François Caron, the Director General of the newly formed French East India Company, sails to Madagascar in 1665.

The Company fails to found a colony on Madagascar but ...

The most powerful of Madagascar's kingdoms—the one that eventually establishes hegemony over a great portion of the island—is that developed by the Merina ethnic group.

Before the Merina emergevas the dominant political power on the island in the nineteenth century, they alternate between periods of political unity and periods in which the kingdom separates into smaller political units.

The location of the Merina in the central highlands affords them some protection from the ravages of warfare that recur among the coastal kingdoms.

The distinction, recognized both locally and internationally, between the central highlanders (the Merina) and the cotiers (inhabitants of the coastal areas) will soon exert a major impact on Madagascar's political system.

Organized like the coastal kingdoms in a hierarchy of nobles, commoners, and slaves, the Merina develop a unique political institution known as the fokonolona (village council).

Through the fokonolona, village elders and other local notables are able to enact regulations and exert a measure of local control in such matters as public works and security.

Two monarchs play key roles in establishing Merina political dominance over Madagascar.

The first, who rules under the name of Andrianampoinimerina (r. 1797-1810), seizes the throne of one of the Merina kingdoms in 1787.

By 1806 he has conquered the remaining three kingdoms and united them within the former boundaries of Imerina, the capital established at the fortified city of Antananarivo.

Radama I (r. 1810- 28), an able and forward-looking monarch, succeeds to the throne in 1810 upon the death of his father.

By adroitly playing off competing British and French interests in the island, he is able to extend Merina authority over nearly the entire island of Madagascar.

Radama I first conquers the Betsileo ethnic group in the southern part of the central highlands and subsequently overpowers the Sakalava, an ethnic group that also seeks at times to assert its hegemony over other groups.

With the help of the British, who want a strong kingdom to offset French influence, Radama I modernizes the armed forces.

In 1817 the peoples of the east coast, facing an army of thirty-five thousand soldiers, submit with little or no protest; Radama then conquers the entire southeast as far as Tolanaro.

Particularly barren or impenetrable parts of the island escape conquest, especially in the extreme south, but before his death Radama I succeeds in bringing the major and more hospitable portions of the country under Merina rule.

The reign of Radama I's wife and successor, Queen Ranavalona I (r. 1828-61), is essentially reactionary, reflecting her distrust of foreign influence.

Under the oligarchy that rules in her name, rivals are slain, numerous Protestant converts are persecuted and killed, and many Europeans flee the island.

The ruling elite holds all the land and monopolizes commerce, except for the handful of Europeans allowed to deal in cattle, rice, and other commodities.

Remunerations to the queen provided the French traders a supply of slaves and a monopoly in the slave trade.

Enjoying particular favor owing to his remarkable accomplishments is French artisan Jean Laborde, who establishes at Mantasoa, near Antananarivo, a manufacturing complex and agricultural research station where he manufactures commodities ranging from silk and soap to guns, tools, and cement.

Radama I's interest in modernizing Madagascar along Western lines extends to social and political matters.

He had organized a cabinet and encouraged the Protestant London Missionary Society to establish schools and churches and to introduce the printing press—a move that is to have far-reaching implications for the country.

The society will make nearly half a million converts, and its teachers have devised a written form of the local language, Malagasy, using the Latin alphabet.

By 1828 several thousand persons, primarily Merina, have become literate, and a few young persons are being sent to Britain for schooling.

Later the Merina dialect of Malagasy will become the official language.

Malagasy-language publications are established and circulated among the Merina-educated elite; by 1896 some one hundred and sixty-four thousand children, mainly Merina and Betsileo, will have attended the mission's primary schools.

Along with new ideas come some development of local manufacturing.

Much productive time is spent, however, in military campaigns to expand territory and acquire slaves for trade.

The reign of Madagascarene Queen Ranavalona I (Ranavalona the Cruel), the widow of Radama I, begins inauspiciously with the queen murdering the dead king’s heir and other relatives.

The aristocrats and sorcerers (who had lost influence under the liberal régime of the previous two Merina kings) re-assert their power during the Queen’s reign, which is to last thirty-three years.

The queen has repudiated the treaties that Radama I had signed with Britain.

Emerging from a dangerous illness in 1835, she credits her recovery to the twelve sampy, the talismans—attributed with supernatural powers—housed on the palace grounds.

To appease the sampy who had restored her health, she issues a royal edict prohibiting the practice of Christianity in Madagascar, expels British missionaries from the island, and persecutes Christian converts who will not renounce their religion.

Christian customs “are not the customs of our ancestors”, she explains.

The queen scraps the legal reforms started by Andrianampoinimerina in favor of the old system of trial by ordeal.

People suspected of committing crimes—most go on trial for the crime of practicing Christianity—have to drink the poison of the tangena tree.

If they survive the ordeal (which few do) the authorities judge them innocent.

Malagasy Christians will remember this period as ny tany maizina, or "the time when the land was dark".

By some estimates, one hundred and fifty thousand Christians die during the reign of Ranavalona the Cruel.

The island grows more isolated, and commerce with other nations comes to a standstill.

The precise number of Malagasy citizens put to death for religious reasons during Ranavalona's reign is difficult to state with certainty.

British missionary to Madagascar W.E. Cummins (1878) will place the number executed at between sixty and eighty.

Far more are required to undergo the tangena ordeal, condemned to hard labor, or stripped of their land and property, and many of these die.

Persecution of Christians intensifies in 1840, 1849 and 1857; in 1849, deemed the worst of these years by Cummins, nineteen people are fined, jailed or otherwise punished for their Christian faith, of whom eighteen are executed.

Four Christians are ordered burnt alive in Antananarivo, Madagascar, by Queen Ranavalona I, and fourteen others are executed, on March 28, 1849.

The pendulum once again swings toward Madagascar's modernization and cordial relations with Western nations, particularly France, during the reign of Radama II (r. 1861-63).

Radama II makes a treaty of perpetual friendship with France, but his brief rule ends with his assassination by a group of nobles alarmed by his pro-French stance.

He is succeeded by his widow, who will rule until 1868, during which time she will annul the treaty with France and the charter of Laborde's company.

A Merina leader, Rainilaiarivony, rules the Madagascarene monarchy after 1868.

To avoid giving either the French or the British a pretext for intervention, Rainilaiarivony emphasizes modernization of the society and tries to curry British favor without giving offense to the French.

He makes concessions to both countries, signing a commercial treaty with France in 1868 and with Britain in 1877.

Important social developments under his leadership include the outlawing of polygamy and the slave trade; the promulgation of new legal codes; the spread of education, especially among the Merina; and the conversion of the monarchy in 1869 to Protestantism.

Ranavalona II, Queen of Madagascar, had entered into a political marriage with her Prime Minister, Rainilaiarivony, on February 21, 1869, in a public ceremony at Andohalo wherein the court had officially undergone conversion to Christianity.

This conversion had been effected to bring the increasingly powerful Protestant faction under the influence of the royal court.

Declaring Madagascar a Christian nation, Ranavalona has the traditional royal talismans (sampy) burned in a public bonfire in September 1869 and replaces their authority with that of the Bible, subsequently making the Anglican faith the official state religion of Madagascar Catholic and Protestant missionaries arrive in numbers to build churches and schools.

The reign of Queen Ranavalona II will prove the heyday of British influence in Madagascar.

British arms and troops arrive on the island by way of South Africa.

Ranavalona II was born Princess Ramoma in 1829 at Ambatomanoina, near Antananarivo in the central highlands to Razakaratrimo and Rafarasoa Ramasindrazana.

As a young woman she, like her cousin Rasoherina, had been married to King Radama II and had been widowed upon his assassination in the nobles' coup of 1863.

The prime minister at the time, Rainivoninahitriniony, had played a major role in the assassination plot and public condemnation of the action forced him from his post.

The position of Prime Minister had then been filled by his younger brother Rainilaiarivony, who had married Queen Rasoherina and then, upon her death, had helped to designate Ranavalona II the next monarch of Madagascar and will consequently marry her to retain his position.

During her years at court, young Ramoma had been tutored by Protestant missionaries of the London Missionary Society, who had greatly influenced her religious and political views.

She had become increasingly favorable toward the beliefs of the Christian religion.

Ranavalona II had succeeded to the throne upon the death of Queen Rasoherina on April 1, 1868.