"The 1895 French invasion of Madagascar nearly came to grief when General Duchesne lingered for too long in the islands malarial lowlands to construct roads and bridges to support a thrust toward Tananarive. His force melting away from disease, Duchesne was obliged to strike inland with a 1,500-man ‘flying column'.
For most of the eighteenth century, the British and French competed bitterly for ascendancy in the Indian Ocean, but victory in the Napoleonic Wars (1793- 1815) gave predominance in the region to Britain. In the western Indian Ocean, Britain deprived France of its trading posts in Madagascar and of Mauritius and Réunion, returning only the latter to France in the postwar settlement. Stung by the loss of Mauritius, France continued to fight for influence over Madagascar, where it possessed considerable historical claims, based upon former settlements at Fort Dauphin (Taolanaro) (1642-1674), and subsequent trading posts, notably at Fort Dauphin and Antongil Bay. An 1818-1819 French expedition seized Nosy Boraha, an island off the east coast of Madagascar, and Tintingue and Fort Dauphin (Taolanaro) on the mainland. However, malaria decimated colonists, and the fall of Portal from government in Paris in 1821 resulted in the abandonment of a systematic colonial policy and the curtailment of imperial expansion on financial grounds.
Moreover, the British-trained Merina army seized the reoccupied French trading posts in Madagascar. Autarkic policies adopted from the mid-1820s led the Merina to reject both British and French influence in the island and to ban foreign access to Malagasy labor. This was anathema to Réunionnais planters who depended on imports of cheap labor and provisions, of which Madagascar was the closest supplier. Their pleas for colonizing Madagascar were supported by the French Navy (and ultra-Royalists), which presented the island as the potential equivalent to France of Australia to Britain. In 1829 the government of Charles X briefly revived the imperial momentum: French forces backed a Betsimisaraka revolt on the east coast, where they attacked the main ports of Toamasina and Mahavelona. However, following the July 1830 Revolution, Louis Philippe (ruled 1830-1848) sought to appease British sentiment and in July 1831 French troops were withdrawn from mainland Madagascar, leaving as their sole Malagasy "dependency" the malarial island of Nosy Boraha. For the next half-century, French governments proved unwilling to engage in colonial ventures that might either offend Britain, the dominant global power, or burden the French treasury. Hence, while in 1841 ratifying treaties negotiated by the French Navy establishing protectorates over the neighboring islands of Mayotta and Nosy Be, the French government failed to heed calls for intervention in mainland Madagascar. This was the case even following the 1845 Merina ban on European trade and the 1848 emancipation measure that plunged Réunion into a prolonged economic crisis for which planters presented the colonization of Madagascar as a panacea. Indeed, from 1845 a modus vivendi was reached whereby France tacitly recognized British predominance in East Africa…"
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Amicalement
Armand
goes to sea with the Terrain Mat.
