, identifies ten
variables as decisive in the period of transition to modern industry: the state of
domestic industry and agriculture, the importance and growth of foreign trade,
economic policy, the economic infrastructure, demographic structure and growth,
human capital, the 'activity rate', domestic demand, and wage costs. The relative
importance of these factors varied according to the socio-economic structure of each
individual country. Thus a reading of recent revisionist work on late eighteenth
century and early nineteenth century western Europe might indicate that the engine
of economic growth in Flanders was lower wage costs, in France was technological
and economic innovations, involving amongst other factors, factories, market
strategy, incentives, that preceded those of Britain whose own motor of growth was
less nascent industry than a progressive agricultural sector allied to the expanding
financial muscle of the City and other parts of the service sector.17
In Imerina, the rural industrial and agricultural basis upon which economic
development could take place has been outlined. However, the catalyst for growth
15
G.Campbell, 'Role of the London Missionary Society', pp. 66-87.
16
Jeannin, 'La proto-industrialisation', pp. 61-2; Coleman, 'Proto-industrialisation', p. 443.
17
Thus Vandenbroeke argues that lower wage costs were the engine of economic growth of
Flanders; Aldrich supports Crouzet's contention that technological and economic innovations,
preceding those adopted in Britain, fomented French development; whilst for Britain, Cain and
Hopkins stress the rising productivity of an agricultural sector reformed by a progressive and
commercially orientated landed class in alliance with a service sector of growing importance.
C. Vandenbroeke, 'The Regional Economy of Flanders and Industrial Modernisation in the
Eighteenth Century: a Discussion', Journal of European Economic History, 16,1 (1987), pp. 163-
70; R. Aldrich, 'Late-Comer or Early-Starter? New Views on French Economic History', Journal of
European Economic History, 16,1 (1987), pp. 91, 95-6; N.F.R. Crafts, 'British Economic Growth,
1700-1831: A Review of the Evidence', Economic History Review, 36,2 (1983), pp. 177-99; P. J.
Cain and A.G. Hopkins, 'Gentlemanly Capitalism and British Expansion Overseas I. The Old
Colonial System, 1688-1850', Economic History Review, 39,4 (1986), pp. 504, 510-511.
was, as in seventeenth century Russia, the state18; the Merina crown was pushed
into the role of industrial entrepreneur by the failure of the British alliance, forged
through treaties signed in 1817 and 1820, to promote the foreign trade of
Madagascar. Slave exports were traditionally the major source of Merina
government revenue but were prohibited by the 1820 treaty. $2.5 million in
potential slave export earnings were lost between 1820 and 1826, and royal revenue
slumped from $32,927 in 1821 to $22,360 in 1822. They increased to $50,000 in
1824, but this was still far short of the sums required to fuel Merina military
expansion within the island. Moreover, no 'legitimate' staples had been developed
to compensate for the loss of earnings from slave exports and as a result the money
supply, income and commerce declined. Moreover, the Merina owned no merchant
fleet, possessed no well established commercial community with access to capital,

and failed in its attempt to induce foreign investment.19
As a result, Radama I in 1825-6 rejected the British free trade alliance and adopted
autarchic policies to promote industrial and commercial growth. Having already
assured agricultural self sufficiency, the immediate priority from 1825 was to
garner indigenous resources and adopt and adapt Western techniques and technology
in order to stimulate industrial self-sufficiency, notably in textiles and armaments.
In the long term it was hoped to produce a surplus of textiles for export, and it was
with the foreign market in mind that Radama I also encouraged the cultivation of
plantation cash crops, and the exploitation of forest products like wax and rubber.
Finally, the Merina court aimed to increase the traditional export of provisions,
namely bullocks, meat and rice, as well as of animal products, especially hides.20
The promotion of the economy, and the augmentation of government revenue
would be achieved through two associated measures; the rejection of free trade and
the erection of high tariffs, and the regulation of industry and commerce through
state monopolies and exclusive contracts with selective foreigners. From 1826-34,
customs duties were raised generally from five to 20-25 per cent ad valorem, were
lowered again to five per cent between 1834 and 1842, from which date they were
doubled. To ensure compliance with the new duties, foreign commerce was
restricted to twelve ports.21 Again, between 1824 and 1837, the Merina crown
entered into monopolistic foreign trade contracts with about five Mascarene
individuals or syndicates, and into industrial contracts with about twenty artisans
from Europe or Mauritius.22
18 For a comparison of the role of the Russian state in fostering industrial growth see Crisp,
'Labour and Industrialisation in Russia' in Cambridge Economic History of Europe, chapter 7.
19
G. Campbell, 'The Monetary and Financial Crisis of the Merina Empire, 1810-1826' South
African Journal of Economic History, 1,1 (1986), pp. 99-118.
20
G. Campbell, 'The Adoption of Autarchy in Imperial Madagascar, 1820-1835', Journal of
African History, 28 (1987), p. 400.
21 The twelve Merina customs ports were Mahajanga on the west coast and, on the east coast,
Vohimarina, Maroantsetra, Fenoarivo, Mahavelona, Toamasina, Vatomandry, Mahanoro,
Mananzary, Mahela and Taolanaro - see Campbell, 'Role of the London Missionary Society', p.
206.
22
The commercial contracts were with a Mauritius consortium headed by the Blancard brothers
(1827-8), Samuel Shipton (1834), and Garnot (1836-7). From 1837 foreign trade was largely
Human Capital
The substitution of fixed for circulating capital is considered a key element in the
transition from rural handicraft to modern industry. The labour intensive nature of
the rural handicraft industry kept costs low and profits high for the merchant
entrepreneur controlling the industry, enabling him to accumulate capital funds
which could subsequently be invested in the factory plant characteristic of modern
industry. 23 In Madagascar, the absence of domestic capital formation and the
preclusion of raising foreign loans because of the principles underlying the
adoption of autarchic policies made economic growth in Madagascar largely
dependent upon the investment of human capital.
Although the central plateau and the south east of the island were relatively
densely populated, only the latter region suffered from over-population, whilst the
neighbouring Mascarene islands were keen to tap Madagascar's labour resources for
their plantations. The Merina crown therefore declared a state monopoly of labour,
a move facilitated by the existence of domestic institutions and ideologies designed
to create a geographically concentrated and servile workforce. The first such
institution was fanompoana, or compulsory and unremunerated labour enforced by
the state upon 'free subjects'. This was superimposed upon a caste system, wherein
status was ascribed and immutable, which agitated for worker passivity and against
the emergence of class alignments. Caste based work units were formed of between
10 and 1000 men under the direction of an ambonizato (lit. 'head of 100') for state
prescribed work. Originally applied to agricultural projects of a maximum of 24
days duration, the system was expanded to include any project of 'national
importance' for an unlimited period. This included military and civil fanompoana.
By 1830 the Merina court had created a standing army comprising a permanent
force of 100,000 soldiers, and had similarly created permanent fanompoana units for
skilled indigenous artisans, numbering just under 10,000 in Ranavalona I's reign
(1828-81). In addition, he established a state school system under the supervision
of LMS missionaries which served as an institution for the recruitment and training
of youths for industry and defence. Finally, he could summon all 'free' subjects of
the expanding Merina empire for unskilled fanompoana, the carriage of industrial
raw materials to industrial centres being generally allocated to fanompoana units of
conquered provincial peoples, notably the Bezanozano, Betsimisaraka, Sihanaka and
Betsileo.24
monopolised on the north west coast by Marks, an agent for Boston merchants, and on the east
coast by de Rontaunay. The foreign specialists involved in state contracts included five Bengali
cultivators and silk-worm workers, three Mauritian and one English carpenter, one Mauritian tailor,
a Mauritian tinsmith, one Mauritian and one Welsh weaver, an English cobbler, an English and one
French blacksmith, an English tanner, and two master artisans, one French and the other Scottish,
who could perform a wide range of skilled work from carpentry to founding cannon: - Campbell,
'Role of the London Missionary Society' chapters . 5, 7 and 9.
23
Mendels, 'Proto-industrialisation', pp. 243-5, 255-6.
24
G. Campbell, 'Slavery and Fanompoana: The Structure of Forced Labour in Imerina
(Madagascar), 1790-1861' Journal of African History, 29 (1988), pp. 468-70, 484.
Table 1 Permanent Skilled Fanompoana Units in Imerina, 1790-1883
Sector Reign
Andrianampoinimerina Radamal Ranavalona I

(c.1790-1810) (1810-1828) (1828-1861)
Number % Total Number % Total Number % Total
Agriculture: 394 77.87 424 6.46 630 6.54
Extractive 0 0.0 27 0.41 73 0.76
Textile 0 0.0 57 0.87 222 2.31
Metal 0 0.0 4,406 67.16 4,509 46.82
Military 86 17.00 370 5.64 2,747 28.53

Construction 26 5.14 1,276 19.45 1,276 13.25
Other 0 0.0 0 0.0 175 1.82
Total 506 100.00 6,560 100.00 9,630 100.0
Source: Hastie, 'Le voyage de Tananarive en 1817-18', Bulletin de VAcademie

Malgache, II (1902), p. 231; Freeman to Hankey, Antananarivo, 12 October 1831 and
Johns, Freeman and Canham to Ellis, Antananarivo, 28 May 1833 - SOAS/LMS MIL,
Bx.4 F.I J.C.; Callet, Histoire des Rois, V (Antananarivo, 1978), p. 1158; S. Chapus,
Quatre-vingts annees d'influences europeennes en Imerina (1815-1895) (Tananarive,
1925), p. 230; Grandidier, Histoire, T.IV vol. IV (Paris, 1928), pp. 134, 166, 370; J.J.
Freeman and D. Johns, A Narrative of the Persecution of the Christians in Madagascar,
(London, 1840), pp. 25-6, 42, 107; C. Rey, 'A propos d'une lettre de Jean Laborde'
ORSTOM, 25 (1965), pp. 167-90; J. Chauvin, 'Jean Laborde, 1805-1878', Memoires de
VAcademie Malgache, 29 (Tananarive, 1939), pp. 8-9, 29, 43; I. Pfieffer, The Last
Travels of Ida Pfieffer, (London, 1861), pp. 222, 267; W. Ellis, History of Madagascar,
I (London, 1833), pp. 196-7, 282, 311-13 and II, 293-4; J. Cameron, Recollections of
Mission Life in Madagascar in the early days of the L.M.S. Mission, (Antananarivo,
1874), p.230; M. Ceffaud, 'L'artisanat indigene a Madagascar', Exposition coloniale
internationale de Paris (1931), p.7.
The second institution for the manipulation of labour resources was slavery.
Domestic slavery was well established in Imerina where by 1817 they formed
approximately one third of the population. The ban on slave exports from 1820
initially resulted in a such an expansion of slave numbers that, fearing a slave
revolt, Radama I ordered that all males aged ten and over captured in provincial
campaigns be executed and counselled his subjects that existing slave labour in
Imerina be fully utilised, notably in the production of 'legitimate' exports:
Let my subjects, them who have slaves, employ them in planting rice, and other
provisions, and in taking care of their flocks — in collecting bees-wax and gums,
and in manufacturing cloths and other articles which they can sell25
25
Radama I, quoted in Jones, 'Journal of, Quarterly Chronicle (1821-4), p. 127; see also G.
Campbell, 'Madagascar and the Slave Trade, 1810-1895' Journal of African History, 22 (1981), pp.
203-227.
As a result of growing poverty commonly attributed to the ban on slave exports,

slave ownership increasingly became a prerogative of the ruling elite, despite the
huge influx of slaves gained from provincial campaigns and imported from
Mozambique. Although some slaves became cattle tenders and cultivators for the
elite, most were used to service their lifestyle of conspicuous consumption.26 There
was little indication of the use of slaves to service the legitimate export trade and
industrial sectors until the 1830s. From that time some provincial captives were
directed into the plantations and sugar factories on the east coast:
Table 2 Workforce of Crown Plantations on East Coast, 1825-61

Designation Origin
A. Fanompoana: Antaimoro South-east — forcibly resettled.
Antaifasy South-east — forcibly resettled.
B. Slaves: Tsimanoa Vorimo and Andiamahakiry —
captured in 1823-4.
Moromaniry Tanala captives — served de
Lastelle.
Maroratsy Soamandrakizay — served Arnoux.
Antaisoa Soamandrakizay — served Orieux.
Maromiasa captured 1853 — served Orieux.
Telovohitra slaves of Rainizanamanga, son of
Rainilaiarivony.
Source: Fontoynont et Nicol Les traitants frangais de la cote est de Madagascar de

Ranavalona I a Radama II (Tananarive, 1940), pp. 11-12, 29-30.
Merina could be legally enslaved for crimes including indebtedness and, after 1835,
the profession of Christian beliefs, and such 'criminals' were also employed in
industrial projects.27 However, the largest slave labour force comprised the porters
who increasingly monopolised the transport of commercial freight and passengers
between Antananarivo and the chief east coast port of Toamasina from the 1830s.
Their numbers at this time are unknown, although it is estimated that they totalled
about 60,000 at the close of the nineteenth century.28 The Merina court also
conscripted into public works gadralava, people of free status convicted for crime,
debt or, in some instances, sedition, in addition to vagabonds and other 'floating'
elements of the population. The crown further appealed for voluntary labour from
the most impoverished sections of the community in return for food rations in the
26
Campbell, 'Madagascar and the Slave Trade' pp. 203-27; idem, 'Labour and the Transport
Problem in Imperial Madagascar, 1810-1895' Journal of African History, 21 (1980), pp. 341-56.
27
Chapus, Quatre-vingts années d" influences européennes en Imerina (1815-1895) (Tananarive,
1925), p. 207.
28 Campbell, 'Labour and the Transport Problem', pp. 341-56.
hope that this would remove 'the necessity of any person committing a theft to
satisfy the wants of nature, as his labour would thus secure him subsistence'.29
Finally, Radama I had access to skills through foreign technical personnel and
Malagasy trained in western techniques. Between 1816 and 1830, 27 Merina youth,
some of whom had already gained experience as metalworkers, were sent abroad,
five to Britain and the rest to Mauritius, to learn the arts of gun and gunpowder
manufacture, factory textile production, machine technology, gold, silver and iron
working, carpentry, painting, shoe mending, and painting. Another fifty were
assigned as sailors aboard a British warship.30 He also assigned to each foreign
artisan an average of two Malagasy 'apprentices', about 40 in total, with
instructions that their apprenticeship be completes in as short a time as possible.31
Education
Education is generally considered to play a key role in economic growth. It

enhances the value of human capital, for a relatively high standard of literacy is
considered a vital factor in the ease and speed of worker adaptation to industrial
employment. For instance, it has been estimated for nineteenth century Russia that
four years of schooling raised the industrial productivity of an individual worker by
40 per cent. Indeed, there exists a sufficiently high correlation between literacy and
industrial development to make it an accepted precondition of industrial 'take-off'.32
A formal educational system in Imerina was established in 1822 under the
auspices of Welsh missionaries but remained limited to three schools until 1824
when, in anticipation of the move to autarchy, Radama I brought the missionary
schools under direct state control.33 The educational system expanded from three
29
Hastie, 'Diary' (1822-3) - CO.167/66, PRO; see also Callet, Histoire des Rois, V
(Antananarivo, 1978), p. 1103; Ellis, History of Madagascar, II (London, 1838), p. 303.
30
Miller to Arundel, 2 May 1823; Miller to Arundel, Austin Friars, 17 June 1824; Barry to
Hastie, Port Louis, 6 June 1825; Clunie to Arundel, Manchester, 21 June 1825 - in S. Ayache,
Raombana l'historien 1809-1855 (Fianarantsoa, 1976), pp. 268, 270, 272; Campbell, 'Role of
the London Missionary Society', p. 128.
31
Canham to Burder, Antananarivo, 30 June 1822, SOAS/LMS MIL Bx.l F.4 J.A.; Ellis,
History of Madagascar, II (London, 1838), p. 275.
32
see Crisp, 'Labour and Industrialisation in Russia' pp. 387-8.
33
In c.1800-1804 a school was established at the Merina court in which by 1817 five to six
children of royal blood had been taught sorabe, or Malagasy written in Arabic script, by
Andriamazanoro, an Antaimoro from the south east of the island. However, the Arabic characters
used in sorabe failed adequately to express the rich range of vowel sounds in Malagasy. In addition,
the Antaimoro tradition of education was highly elitist, and the sorabe writing was considered to
have powerful sacerdotal and magical powers. This hindered the expansion of education required for
the effective running of the economy and the administration of the Merina empire. Radama I
therefore sought European teachers. In 1817 Hastie was appointed as British agent and tutor to
royal princes at the Merina court, but the same year the British treaty was negated by Hall, acting
governor of Mauritius, and in 1819 Radama I appointed a Frenchman, Robin, as royal tutor. - see
James Hastie, 'Diary' (1817), 153, 188-9 - CO.167/34, PRO; Jones and Griffiths to Burder,
Antananarivo, 30 May 1827, SOAS/LMS MIL Bx.2 F.4 J.A; L. Munthe, La bible a Madagascar
(Oslo, 1969), pp. 8-15, 23; idem, 'La tradition Arabico-Malgache' CRASOM 37. 2 (1977), p. 265;
Raharijaona and Raveloson, 'Andriamazanoro, prince Antaimoro de Vohipeno', Bulletin de
l' Académie Malgache, 32 (1954), pp. 31-6; J. Dez, 'Le temps et le pouvoir; l'usage du calendrier
schools in 1822 to over 30 in 1824 and reached 100 by 1828, the number of pupils
increasing from 200 to 5,000 between 1824 and 1828. In 1829, schools were
founded for the first time in Betsileo and Antsihanaka and plans had been drawn up
for the construction of a boarding school to house provincial pupils.34 The rapid
expansion of the school system required organisation. The crown used its
theoretical right over land and labour to order amboninzato to apportion land and,
where necessary, construct a building for school use by summoning local
fanompoana. Pupils were also conscripted into the schools through fanompoana.35
The Merina king subsequently fashioned the schools into the chief institution for
the recruitment and rudimentary education of soldiers, administrators and master
artisans. The schools were highly successful, imparting both a basic literacy and
work discipline to pupils. In 1824, Radama I proclaimed to his subjects 'that none
of them that should enter his service, either military or civil, after a limited defined
period, should be promoted if not found capable of writing'36, and the following
year written replaced oral instruction in the Merina administration. Between 1827
and 1835 the number of pupils estimated to have gained basic literacy in the
schools rose from 4,000 to 15,000. Whereas as late as 1897 the literacy rate in
Russia was only 21 per cent,37 in Imerina as early as 1835 it was probably over 7
per cent, prompting Raombana to note in 1853 that 'Had no schools been
established in IMERINA, no important business or affair could have been
transmitted to the Garrisons'.38 Literacy in Imerina in the mid nineteenth century
was probably far in advance of that amongst the indigenous population of any
comparably sized region of Africa.39
In a country with no developed urban centres the schools also helped to instil a
sense of discipline which is the major obstacle to the forging of an industrial from
divinatoire antaimoro' in F. Raison-Jourde (ed.), Les souverains de Madagascar (Paris, 1983), pp.
110-11, 119-20; Grandidier, Histoire vol.IV T.IV (Paris, 1928), p. 387; Ellis, History of
Madagascar I (London, 1838), pp. 292, 402-3.; Hastie, 'Report on Missionary Instruction in
Ovah' (17 March 1825), CO.167/78 II, PRO; Jones and Griffiths to Phillips, Antananarivo, 30
April 1823, ALGC 19157E no. 3; Campbell, 'Role of the London Missionary Society', pp. 149-
51.
34
D. Griffiths, Hanes Madagascar (Machynlleth, 1843), p. 41; Johns to LMS, Antananarivo, 8
November 1826, SOAS/LMS MIL Bx.2 F.3 J.C.; 'Second Report of the Madagascar Missionary
School Society' (1828), SOAS/LMS MIL Bx.2 F.4 J.C.; 'Report of the Madagascar Mission School
Society, March 1828-December 1829', SOAS/LMS MIL Bx.3; Betsileo District Committee to LMS
Deputation, Fianarantsoa, 19 October 1920, SOAS/LMS 'Madagascar Personal' Bx.1 (1920).
35
Jeffrey to Burder, Ambatomanga, 24 May 1824, SOAS/LMS MIL Bx.2 F.1 J.A.; Jones to
Hankey, Antananarivo, 29 July 1829, SOAS/LMS MIL Bx.3 F.2 J.A.
36
Hastie, 'Report on the Schools superintended by the Missionaries at Tananarive' (19 April
1824), CO.167/78 II, PRO.
37
Crisp, 'Labour and Industrialisation in Russia', pp. 388, 391.
38
Raombana, Histoires, 134; see also Rabary, Ny Daty Malaza (Tananarive, 1930) I, p. 58;
Mrs. Ellis, Madagascar: its Social and Religious Progress (London, 1863), p. 28; Ellis, History of
Madagascar, II, pp. 470-1; N.B. Leminier, 'Notes sur une excursion faites dans l'intérieur de l'ile de
Madagascar en 1825' Bulletin de Madagascar, 292 (1970), p. 796; Freeman and Johns, Narrative,
p. 75.
39
For a comparison with Ethiopia see R. Pankhurst, Economic History of Ethiopia 1800-1935
(Addis Ababa, 1968), pp. 666-73.
an agricultural work force. This was the message of a number of LMS directives to
missionary teachers,40 and the lesson was also not lost on missionary artisans who
had given 'schooling' to their indigenous apprentices on an irregular basis since
their arrival in the island in 1821. The first attempt to formalise craft education was
in 1826 when the first school graduates were despatched on 'industrial fanompoana'
as apprentices to workshops supervised by foreign artisans41, and this was followed
in 1831 by the first formal 'worker' education programme, when Cameron started
an evening school for 560 of his Analakely factory labour force. This initiative,
followed by Chick, proved a success for management, it being commented later
that 'Habits of thought, attention, industry, and application, were formed, new
ideas were communicated, and new associations were generated'.42 Of the total
missionary effort in this direction, it was reported in 1840:
new scenes have been visited; new energies created; and a new kind of life
instituted; new ranks and orders in society established; and in a word, a new
physical aspect given to the condition of society... rude and unwieldy masses have
been brought under European discipline.43
Finally, the schools instilled in pupils an unswerving personal loyalty to the

crown and empire. Thus when Carayon visited Ambatomanga school in 1826 he
had the following passage written on the board for him by a child as proof of its
schooling: 'Radama n'a point d'egal parmi les princes. II est dessus de tous les
chefs de l'ile; il est maitre de tout. Tout la terre de Madagascar lui appartient qu'a
lui seul'. 44 This mission school ideology was of immense importance for an
economic development in the form of crown monopolies. In this way the values
imparted through mission education complemented those of caste in helping to
shape a workforce that was simultaneously docile and disciplined.
40
See for example, 'Instruction of the Rising Generation' in The Missionary Register (1826), p.
208
41
Jones and Griffiths to LMS, SOAS/LMS MIL Bx.l F.5 J.A.; 'School Report' (1826),
SOAS/LMS MIL bx.2 F.3 J.E.; 'Second Report of the Madagascar Mission School Society' (1828),
SOAS/LMS MIL Bx.2 F.4 J.D.
42
Freeman and Johns, Narrative, p. 78; see also Baker to Arundel, Antananarivo, 5 April 1831,
and Johns to Arundel, Antananarivo, 12 April 1831 - SOAS/LMS MIL Bx.4 F.1 J.A.
43 Freeman and Johns, Narrative, p. 83.; see also Ellis, History of Madagascar, I, pp. 103-4,
308; For a Russian comparison see Crisp, 'Labour and Industrialisation in Russia' pp. 375-6.
44
Quoted in F. Raison, 'L'échange iné'gal de la langue. La pénétration des techniques
linguistiques au sein d'une civilisation de l'oral (Imerina, début du XIXe siècle), Revues annales
ESC (fèvrier 1976), p. 5.
To Ambatomanga
h forges Mahamasina
'I Military Camp
-;Royal
Mission Party " 'icefields
Property & Workplaces " ~ - ' /
Densely Populated LI * ^ // Ambohijanahary
Areas Farming
Gardens ' Villages G>
V V v/ V
i V
Betsimitatatra N/ \t v v v v v
Antananarivo, 1828-35
Journal of Southern African Studies, Vol. 17, No. 3, September 1991 539
Formal education ended in 1835 with the expulsion of the missionaries, but
informal education continued, and by mid century had probably generated greater
literacy than had the formal system. Informal western education started in the
chapels, established in 1821 but generally avoided by the Merina public until 1827
when large numbers of young military conscripts attended as 'listeners'. Their
numbers dropped from Radama I's death in mid 1828 until May 1829 when the
new sovereign indicated her approval of chapels. Thereafter so much eagerness was
expressed for the taratasy, or ability to read the Scriptures, that by 1832 two new
missionary chapels had opened and a number of indigenously operated prayer
meetings instituted, mainly in Antananarivo and its suburbs and in military camps
and garrison towns.45 Slaves, who comprised one third of the population (rising to
two thirds in Antananarivo) were also strongly affected. Missionaries compelled all
slaves employed by them as domestic servants or apprentices to attend both chapel
and special night schools. Finding that conversion to Christianity and an ability to
read and discuss the Christian scriptures gave them a status within the Christian
community impossible to attain in the caste stratified ancestral society outside,
they were eager to learn and quickly mastered the art of the taratasy. Proselytisation
within the slave community spread rapidly, slave literacy accelerating from
December 1831 when the missionaries, barred from baptising and conferring church
membership upon 'free' Merina subjects, concentrated their efforts upon the slaves.
The subsequent court proscription of slave education in May 1832 and of the
Christianity in February 1835 came too late to prevent the continued spread of
literacy through an indigenous clandestine church which flourished despite periodic
bouts of state persecution. All social ranks were affected by the thirst for the
taratasy, and the few books which escaped the mass burning of 1835 were copied
and recopied until the LMS started to smuggle in quantities of Christian literature
through the ports of the east coast.46
Wage Costs
A further initial advantage for the Merina crown was wage costs, a factor
Vandenbroeke considers to have been vital for the success of the economy of
eighteenth century Flanders:
the cost of wages form one of the most essential components in the final level of
prices. In a society where labour-saving devices are few and where therefore few
differences in productivity were possible, it is logical that the relative importance
of the costs of wages will be great.47
In Imerina under autarchy, wage costs were initially very low. There was an
extremely limited experiment with wage labour in the 1820s which ended because
it threatened the institution of fanompoana upon which the Merina crown's
45
G. Campbell, 'Role of the London Missionary Society', pp. 274-6.
46
G. Campbell, 'Role of the London Missionary Society', pp. 277-8 and chapter 8.
47 Vandenbroeke, 'The Regional Economy of Flanders', p. 164; see also ibid, pp. 165-70.
autarchic economic policies rested. As Freeman observed in 1829, 'a regular

monthly payment... to a large body of teachers might excite some jealousy — and
dissatisfaction' amongst unremunerated industrial workers and soldiers.48 Thereafter,
free labour could theoretically.be hired at $0.04 per day for an unskilled workman
and $0.08 for a skilled craftsman, but in practise was monopolised by the state so
that foreigners were obliged either to hire slave labour from the court syndicate or
to request fanompoana labour from the crown.49
All fanompoana and slave labour for state projects was unremunerated,
conscripted workers even having to provision themselves. Indeed, through a system
of fines and the hasina, or royal tribute, there was a net flow of money from
workers to the court. Also the reliance for freight transport upon human porterage,
again comprising slave oxfanompoana labour, represented a considerable saving in

wages for the crown. For example, in 1817, at the height of the commercial season
between July and October, 1,000 porter loads reached Antananarivo from the east
coast. This would have represented to foreign hirers a wage cost of $12,000, but
would have entailed for the crown a net gain of $1,000 from hasina.50
The Merina crown was fortunate in that the LMS and Mauritian government
initially undertook to pay the full costs of educational goods, the training of
Merina youths abroad, and the salaries of British personnel working in Imerina.
Most school equipment, comprising imported books and slates, was financed by
the LMS in London, churches in North Wales, and the foreign community in
Antananarivo. It is estimated that the LMS alone spent between $9,000 and
$13,000 on imported educational goods between 1820 and 1835.51 The crown also
saved $443,227 in salaries (at $ 1,000 per annum for clerics and $360 for artisans)
between 1820 and 1826 for missionaries alone.52 In December 1824, most foreign
craftsmen, at least half of whom were missionary artisans, signed contracts,
generally for five years, in which they were engaged by the crown to manufacture
skilled articles in return for apprentice labour, and a salary in money or as a
proportion of the goods they produced.53 This established a pattern of royal control
48
Freeman to Hankey, Antananarivo, 10 February 1829, SOAS/LMS MIL Bx.3 F.1 J.A.; see
also Griffiths to Arundel, 'private', Antananarivo, 20 December 1825, SOAS/LMS MIL Bx.2 F.2
J.C.
49
Jones and Griffiths to Burder, Antananarivo, 30 May 1827, SOAS/LMS MIL Bx.2 F.4 J.A.;
see also Campbell, 'Role of the London Missionary Society' p. 266.
50
Campbell, 'Role of the London Missionary Society', p. 244.
51
LMS to Jones, 'Account Sheet', SOAS/LMS MIL Bx.2 F.1 J.C; Griffiths, Hanes Madagascar,
48; Campbell, 'Role of the London Missionary Society', pp. 221, 245.
52 '
Expenses incurred by the Government of Mauritius on account of Madagascar' in 'Papers
Relating to Slavery in Mauritius' (26 November 1827), House of Commons Parliamentary Papers
36 (1828), pp. 72-82; Griffiths to Burder, Antananarivo, 6 November 1821, SOAS/LMS MIL Bx.l
F.2 J.C; Jones and Griffiths to LMS, Antananarivo, 2 June 1824, SOAS/LMS MIL Bx.2 F.1 J.A.;
Griffiths to Burder, 24 December 1825, and Rowlands to Burder, 26 December 1825, SOAS/LMS
MIL Bx.2 F.2 J.C
53
Chick to Burder, Antananarivo, 16 December 1825, SOAS/LMS MIL, B2 F2 JC; ibid, 6 June
1826, SOAS/LMS MIL, B2 F3 JA; Mondain et Chapus,'Journal of de Robert Lyall', p. 171; Callet,
Histoire V (Antananarivo,1978), 1062-3, 1066; Chapus, Quatre-vingts années d'influence
européennes en Imerina, 1815-1895 (Tananarive, 1925), 201-2; Ellis, Three Visits, 262-3; Oliver,
Madagascar II, 91; Campbell 'Slavery and Fanompoana'.
of missionary industry in which priority was given to the manufacture of military

goods. From the declaration of autarchy in 1826 the Merina crown became liable
for the salaries, lodging and provisioning of all foreign artisans in Madagascar.
However, lodgings, servants and provisions were all provided through fanompoana
obligations, whilst a part of their salaries was paid in kind, comprising a
proportion of the goods the artisans produced, on the basis that they could sell
them. Thus most artisan wages were reduced to a minimum of $900 per annum
from 1826-28, although those like Cameron and Laborde, whose abilities were
wide ranging and in great demand, earned far in excess of that figure. For example,
in 1833 Laborde signed a two year contracts for $4,500.54
Moreover, the crown defrayed the cost of such salaries not from the treasury but
through imposing extraordinary taxes upon the Merina populace. In accounting

wage costs, tax and other exactions must be taken into account. In 1837,
Ranavalona I imposed a new poll tax of $0.25. Many of her subjects were so
impoverished that they could only raise the cash by approaching the court elite for
a loan at an exorbitant rate of interest. Others, who owned some cattle, sold them
to raise the required money, again to the court elite who, because of their
monopoly of cattle export, could dictate the sale price. The rate they set was $0.25
for three bullocks, which the purchasers could re-sell to foreign merchants on the
coast for $15 each. The same year a special tax of $1.00 for every slave owned in
order to pay Delastelle $31,800 for imported European muskets. The tax,
burdensome to imperial subjects, brought a surplus of $70,000 to the royal
treasury, prompting the crown to impose another extraordinary tax which raised the
$100,000 required to finance the construction of the canon foundry built in 1837-9
by Laborde at Mantasoa (Isoatsimanampiovana).55
The Industrial Experiment
A chief aim of autarchy was the promotion of self sufficiency in industry and the
production of manufactures for export. Radama I made a piecemeal start,
implementing plans to expand manufacturing by replacing artisanal by factory
production. The proto-industrialisation school have placed almost exclusive
emphasis upon the importance for the emergence of modern industry of
developments within textile manufacturing. Despite having an important domestic
textile industry, Imerina imported cheap Indian and Lancashire pieces as well as
luxury cloth. Import substitution was first achieved in the production of luxury
cloth, for which demand was restricted to the Merina. In 1824 a factory was
established comprising 40-50 females from the sewing groups established amongst
female students in the Royal Academy. They produced small overcoats of twilled
calico and bordered woollen cloth as well as gowns, trousers, shirts and kerchiefs,
54
Campbell, 'Role of the London Missionary Society', pp. 245, 259, 262.
55
Oliver, Madagascar II, p. 196.
Mission School
Valley (Ricefieid & Swamp) 10 15 km
River
Lake
Main Route
hmandrosoV . • * I Ambohimanga
• Amboalany^ > A
\ ^'Ambohitrabiby
/ /A Ambohipianana
/ > *
A
Ambohimahamaina * \ 'I * *
MISSIOiN SCHOOLS IN CENTRAL IMERINA 1828-32

all in European style which were amongst the most popular articles sold in the
mission shop which operated from 1825-9 in Antananarivo.56
Nevertheless, ordinary household production generated a surplus which effectively
undermined 'factory' produced goods in the domestic market. This was most clearly
demonstrated in the attempts of Rowlands, the missionary weaver, to establish a
viable market for his machine products. A major obstacle for Rowlands was that
Malagasy cloth production was an ubiquitous part-time activity in the ordinary
farm household during the off-peak agricultural season from June to August, when
most ceremonies were held and therefore a time of peak demand for clothes. As
Rowlands noted:
Every woman in the country from the King's wives to the Slaves are weavers. They
will sit upon their heels weaving from morning 'til night a month together for 1/8
of a Spanish dollar. Most families spin and weave the whole of their own clothing.
The markets are stocked with home made clothes. No cloth meets with a rapid
sale... if it be not superior to their own in whiteness, fineness, brilliance of colours
etc.. 557
Cloth manufactured in factories employing expensive imported machinery and

craftsmen simply could not compete with ordinary farm household production.58
Radama I envisaged undermining domestic producers through enlarging the scope of
machine production of textiles to benefit from economies of scale. In early 1827 he
planned the construction of a cotton factory comprising imported British machines,
with the aim of producing 5,000 cotton pieces a year. It was to be water powered,
Cameron being commissioned to construct a water-mill supplied from a canal
leading from the river Ikopa.59 The London Missionary Society guaranteed half the
investment capital in return for 50 per cent of profits until the crown had repaid
them. The factory was to be managed by Rowlands, the missionary weaver, and
56
Jones to Farquhar, Antananarivo, 25 March 1822, CO.167/63, PRO; Griffiths, Hanes, p. 29;
Ellis, History I, pp. 277-8; J. Valette, Études sur le règne de Radama ler, p. 321; Rabary, Daty
Malaza I, pp. 24, 41; Campbell, 'Role of the London Missionary Society', pp. 247-9.
57
Rowlands to LMS, Antsahadinta, 13 June 1826, SOAS/LMS MIL Bx.2 F.3 J.A.
58
Hastie, 'Diary' (1817), pp. 143, 167-8, CO.167/34, PRO; idem, 'Report on Missionary
Instruction in Ovah' (17 March 1824) and 'Report on the Schools Superintended by the
Missionaries at Tananarive' (19 April 1824) - CO.167/78 pt.II, PRO; Bojer, 'Journal of in J.
Valette, 'L'Imerina en 1822-1825 d'après les journaux de Bojer et d'Hilsenberg', Bulletin de
Madagascar (avril-mai 1963), p. 24; Rowlands to Jones and Griffiths, Amparibe, 15 May 1827;
Jones and Griffiths to Burder, Antananarivo, 30 May 1827 - SOAS/LMS MIL Bx.2 F.4 J.A.; J.A.
Wills, 'Native Products used in Malagasy Industries' Antananarivo Annual and Madagascar
Magazine, 9 (1885), pp. 124-5; Ellis, History I, pp. 324-7; idem Three Visits to Madagascar
During the Years 1853-1854-1856 (London, 1859), p. 151; K. Jeffreys, The Widowed
Missionary's Journal (Southampton, 1827), pp. 173-6; J. Dez, 'Développement "economique et
tradition à Madagascar', Cahiers de l'institut de science économique appliquée supplement. 129
(1962) V, pp. 4, 92-3.
59
Robin to Missionaries, 24 January - 14 February 1827; Rowlands to Jones and Griffiths,
Amparibe, 15 May 1827; Cummins to Jones and Griffiths, Amparibe, 17 May 1827; Cameron to J.
and G. Brighton, 19 May 1827; Jones and Griffiths to Burder, Antananarivo, 30 May 1827;
Cameron to Arundel, 19 May 1827, SOAS/LMS MIL, B2 F4 JA.; Campbell, 'Role of the London
Missionary Society', p. 248.
Raolombelona, one of the Merina trained in the art of weaving and dyeing in
Manchester where in 1825 he was reported to be 'a very good workman and far
better acquainted with the principles of the art and preparation of the work, than
many who earn their livelihood by weaving'.60 In an attempt to protect the cotton
factory from foreign competition, Radama I in 1827 altered the payment for cattle
exports, traditionally made in cloth, to cash.61 In 1829 however, following the
French invasion of the north east coast, Ranavalona I substituted for textiles the
idea of an armaments factory, Henceforth the textile machinery was worked on a
small scale by government weavers producing lambas, a kind of Malagasy toga.62
The production of armaments had always been a priority of the Merina crown and
in 1825 Radama I instructed Canham, a missionary tanner about to leave on
furlough for Britain, to study the latest armament techniques there and report back
on his return scheduled for 1827. Also, in a premature attempt to promote import
substitution, Radama I prohibited the import of French armaments and insisted that
the British pay for all Malagasy exports in cash. In 1827, recognising Imerina's
continued dependence upon imports, he stipulated that foreign armaments could
enter the country at a nominal duty of five per cent.63 Ranavalona I concentrated her
efforts upon fostering a domestic arms industry, establishing four factories in the
vicinity of Antananarivo: A gunpowder mill at Isoraka, the site formerly earmarked
for textile production, under the direction of Cameron and Rainimanana/Ravarika
(Verkey), another Merina trained in Britain — at the Walthamstow gunpowder
factory; a sword and bayonet factory under the blacksmith missionary Chick at
Amparibe; a musket factory and cannon foundry at Ilafy, under the direction of
Frenchmen Droit and Laborde; and finally the maintenance of the three tanneries
established in 1828 under the missionary tanner, Canham, at Ambohimandroso,
Andoharano, and Vodivato for the manufacture of military boots, belts, saddles and
pouches.64
Only the tanneries and the Amparibe factory were in full production by 1830.
The government ordered the hides, suet and neats foot oil of all slaughtered cattle to
be sent to Canham, over 16,500 hides being surrendered in 1828 alone.65 Tannin
60
Clunie to Arundel, Manchester, 21 June 1825, in S. Ayache, Raombana l'historien 1809-
1855 (Fianarantsoa, 1976), p. 272.
61 Campbell, 'Role of the London Missionary Society' p. 205.
62
Rabary, Ny Daty Malaza I, pp. 50, 59, 66; Valette, Etudes, p. 30; 'Extracts of the Minutes of
the Madagascar Mission' (4 May-8 July 1829), SOAS/LMS MIL Bx.3 F.2 J.A.; Campbell,'Role of
the London Missionary Society', pp. 206-7, 259-62.
63
L. Munthe, C. Ravoajanahary and S. Ayache, 'Radama I et les Anglais. Les négotiations de
1817 d'après les sources malgaches ("sorabe" inédits)', Omaly sy Anio 3-4 (1976), p. 56; N.
Leminier, 'Notes' (1825), p. 797; Jones and Griffiths to LMS, Antananarivo, 9 November 1826,
SOAS/LMS MIL, Bx.2 F.3 J.D.; Canham to Burder, Ifenoarivo, 3 October 1827, SOAS/LMS MIL,
Bx.2 F.4 J.C.; Mondain et Chapus, 'Journal of de Robert Lyall', Documents de l' Académie
Malgache 5 (1954), pp. 11-13, 33; idem, 'Un chapitre inconnu. Des rapports de Maurice et de
Madagascar' Bulletin de l'Academie Malgache 30 (1951-2), pp. 111-3, 118; Campbell, 'Role of the
London Missionary Society', p. 205.
64
Campbell 'Slavery and Fanompoana'.3
65
Canham to Burder, Ifenoarivo, 13 December 1825, SOAS/LMS MIL, B2 F2 JC; Griffiths,
Hanes Madagascar, p. 38; Oliver, Madagascar II, pp. 84-5; The Madagascar Times II 46 (19
November 1884), p. 415; Grandidier, Histoire IV.IV (1928), pp. 133-4.
was initially obtained from bark, notably from the hard red mahogany-like wood
called nanto which grew in abundance in the north-eastern forests, but the gathering
and transport of the bark was both time and labour consuming.66 This provided the
incentive to search for alternatives and by 1830 Cameron was obtaining both lime
and sulphur from the Sirabe plain in Betsileo, 6-7 days (45 miles) south of
Antananarivo.67 As noted, indigenous iron smiths were skilled at producing a wide
range of ware, and a few iron smith villages had been formed around Antananarivo
by 1820 producing bayonets and spear heads for the state.68 From 1830, these
supplemented the Amparibe factory which between 1832 and 1835 produced
possibly 48,000 quality bayonets and swords per annum.69
The crown's continued dependence upon imported muskets, cannon and powder
was reflected in the 1832 stipulation that exports be paid for only in arms,
gunpowder or dollars. The following year, in response to a dual request from
governor Nicolay of Mauritius and the British Secretary of State for Foreign
Affairs, these restrictions were lifted, but were reimposed in 1834 for the staple
exports of rice and cattle.70 However, by the end of 1834 the crown was confident
that it had attained self sufficiency in armaments production. Sufficient numbers of
'apprentices' — 250 under Chick — had been trained for the manufacture of
bayonets, swords and military leather war to continue under indigenous
management.71 Also although Cameron, who by 1828 had successfully produced
nitre and sulphur from local resources72, felt that he lacked the necessary materials,
namely glass, indigo, copper, alum, acids, salt, and heating apparatus to conduct
preliminary chemical and mineral tests, the gunpowder mills, described as being
'on an immense scale' were in full production by February 1835. It was noted by a
contemporary that:
One of the principal native gunsmiths, and one of the superintendents of the
powder-mill, then made an oration in praise of their own ability, and assured the
66
The Madagascar Times II 41 (15 October 1884), p. 376.
67 Campbell, 'Slavery and Fanompoana'.
68
Oliver, Madagascar I, pp. and II, pp. 86, 90; G.S. Chapus and E. Birkeli 'Historique
d'Antsirabe jusqu'en l'année 1905' Bulletin de l'Académie Malgache XXVI (1944-5), pp. 59-82; J.
Sibree 'Industrial Progress in Madagascar' Antananarivo Annual and Madagascar Magazine XXII
(1898), pp. 129-32. In 1882, iron sold at $0.03 per lb. on the markets of Imerina - Madagascar
Times I, 9 (17 June 1882), 53.
69
Hastie, 'Diary' (1817), 182 - CO.167/34 PRO; Campbell 'Slavery and Fanompoana'.
70
Raombana, 'Annales', pp. 314-5; Baker to Stanley, 'Memorial concerning Madagascar'
(1852), SOAS/LMS MIL Bx.3 F.4 J.C.; Callet, Histoire des rois V (Tananarive, 1978), pp. 1156-7;
M. Rasoamiaramana, 'Aspects économiques et sociaux de la vie a Majunga entre 1862 et 1881'
thèse, Université de Madagascar (1974), p. 59; G.M. Razi, 'Sources d'histoire malgache aux Etats-
Unis, 1792-1882', Colloque des historiens et juristes (6 septembre 1977), p. 59.
71
Canham to Ellis, Ambohimandroso, 20 July 1833, SOAS/LMS MIL, B4 F4 JB; 'Minutes of
the Madagascar Mission' (Dec 1833 - May 1834), SOAS/LMS MIL, B5 Fl J C ; Wills 'Native
Products', p. 123.
72 'from the lixivation of decayed gneiss located to the north west of Lake Itasy and to the south
of the Vakinankaratra range, and from the blood and offal of slaughtered bullocks', Campbell.'Role
of the London Missionary Society', pp. 206-7, 259-62.
Queen, through her officers, that they would faithfully retain and improve the
knowledge of these arts, which they had received from the Europeans73
At the same time at Ilafy, Laborde had succeeded in 'manufacturing exceptionally

good gunpowder and muskets', at one stage at a rate of one a day, as well as a
cannon and bullets cast from an impure lead extracted from indigenous galena.74
Thus in 1835, when the political stance of the missionary clerics made the
continued presence of the LMS contingent untenable to the imperial court, the
latter were confident of their industrial future.75 Plans had already been drawn up for
the construction of a paper mill and a cannon foundry,76 and a factory constructed
by Cameron in 1832 was successfully producing cheap soap for the home market.77
Indigenous personnel took over the running of all except the Ilafy site which
lacked the necessary water and fuel to expand or even to maintain production.78 In
1837, Laborde relocated to Mantasoa, situated close to a series of lakes in the great
eastern forest some 25 miles from the capital where, following the technical
manuals of Roret, he constructed 'un veritable centre industriel, sorte de Cresot
malgache'.79 An aqueduct was constructed to convey the water to the complex, and
in June 1843 its first blast furnace was lit; thirteen months later the first cannon
was completed.80 In 1849 plans were laid for the construction of nineteen new
buildings, and at its height, Mantasoa comprised five factories containing blast
furnaces, which could smelt far larger quantities of iron ore more efficiently than
the traditional small scale bellow furnaces81, forges, hydraulic machines, and
numerous craft shops. The complex specialised in the manufacture of muskets and
73 Freeman and Johns, A Narrative, p. 118; see also Freeman to Hankey, Antananarivo, 18 June
1832, SOAS/LMS MIL Bx.4 F.2 J.D; George and Mary Chick to Ellis, Antananarivo, 11 November
1833, SOAS/LMS MIL, B4 F4 JC; Freeman to Philip, Ambohimandroso, 24 September 1834,
SOAS/LMS MIL, B5 F1 JD; see also Rafaralahy to Arundel, Antananarivo, 1 December 1830;
Rahaniraka to Hankey, Antananarivo, 5 Dec 1830 - SOAS/LMS MIL, B3 F4 JC; Simon Ayache,
Raombana l'historien 1809-1855, p. 313; Campbell,'Role of the London Missionary Society',
pp. 206-7, 259-62.
74
Chapus, Quatre-vingts années, p. 203.
75
Canham received a final injunction to leave in May 1834 from which time Merina tanners
produced leather shoes, boots, hat linings, belts, bags and saddles from the skins of bullocks,
sheep, goats and dogs - Canham to Ellis, Ambohimandroso, 20 July 1833, SOAS/LMS MIL, B4 F4
JB; 'Minutes of the Madagascar Mission' (Dec 1833 - May 1834), SOAS/LMS MIL, B5 Fl J C ;
Wills 'Native Products', p. 123.
Cameron was invited to remain in the island, he chose to follow his colleagues into exile -
Cameron to Ellis, Antananarivo, 3 Oct 1834, SOAS/LMS MIL, B5 Fl JD; David Griffiths Hanes
Madagascar (Machynlleth, 1843), 65.
76
G and M Chick to Ellis, Antananarivo, 11 Nov 1833, SOAS/LMS MIL, B4 F4 JC; Freeman to
Philip, Ambohimandroso, 24 September 1834, SOAS/LMS MIL, B5 F1 JD; see also Rafaralahy to
Arundel, Antananarivo, 1 Dec 1830; Rahaniraka to hankey, Antananarivo, 5 Dec 1830 -
SOAS/LMS MIL, B3 F4 JC; Ayache, Raombana l'historien 1809-1855, p. 313; Campbell.'Role of
the London Missionary Society', pp. 206-7, 259-62.
77 Campbell, 'Role of the London Missionary Society', p. 259.
78
Chapus, Quatre-vingts années, p. 203.
79 Chapus, Quatre-vingts années, p. 204; see also ibid, pp. 203, 205.
80 Chapus, Quatre-vingts années, p. 204.
81
in the latter an estimated 75 per cent of ore was lost - Grandidier, Histoire vol.IV T.IV, pp.
182-3.
cannon, but also produced swords, gunpowder, grape-shot, copper, steel,

lightening-conductors, glass, pottery, bricks, tiles, silk, a variety of cloths,
candles, lime, dye, white soap, paper potassium, processed sugar into sweets and
alcohol, and tanned leather.82
Although industrial activity was concentrated on the plateau and its margins,
there were also attempts under autarchy to process mineral and agricultural products
in the lowland provinces conquered by Merina armies. A successful if limited
example was the iron ware produced by smiths, under the direction of Delastelle,
who from 1840-45 manufactured pickaxes, axes and shovels for export to Reunion,
thus realising an enterprise first conceived by La Bourdonnais in the mid-eighteenth
century. De Lastelle also established a shipyard at Mahela where 150 Malagasy
carpenters, iron-smiths and coopers 'sont occupes toute l'annee a construire et a

reparer nos bateaux pour le service de l'interieur, des rivieres et de la cote'.83 More
importantly, military expansion into Iboina, in the north west of the island, in the
early 1820s secured for the Merina vast herds of Sakalava cattle, and a large
industry producing raw and salted hides for export soon developed in Mahajanga and
Marovoay. This became one of the staple exports of the second half of the
nineteenth century, being shipped to both European and American markets.84
Plantations
The Merina court also formed associations with foreigners for plantations on the
east coast cultivating cash crops for export and for manufacture. The first such
project, in collaboration with the government of Mauritius at Mahavelona in 1822
failed due to a combination of inappropriate European farming techniques and
crops, a turbulent climate, and salt saturated soil.85 The break with the British and
adoption of autarchy from the mid 1820s resulted in the formation of plantations
under crown contracts wherein the crown provided the land and labour and the
foreign partner provided the necessary machinery and 'European' skills — the
produce being split between the court and the foreign associate.86 The first of these
was in 1825 when Radama I negotiated with the Reunnionais merchants Arnoux
and Delastelle for the creation of coffee and sugar plantations, and distilleries on the
east coast. These proved highly successful; in addition to creating vast sugar
82
Raombana B2 Livre 13, 18; Oliver, Madagascar II, p. 107; Chapus, Quatre-vingts années, pp.
204-5.
83
Campbell 'Role of the London Missionary Society', p. 297; Fontoynont et Nicol Les
traitants français, p. 25; see also Madagascar Times v.I no.9 (17 June 1882), p. 52.
84
Thompson to Hathorne, Majunga, 27 November 1878, encl.l in Hathorne to Bertram,
Zanzibar, 11 December 1878, 'Letters of H.Hathorne, agent of Arnold, Hines and Co., New York
and John Bertram, Salem, and US consul at Zanzibar, 1878-1880', Peabody Museum.
85
Sémerville,'Souvenirs de Sainte-Marie', in R. Decary,'Le voyage du lieutenant de Vaisseau de
Semerville à l'île Sainte-Marie en 1824', Bulletin de l'Académie Malgache 16 (1933), pp. 50-1;
Hastie,'Diary' (1822), PRO.CO. 167/63; idem, 'Diary' (1822-23) PRO.CO. 167/66.
86 Tentor de Ravis,'Projet de système de conquête, colonisation et civilisation de l'île de
Madagascar', St Denis, 15 août 1852, AHH, Carton dossier l l e ; Robequain,'Une capitale
montagnarde en pays tropical: Tananarive', Revue de géographie alpine 37, 2 (1949), p. 288;
Grandidier, Histoire IV, IV (1928), pp. 70, 228.
plantations, Arnoux planted 150,000 coffee bushes of coffee and 50,000 'feet' of
vanilla.87
By the early 1830s, following Arnoux's death, the large Réunionnais firm of de
Rontaunay, with which Laborde was associated, had become the dominant foreign
interest in east coast plantations. The problems experienced by the British sugar
cane industry following the abolition of slavery in their colonies in 1833,
encouraged the Merina court to establish sugar plantations with the eventual aim of
competing on the international market. The first large sugar plantation was created
by Laborde at Tsarahafatra on the banks of the river Mananzara in 1834, and was
followed by the establishment of other sugar plantations at Bakoro, also on the
Mananzara, in 1842 and at Soamandrakizay, on the river Ivondrona, in 1843. Two
sugar refineries, one on each river, were constructed in 1846 by Delastelle to cater
for the output of the plantations. In all, de Rontaunay invested over $400,000 in
sugar cane cuttings, machinery and skilled foreign personnel to establish and run
these concerns which by the late 1840s had an average annual output of 500 tons of
sugar and 2,000 barrels of rum. In addition Laborde created sugar cane plantations at
Lohasoa and introduced cigar manufacturing.88
Plantations of cloves and spices were also established. Cloves, first introduced
into Madagascar from Mauritius in 1803, were cultivated extensively by Laborde at
Rianambo near Mahela from 1835. In its first ten years the plantation produced
6,610 kilograms of cloves worth $1,983 oh the French market to which it was
exported. Vanilla, brought from Réunion, was planted at Mahela in 1840 by
Delastelle, who also planted 50,000 coconut palms with the aim of producing oil,
and cultivated and exported to France 200,000 black currents. In 1840, Nicol signed
an eight year contract with the crown for the establishment of a coffee plantation
and manufactory at Mananjara. A European, paid by Nicol, was hired to maintain
his 'machine'. The crown donated the land and 30 labourers to Nicol, and the
produce was to be divided equally between Nicol and the court.89
Radama I also entertained great hopes, originally inspired by the British, for the
development of silk cloth as a legitimate export alternative to slaves. Two of the
five Bengali cultivators who arrived in Imerina in 1816 devoted themselves to the
cultivation of imported Indian silkworm. They discouraged the indigenous practice
of eating the worms and, from 1820, Radama I organised the distribution of
mulberry bush cuttings to the ambonizato, urging them to follow the example of
the Bengalis whose endeavours were, by 1823, described as being highly
successful.90 A mulberry bush plantation was also established in 1825 to the south
87
M. Esoavelomandroso, La province maritime orientale du "Royaume de Madagascar" à la fin du
XIXe siècle (1882-1895) (Antananarivo, 1979), p. 87.
88
Grandidier, Histoire IV, T.IV (1928), pp. 70, 228; J.H.Galloway, The Sugar Cane Industry. An
historical geography from its origins to 1914 (Cambridge, 1989), p. 131.
89
'contract', Antananarivo, 25 and 26 Alakarabo, in Ayache, Raombana l'historien 1809-1855,
pp. 321, 323.
90
Le Sage, 'Mission to Madagascar' (1816) and Hastie, 'Diary' (1817), pp. 159, 173 -
CO.167/34, PRO; Hastie, 'Diary' in D. Tyerman and J. Bennett Journal of Voyages and Travels,
1821-1829 (ed.James Montgomery) II (London, 1831), pp. 189-90; Farquhar to Wilmott,
Madagascar, 6 June 1823 - CO.167/66, PRO; Bojer, 'Journal o f in J. Valette, 'L'Imerina en 1822-
of Mahavelona.91 In the 1830s Delastelle introduced a species of white mulberry

bush at Mananzary and Laborde introduced a red bush at Soatsimanampiovana
where he also established a rearing house for silkworm with an annual output of
200 kilograms of raw silk.92
A Failed Experiment
The proto-industrialisation school argue that certain key conditions have to be met
for the successful transition from rural handicraft to modern factory industry. These
include the emergence of a high degree of division of labour, involving the breakup
of the household work unit and the separation of the workplace from the home, and
the spread of literacy. Of particular importance was the opportunity cost of

transferring labour from the agricultural to the industrial sector. Through
fanompoana the Merina state successfully formed permanent and occasional
unskilled work units and a number of full time specialist ones which operated away
from home whenever necessary. Through the schools it also ensured that a core of
that workforce gained a literacy which rapidly affected thousands more through
informal means. It also started with an agricultural base which produced regular
surpluses.
Nevertheless the industrial experiment failed. It would appear that production was
never on a sufficient enough scale to meet state demand for armaments as the court
was obliged to import gunpowder from the American commercial agent Marks at
Mahajanga on the west coast93, and powder and muskets from Delastelle on the east
coast 94 throughout the later 1830s and 1840s. Finally, in November 1853 the
Isoraka powder mills exploded, instantly killing nine workers, including
Rainimanana, and wounding a further 47, some of them fatally.95 This was
followed four years later by the expulsion of Laborde from the island, after which
production at Mantasoa came to an abrupt end.96 Of the 'foreign' industrial
techniques introduced onto the plateau only soap manufacture succeeded, spreading
steadily from the mid 1830s but on a handicraft rather than factory basis.97
1825 d'après les journaux de Bojer et d'Hilsenberg' extrait du Bulletin de Madagascar (avril-mai,
1963), p. 24; Leminier, 'Notes' (1925), p. 778; W.F.W. Owen, Narrative of Voyages to... Africa,
Arabia, and Madagascar II (London, 1833), p. 171; Cameron, Recollections of Mission Life, p. 28.
91
Hastie,'Diary' (2 April 1825), PRO CO.167/78 part II.
92
Grandidier, Histoire IV, T.IV (1928), p. 171.
93
Marks to Raombana, Majunga, 6 September 1852, in Ayache, Raombana l'historien 1809-
1855, p. 329.
94
'contract', Antananarivo, I Adalo 1840, in Ayache, Raombana l'historien 1809-1855, pp.
323, 325.
95
Raombana 'Manuscrit écrit à Tananarive (1853-1854)' trans. J.F. Radley, Bulletin de
l'Académie Malgache XIII (1930), p. 4.
96
Raombana B2 Livre 13, p. 18.
97
Raombana, B2 Livre 13, p. 29; [Finaz],'Tananarive, Capitale de Madagascar. Séjour d'un
missionnaire Catholique en 1855, 56 et 57', p. 109, sect.II Diaires no.20, AHH..
Thn I n d u s t r i a l Complex of M.int.asoa

Silkworm Rearing
Antelope Park
On the coastal plantations, where production was market orientated, results were
poor. Even with the aid of minimal wage costs, Malagasy produce could find no
more than a peripheral and mostly temporary niche on the world market. For
instance, between 1834 and 1845 the de Rontaunay sugar plantations and
distilleries produced approximately 1,555 tons of sugar for export to France, but
found competition intense. Firstly, Réunion rapidly converted from a multiculture
to a monoculture sugar economy in the 1840s. Secondly, the production of beet
sugar increased steadily from the second quarter of the nineteenth century, first in
France, and subsequently in Belgium, the German states, Austro-Hungria and
Russia. At the same time rum manufactured on the east coast plantations and
disposed of on the east coast at $26.4 a barrel, failed to meet domestic demand and
large quantities of Mascarene rum continued to be imported into Madagascar.98 One

of the few instances of successful manufacture of a plantation crop for the home
market was tobacco. Traditionally local tobacco was ground to powder and chewed
like snuff, but Laborde manufactured cigars which quickly captured a large domestic
market: By the 1880s, J. Andrianisa, a Merina entrepreneur, was selling locally cut
tobacco, wrapped and labelled with his name, in Antananarivo", whilst locally
produced cigars sold for $0.75 per 1,000 in 1882.100
A main reason for the lack of competitiveness of Malagasy products was high
transport costs which to some degree cancelled out low wage costs. A poorly
maintained network of tracks and bridges, and a transport system depending on
human porterage constituted a major obstacle to economic development in
Madagascar. Radama I had first initiated transport improvements at the urging of
the British following the treaty of 1820. He constructed an 'excellent road fit for a
carriage' in Antananarivo, and similar roads in Mahavelona in 1822-3, as well as
bridges across the river Ivondrona, near Toamasina, in 1817 and the river Ikopa in
central Imerina (at Ampitantafika, Antanjombato and Ambaniala) from 1823. Also,
by 1822 the first wheeled carts, drawn by horses, had been introduced into Imerina,
and the ban lifted on non-Andriana use of the filanzana, or palanquin. Also in 1821
a courier service, taking as little as two days, was introduced along the 200
kilometre Antananarivo-Toamasina route. 101 Radama I also summoned large
numbers of Betsimisaraka to improve and extend the east coast canal system in
1827.102
98
Grandidier, Histoire vol.IV, T.IV (1928), pp. 70, 228; A. Scherer, Histoire de la Réunion
(Paris, 1966), p. 59; Galloway, The Sugar Cane Industry, pp. 130-1.
99
The Madagascar Times II, 39 (1 October 1884), p. 364.
100
Madagascar Times I, 6 (27 May 1882), p. 5.
101
Hastie, 'Diary' (1820), p. 476 - CO.167/50, PRO; idem 'Diary' (1822-3) - CO. 167/66, PRO;
Hastie to Griffiths, Port Louis, 18 February 1821, SOAS/LMS MIL, Bx.1 F.2 J.B; Hilsenburg,
'Journal o f (ed. Jean Valette) Bulletin de Madagascar (avril-mai 1963), p. 4 1 ; Rabary, Ny Daty
Malaza I (Antananarivo, 1929), pp. 23, 26-7; Farquhar to René, Port Louis, 26 April 1821 in
Raombana, 'Histoires', p. 101; Finaz, 'Journal o f (1855-7), p. 57 - Diaires 11.20, Archives
historiques de la vice-province S.J. de Madagascar; Callet, Histoire des Rois (Antananarivo, 1978),
pp. 1081, 1110; Grandidier, Histoire IV T.IV, pp. 344, 350, 376; J. Sibree, Fifty Years in
Madagascar (London, 1924), p. 46; Oliver, Madagascar I, pp. 236, 238.
102
Raombana, 'Annales', p. 263.
From that time however, transport improvements were largely abandoned and the
policy of 'hazo'(forest) and' tazo' ('fever') was implemented. In effect this meant
that no improvements be made in transport in order that the natural obstacles of the
eastern forest and lowlands malaria would prevent any European invasion to impose
their economic and political will upon the Merina court. Thus freight and passenger
transport remained the domain of human porters, notably from the 1830s slaves
belonging to the court élite who were hired out to foreigners.103
Given that an individual porter could be expected to carry 60 lbs in weight if the
load could be dissembled into small units and that two porters could carry between
them indivisible loads of 80-90 lbs 104 , the reliance on porterage and a poor
transport network imposed major restrictions upon the volume and speed of freight
carried. For example, although Laborde was granted permission to build a road
between Mantasoa and Mahanoro to facilitate the carriage of essential imports like
copper and oil, the lime required by Mantasoa was fetched from Antsirabe, five days
march away. Similar difficulties were encountered when transporting the finished
product to Antananarivo.105
In addition, the court took policies which directly or indirectly undermined
foreign trade. The mass expulsion of foreigners in 1835 and 1857 inevitably created
commercial insecurity and for a short time resulted in the near paralysis of foreign
trade. Again, between 1845 and 1854 foreign commerce was greatly restricted due
to an imperial ban on British and French nationals trading in Madagascar in
retaliation for a combined Britanno-French naval assault upon Toamasina.106
The main reason for the failure of the industrial experiment was the growing
opportunity cost of transferring labour from the agricultural and rural handicraft
sectors to the state-run factory sector. This, in turn, was to a significant degree due
to wage costs in state industry. Through fanompoana the Merina crown minimised
nominal wage costs, even generating through taxation and tribute a transfer of
capital from the workers to the court. In the industrial sector, this exploitation of
human capital was felt most by those workers conscripted into full time
fanompoana for long periods of time, or on a permanent basis. The worst affected
were the full time indigenous skilled artisans, including foreign trained Merina
who, in June 1836, following the expulsion of the LMS missionaries from the
island, were formally barred from any independent work lest they provide
103
Le Sage, 'Mission to Madagascar' (1816), pp. 44-5, CO.167/34, PRO; Hastie, 'Diary'
(1817), p. 205; Grandidier, Histoire IV, T.IV, pp. 295, 354; Campbell, 'Role of the London
Missionary Society', p. 201.
104
105
Raombana, B2 Livre 13, p. 18; Raombana, 'Annales', p. 446; Oliver Madagascar II, p. 107;
Grandidier Histoire IV, T.IV (1928), pp. 179, 186-7; Chauvin 'Jean Laborde', pp. 13-29; Claude
Rey 'A propos d'une lettre inédite de Jean Laborde' Cahiers ORSTOM XXV (1965); A.M. Hewlett
'Mantasoa and its Workshops; a page in the History of Industrial Progress in Madagascar'
Antananarivo Annual and Madagascar Magazine II (1887); Chapus Quartre-vingts années, pp. 205-
7; Grandidier 'Souvenirs de voyages, 1865-1870' Documents anciens sur Madagascar VI
(Tananarive, undated.), p. 38; Campbell, 'Labour and the Transport Problem', pp. 341-56.
106
Oliver, Madagascar II, p. 196.
competition for the crown. The sole exception were hat-makers.107 Whereas in a
free labour market indigenous craftsmen could have earned both greater wages and
leisure than the unskilled labourer, under autarchy many were permanently deprived
of both. They were also expected to equip and feed themselves. This latter
requirement was harsh for they constituted the group who, through the process of
specialisation that evolved from the mid eighteenth century in Imerina, were most
divorced from land and cultivation.
Their grievances were fuelled when indigenous artisans witnessed the profits
being made by foreign artisans, and by members of the court élite. One example is
soap: Cameron made a considerable profit in establishing a soap factory whilst
Rainijohary monopolised its sale and distribution.108 The result of this policy was
to crush individual artisanal enterprise. Their situation had been deteriorating even
before autarchy, with Hastie commenting in 1815 of the tribute system that,
Les industries s'amélioraient promptement dans l'Imerina si le roi le voulait, mais

les ouvriers ne peuvent faire aucune modification aux modèles usuels sans son
autorisation et, d'autre part, ils doivent non seulement leur fournir le produit de leur
travail, gratis, mais y ajouter un petit morceau de piastre; j'ai vu un forgeron lui
apporter dix baïonnettes bien finies et lui donner en outre, en les lui offrant, de
l'argent'.109
Variez noted of the wage costs during the dramatic decline of the handicraft textile
industry in Flanders in the 1840s that 'There is a moment when the wage ceases to
be human and when the worker prefers to abandon his trade'.110 That point had been
reached for indigenous Merina craftsmen by the mid 1830s. It was first manifested
by popular opposition to schools in their role as a recruitment agency for
fanompoana.xn However, the main reaction was flight. For example, it was
through artisans refugees from fanompoana in Imerina that the leather craft skills
introduced by the LMS artisan missionary Canham spread to Anosy, in the south
east of Madagascar, by the 1860s. Similarly the three apprentices assigned to
Rowlands fled in 1826 and attempted to establish themselves as independent
craftsmen. However, few artisan refugees succeeded in this aim and flight
increasingly became a matter of self-exile.112 Those artisans who remained in
Imerina increasingly chose not to pass on their talents. Thus Griffiths reported after
107
For restrictions on skilled Malagasy workers see Callet Histoire des Rois I, pp. 164, 253-4,
303; ibid II, p. 596; ibid III, p. 885; ibid V, p. 1158; Grandidier Histoire T.IV Vol.I (1908), pp.
249, 370; ibid T.IV Vol.IV (1928), pp. 166, 175; Freeman and Johns A Narrative, p. 78; A
Resident Madagascar, Past and Present (London, 1847), pp. 57, 60, 62.
108 Raombana, B2 Livre 13, 29; [Finaz],'Tananarive, Capitale de Madagascar. Séjour d'un
missionnaire Catholique en 1855, 56 et 57', p. 109, sect.II, Diaires no.20, AHH..
109
Hastie (1815), quoted in Grandidier, Histoire IV, IV (1928), p. 162; see also ibid, 104;
Oliver, Madagascar II, 92-3.
110 quoted in Vandenbroeke.'The Regional Economy of Flanders', p. 150.
111
Freeman to Wilson, Antananarivo, 26 November 1833, SOAS/LMS MIL Bx.4 F.4 J.C.; see
also R. Lyall, 'Journal of (eds. G.S. Chapus et G. Mondain) in Académie Malgache, Collection de
documents concernant Madagascar et les pays voisins 5 (Tananarive, 1954), p. 185.
112
Rowlands to LMS, Antsahadinta, 13 June 1826, SOAS/LMS MIL B2 F3 JA.
his return from the island in 1840 that 'The people often remark, with feelings of
indifference, "We shall not teach our children anything for the more they know, the
harder will be their service'".113
Much unskilled labour on the east coast plantations reacted in a similar fashion.
The sugar plantations suffered a continual shortage of labour, critical not merely
because of the labour intensive nature of sugar cane cultivation, but also because of
the need to repair hurricane damage, because impressed labour fled the plantations
en-masse. Similarly Delastelle's attempt to establish vanilla plantations at
Mananzary collapsed because the local population vanished during the recruitment
period, whilst on other projects even the presence of armed guards and the threat of
the tangena poison ordeal failed to prevent the workforce from fleeing.114 Flight
also damaged Nicol's coffee plantation at Mananjary for the crown contract
stipulated that should any of the thirty labourers assigned to him die or flee, the
crown would not replace them.115 As local 'free' labour proved insufficient to fulfil
the heavy labour requirements of the plantations and associated industries, the
crown was obliged to forcibly import entire communities from other regions of the
island. For example, Laborde was given by the crown a 3,000 Bezanozano
workforce to establish his sugar cane plantations at Lohasoa, but most died after
being subjected to the tangena poison ordeal and were replaced with impressed
Sihanaka, Betsimisaraka and Amoronkay labour. Nevertheless, most of the non
local workforce for the east coast plantations comprised labourers from the
populous south-east, or slaves.116 The latter, especially those supplied by the
queen, proved the most truculent element of the plantation workforce and many fled
to the forest, to join brigand bands or slave 'republics'.117
Others were less passive and violently protested against fanompoana. One of the
first such manifestations of anti-fanompoana protest was the firing of Le Gros'
premises in 1825/6 by two of his fanompoana 'apprentice' carpenters, who
considered him to be the originator of the new fanompoana. They were captured and
executed by Radama I.118 Many Merina blamed the increase in fanompoana directly
on the missionaries, Raombana asserting that 'the several Arts introduced by these
[missionary] artisans has been the greatest scourge to the people of IMERINA, in-
as-much as through them, the feudal services of the people were increased to the
113
D. Griffiths, The Persecuted Christians of Madagascar (London, 1841), p. 39; see also A
Resident, Madagascar Past and Present (London, 1847), p. 60; Grandidier, Histoire vol.IV, T.I
(1908), pp. 248, 368; Oliver, Madagascar II, pp. 98-9.
114
Ellis, History of Madagascar I, p. 337 and II, pp. 521-2; Callet, Histoire des Rois, p. 1167;
H. Deschamps, Histoire de Madagascar (Paris, 1972), pp. 191-2; Chapus, Quatre-vingts années, p.
33; Oliver, Madagascar II, pp. 8-10.
115
'contract', Antananarivo, 26 Alakarabo 1840, in Ayache, Raombana l'historien 1809-1855,
p. 323.
116
Lyall 'Journal of, 186-7; Chauvin Jean Laborde, 1805-1878, pp. 41-5, 91-2; M.D. Charnay
'Madagascar à vol d'oiseau' Le Tour du Monde (1864), pp. 215-6; Fontoynont et Nicol Les traitants
français, pp. 11-12, 21, 24-6, 29-30; Freeman and Johns A Narrative, pp. 41-2; Campbell 'Role of
the London Missionary Society', p. 297.
117
Cartier,'renseignements' (1843), pp. 3, 9, Cllb, AHH.
118
A Resident Madagascar, Past and Present (London, 1847)
highest degree'. 119 Referring specifically to the armaments factory at Isoraka,

supervised by Cameron, he remarked:
The labour of Mr. CAMERON though beneficial to Her Majesty and her
government, proved to be one of the greatest scourges that could have been
inflicted on the people of IMERINA etc. It was made part of the feudal services, and
people brought the nitre and other ingredients for the making of the gunpowders
from great distances off, without receiving a penny from Her Majesty, as well as in
the making of the mills for the above purpose — Nay, the people were ruined by it
for they were compelled to pay fines when the above articles are not brought in
within a stated time, and flogged unmercifully also in the bargain — In the making
of soaps they were obliged to procure the wormwoods; and fats or grease from their
cattle which are killed at the festivals... The Antsihianaka and Bezanozano people
who live hundred miles off were compelled to bring wooden fuels every one or two
months for to boil the soaps — and yet the people received no benefit at all from
these soaps. 120
Given such sentiments, the deliberate ditching of Cameron into Amparibe lake by
three soldiers carrying him around the site appears mild revenge.121 The explosion
which destroyed the gunpowder mill in 1853 might have been less unequivocal.122
The same year the population of the region of Mananzary on the east coast joined
with the slave labour forced under Delastelle to fire his factory at Bakora.123
Laborde did not gain the same notoriety as Cameron. He constructed lodgings and
allocated ricefields for his workers at Mantasoato a degree cared for their health.
However, he was unable to alleviate the harshness of the work regime, as the
following popular sayings indicate:
Raharahan'Imantasoa: ny miera mandoa venty; ny mandeha fotsiny maty loso'

('Fanompoana at Mantasoa: ask permission to leave and you pay $1.33; go without
leave and you are fined $4.00') and 'Taozavatr' Imantasoa: ny marary manao izay
ho vitany; ny finaritra mamono masoandro' ('The work at Mantasoa: the sick do
what they can; the healthy labour until sunset'). 124
Foreign commentators were full of praise for the benefits Laborde was bringing to
Madagascar, but noted sullen worker resentment, which they mistakenly ascribed to
a conservative mentality. Thus Ida Pfieffer commented of Laborde's agricultural
efforts:
II a appris aux habitants à planter la canne à sucre d'une manière régulière, et a

essayé avec succès la culture du blé et de la vigne. Il a aussi voulu doter l'île des
119
Raombana, 'Histoires', p. 134.
120
121 Campbell, 'Role of the London Missionary Society', p. 265.
122
Raombana, 'Manuscrit écrit à Tananarive, 1853-1854', p. 4.
123
Fontoynont et Nicol, Les traitants français, p. 27
124
Chapus, Quatre-vingts années, p. 208; J.A. Houlder, Ohabolana or Malagasy Proverbs II
(Antananarivo, 1930), p . 40.
fruits et des légumes de l'Europe, et la plupart ont parfaitement réussi; mais

malheureusement ses essais n'ont pas trouvé d'imitateurs. Les indigènes ont préféré
vivre dans leur indolence habituelle et ne manger que du riz, accompagné, de temps
en temps, d'un morceau de boeuf.125
Labour hostility to the enterprise resulted in the sacking and desertion of Mantasoa
by its workforce following the departure of Laborde in 1857.126
Demographic Trends
The industrial experiment involved huge numbers of workers both on a permanent

and on an intermittent basis, as it utilised not only a new core of factory workers,
but also traditional artisans, and general fanompoana units to extract and supply
raw materials. The total permanent skilled fanompoana totalled about 10,000 in
Ranavalona I's reign. Unskilled units totalling up to 20,000 men, equivalent to
about 5 per cent of the adult male population registered for fanompoana in Imerina,
were utilised in the construction of the canal feeding the Isoraka gunpowder mills
and the industrial site at Mantasoa. The Mantasoa complex was also constructed
with a 20,000 strong work force,, and was maintained with a permanent workforce
of 5,000 (1.25 per cent of the Merina adult male fanompoana register).127 Far
greater numbers of unskilled than skilled labour were involved in the extraction and
porterage of nitre and other raw materials to the armament and soap factories. In
1830 a Betsileo work force of 21,000 men was formed and settled in a specially
created industrial village named Soamalaza for the mining, quarrying and porterage
of lime and sulphur.128 To construct the industrial sites required timber from the
forest fifty miles east of Antananarivo. The foloroazato (lit. the '1,200') as the
woodcutters were known for that was their original number, were settled
125
I. Pfieffer, Voyage à Madagascar (1857) (Paris, 1981), p. 124.
126
J. Chauvin, Jean Laborde, 1805-1878, pp. 33, 44; Chapus, Quatre-vingts années
d'influences européennes, p. 207.
In 1861, Radama II (1861-3), announced his intention to abolish fanompoana and almost
immediately dismissed the 2,000 plus fanompoana workforce which was still theoretically
assigned to Mantasoa - Hewlett 'Mantasoa and its Workshops', pp. 378, 381.
127
Raombana B2 Livre 13, 18; Freeman to Hankey, Antananarivo, 18 June 1832, SOAS/LMS
MIL, B4 F2 JD; see also Freeman to Philip, Antananarivo, 19 April 1832, SOAS/LMS MIL, B4 F2
JC; Johns, Freeman et al. to Canham, Antananarivo, 5 July 1832, SOAS/LMS MIL, B4 F3 JA;
128
E. Prout Madagascar: Its Mission and its Martyrs (London, 1863), p. 79; Hewlett 'Mantasoa
and its workshops', p. 381; Cameron to Arundel, Antananarivo, 25 Sept 1829, SOAS/LMS MIL
Bx3 F2 JB; Shipton to LMS, Tamatave, 10 Aug 1834, SOAS/LMS MIL B5 F2 JA; Campbell 'Role
of the London Missionary Society', pp. 208-10, 301; Callet Histoire des Rois V, pp. 1103, 1114;
Raombana, 'Annales', pp. 256-7; Freeman and Johns A Narrative, p. 48; Echalier 'Betsileo et ses
habitants' Conférence de l'école coloniale (15 février 1909), p. 48; H.M. Dubois Monographe des
Betsileos (Paris, 1938), pp. 604-5; J.A. Nilsen 'Ny tantaran'ny distry Fianarantsoa, 1878-1943',
ms 57H, p. 1 - Norwegian Missionary Society Archives, Isorake, Antananarivo, Madagascar;
Oliver Madagascar I, p. 503; Chapus Quatre-vingts années, pp. 197, 206; Les Missions
Catholiques, 153 (1872), p. 334; Chapus and E. Birkeli 'Historique d'Antsirabe', pp. 59-82; Sibree
'Industrial Progress in Madagascar', pp. 129-32; Oliver Madagascar I, pp. 228-9 and II, p. 86.
permanently on the fringes of the vast eastern forest to fell and cut timber.129 In
addition, temporary porterage gangs were formed, between ten and forty men being
required to carry a single piece of forest timber, depending on its size.130
Although not as great as the numbers involved in industrial work on the plateau,
considerable numbers of workers were employed in the east coast plantations and
factories. A 2,000 strong Betanimena or Betsimisaraka workforce was summoned
to help Hastie create a ten acre mulberry bush plantation near 'Vonitzar', on the
Antananarivo-Andevoranto route, in April 1825 131 , whilst by 1829 Arnoux
possessed 750 slave labourers in his sugar plantations, and by the 1840s de Lastelle
had 500 slaves in his distillery at Soamandrakizay and de Rontaunay had purchased
2,300 slaves for his concerns.132
If one includes the 30,000 Merina drafted into the army and the slaves involved
in the porterage syndicate, this would indicate a minimum of 50,000 men, mostly
young and able-bodied, in permanent and virtually unremunerated forced labour,
from Imerina alone. This represented possibly 12.5 per cent of the total and as
much as 25 per cent of the working population which was removed permanently
from agricultural production.
In addition, there is every indication that Imerina was becoming depopulated in
this era due in the first instance to flight from fanompoana. Freeman and Johns
claim that military fanompoana, which was largely restricted to Merina subjects,
had become so onerous by the late 1830s that civilian fanompoana units formerly
100 strong had been reduced through flight and evasion to 10-15 men.133 The four
Merina provinces most afflicted by fanompoana, and in consequence by
depopulation, were Vakinankaratara, a mountainous region straddling southern
Imerina and northern Betsileo, Marovatanana, Vonizongo and Valalafotsy.134
Marovatanana, one of the most populous areas at the start of the nineteenth
century, was largely deserted by 1845, whilst from Vonizongo and Valalafotsy by
the early 1850s 'on évalue à 24000 le nombre d'esclaves et d'hommes libres qui se
sont enfuis en pays sakalava pour échapper aux devoirs qu'impose Sa Majesté'.135
By the late 1850s the whole of Imerina was affected and slaves rejected offers of
freedom lest they be subjected to the rigours of fanompoana:
II n'y a presque pas d'hommes dans les villages de la province d'Emirne [Imerina],
si ce n'est pas des esclaves. Les différentes espèces de Fanompoana (services ou
129
130
Ellis History of Madagascar I, pp. 107-8.
131
Hastie,'Diary' (2 April 1825), PRO CO.167/78 pt.II.
132
Lyall 'Journal o f , pp. 186-7; Chauvin Jean Laborde, 1805-1878, pp. 41-5, 91-2; Charnay
'Madagascar à vol d'oiseau', pp. 215-6; Fontoynont et Nicol Les traitants français, pp. 11-12, 2 1 ,
24-6, 29-30; Freeman and Johns A Narrative, pp. 41-2; Campbell 'Role of the London Missionary
Society', p. 297.
133
Freeman and Johns A Narrative, p. 41-2.
134
135
Raombana Bk.13 B.2, p . 25.
corvées), sont si dures que beaucoup d'esclaves refusent la liberté qu'on leur offre ou
qu'ils pourraient se procurer en se rachetant.136
A similar trend was discernible in Betsimisaraka land, on the north east coast. In
1855, Dalmond noted that the population of the eastern forest verging on the main
route between Toamasina and Antananarivo was sparse because most peasant had
either been summoned on imperial fanompoana, or had fled it. The resident
population comprised the old and slaves — that is, those who were forced to
remain.137
Imerina also experienced a high mortality. Deaths from the tangena poison ordeal
alone amounted to 200,000 between 1828 and 1860, with a further 60,000 deaths
experienced in military expeditions from 1816-53. Indications of depopulation

appear confirmed by contemporary estimates indicating a rise in the population of
Imerina from about 400,000 in 1825 to 700,000 by 1829, after which it appeared
to fall sharply to roughly 260,000 by 1835. It then shows a temporary rise to
500,000 by 1838, followed by another sharp dip to less than 200,000 by 1841,
after which there was a recovery, the Merina population reaching possibly 500,000
by 1850, at which level it remained for the rest of the decade.138 The decline in the
population of Imerina is reflected in the fact that the number of Merina males
registered for fanompoana fell 86.31 per cent from 400,000 during the 1830s to
54,750 by 1869.139
The result in Imerina of extensive fanompoana and depopulation was twofold.
Firstly, in harness with the impoverishment of the Merina farmer through
unremunerated state service, and monopoly prices set by the court élite, it
undermined domestic market demand, causing the vast majority of the 'free'
population to retreat into subsistence farming. Slaves, who comprised one third of
the population also possessed virtually no purchasing power. Hence the internal
market shrunk, the only vibrant domestic market being for state necessities, and
that established by the court élite for luxury items. However, the demand of the
latter for domestically produced goods was limited. For example, the Merina élite
did offer an outlet for some 'factory' production, such as the fancy railings
manufactured by Chick, but he and other foreign iron workers were only maintained
in full employment by demand for metal products in the state armaments
industry.140 This was because most of the demand for luxury goods was met by
imports. The sewing factory established by Mrs. Griffiths and Jones in 1824
succeeded in obtaining a specific niche in the local luxury market, but was closed
136
Finaz, 'Journal of (1855-7), p. 113 - Diaires 11.20, AHH; see also idem, p. 31; Raombana
B.k.12 C.1, p. 489; Raombana, 'Annales', p. 247.
137
Dalmond.'Mission Apostolique de Madagascar, 1837-1847', p. 26, Diaires, sect.II. 1, AHH.
138
G. Campbell, 'The State and Pre-Colonial Demographic History: The Case of Nineteenth
Century Madagascar' - paper presented at the Colloque internationale d'histoire Malagasy
Antananarivo, August 1989.
139
140
' Jones and Griffiths to LMS, May 1823, SOAS/LMS MIL Bx.l F.5 J.A.; Ellis, History I, pp.
311-3; Oliver, Madagascar II, p. 91; Chapus, Quatre-vingts années, p. 80; Campbell, 'Role of the
London Missionary Society', p. 261.
down in 1829 when Ranavalona I ordered the missionary shop to close.141 That
experiment apart, the demand for 'foreign' silks, fine velvet and printed and plain
cottons was met by Antalaotra, American and British merchants. The east coast
imported over 8,000 pieces of Pondicherry annually by 1826 and, despite the heavy
cost of transport, Manchester cottons sold cheaper, at $3.5-4.0 a piece, in
Antananarivo than the equivalent produced by the missionary weaver Rowlands
whose cheapest cloth retailed at $6 a piece.142
Secondly, the loss through flight or death of a disproportionately large number of
young male hands undermined the labour intensive hydraulic riziculture which was
the basis of the Merina economy. Labour could not be transferred from a labour
intensive agricultural system to a labour intensive industrial system in such
numbers without creating regular food shortages. This combined with an unusually
wet season in 1833-4 ruined the rice harvest in Imerina, which in turn debilitated
large sections of the population rendering them more vulnerable to the smallpox
epidemic of 1834-5.143 The impact on the east coast was accentuated by the ban in
1835 on the practice of swidden lest the resultant forest clearances facilitate the
passage of a European invasion force to the plateau.144 This, combined with
fanompoana and flight from the land caused such shortages of rice in 1845-6 that
Mascarene traders flocked to north east ports to sell provisions at high prices.145
Conclusion
As noted in several of the above instances of desertion or revolt, labour protest

impinged directly upon industrial efficiency and production, effectively undermining
the attempt by the Merina crown to modernise the industrial sector. In consequence,
Imerina was thrust into what the proto-industrialisation school term, an era of 'de-
industrialisation' which has lasted up to modern times. Even more alarming for the
Merina economy was the impact upon the agricultural sector of the transfer of
resources, notably human capital, into the industrial experiment. Agriculture was
the base upon which the Merina economy and its hopes of achieving autarchy
rested. The damage inflicted upon it by state policy ensured as early as 1835, at the
precise time that the Merina court proclaimed its ability to achieve industrial self
sufficiency, that its industrial experiment would never succeed. In this sense the
labour opportunity costs inherent in autarchic policies were so high that they were
to a large degree responsible for the failure of the industrial experiment in Imerina.
141
Campbell, 'Role of the London Missionary Society', pp. 247-9.
142
Raombana, 'Histoires', pp. 6-7; Jones and Griffiths to LMS, Antananarivo, 2 June 1824,
SOAS/LMS MIL, Bx.2 F.1 J.A.; Rowlands to Burder, Antananarivo, 17 June 1824, SOAS/LMS
MIL, Bx.2 F.1 J.B.; Rowlands to LMS, Antsahadinta, 13 June 1826, SOAS/LMS MIL. Bx.2 F.3
J.A.; Jones and Griffiths to Burder, Antananarivo, 30 May 1827, SOAS/LMS MIL, Bx.2 F.3 J.A.
143
Campbell, 'The State and Pre-Colonial Demographic History', p. 25.
144
Raombana, 'Annales', pp. 359-60.
145
Raombana 'Annales' Livre 12 C.1, pp. 510-11; Raombana B.2 Livre 13, p. 4; Griffiths
Hanes Madagascar, p. 131.

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This article was downloaded by: [Monash University Library]

On: 04 February 2015, At: 06:23

Journal of Southern African

To cite this article: Gwyn Campbell (1991) An industrial experiment in pre‐colonial

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03057079108708290

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An Industrial Experiment in Pre-colonial

(Department of Economic History, University of the Witwatersrand)

deliberate neglect of roads and their refusal to implement transport innovations — a

The period 1820-61 witnessed an industrial experiment in the Merina empire,

Origins of the Industrial Experiment

the simultaneous occurrence of three ingredients within the framework of a region:

In focussing upon the development of export-oriented woollen, linen and hemp

copper, producing jewellery, weapon ornamentation and coinage, whilst others

considerable. If one accepts as one standard definition of 'factory' industry a single

10 O. Crisp, 'Labour and Industrialisation in Russia' in Cambridge Economic History of Europe,

Imerina where it was a royal monopoly, gunpowder, acted as currencies. In the

The Role of the State

The proto-industrialisation school have generally relied on the British experience as

a model of the successful transition from rural textile handicraft production to

fleet, possessed no well established commercial community with access to capital,

Table 1 Permanent Skilled Fanompoana Units in Imerina, 1790-1883

Andrianampoinimerina Radamal Ranavalona I

Military 86 17.00 370 5.64 2,747 28.53

Source: Hastie, 'Le voyage de Tananarive en 1817-18', Bulletin de VAcademie

As a result of growing poverty commonly attributed to the ban on slave exports,

Table 2 Workforce of Crown Plantations on East Coast, 1825-61

Source: Fontoynont et Nicol Les traitants frangais de la cote est de Madagascar de

Education is generally considered to play a key role in economic growth. It

missionary effort in this direction, it was reported in 1840:

Finally, the schools instilled in pupils an unswerving personal loyalty to the

autarchic economic policies rested. As Freeman observed in 1829, 'a regular

again comprising slave oxfanompoana labour, represented a considerable saving in

of missionary industry in which priority was given to the manufacture of military

through imposing extraordinary taxes upon the Merina populace. In accounting

The Industrial Experiment

MISSIOiN SCHOOLS IN CENTRAL IMERINA 1828-32

Cloth manufactured in factories employing expensive imported machinery and

At the same time at Ilafy, Laborde had succeeded in 'manufacturing exceptionally

cannon, but also produced swords, gunpowder, grape-shot, copper, steel,

carpenters, iron-smiths and coopers 'sont occupes toute l'annee a construire et a

of Mahavelona.91 In the 1830s Delastelle introduced a species of white mulberry

the spread of literacy. Of particular importance was the opportunity cost of

Thn I n d u s t r i a l Complex of M.int.asoa

large quantities of Mascarene rum continued to be imported into Madagascar.98 One

Les industries s'amélioraient promptement dans l'Imerina si le roi le voulait, mais

highest degree'. 119 Referring specifically to the armaments factory at Isoraka,

Raharahan'Imantasoa: ny miera mandoa venty; ny mandeha fotsiny maty loso'

II a appris aux habitants à planter la canne à sucre d'une manière régulière, et a

fruits et des légumes de l'Europe, et la plupart ont parfaitement réussi; mais

The industrial experiment involved huge numbers of workers both on a permanent

experienced in military expeditions from 1816-53. Indications of depopulation

As noted in several of the above instances of desertion or revolt, labour protest

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