James Baquet

Cartoon lovers may have heard of “Madagascar” as the title of a series of animated films, but one would learn very little of this island nation from watching those (though it is true that lemurs are endemic to the island).

Madagascar is an island off the east coast of Africa. It is due east of Mozambique, across the Mozambique Channel of the Indian Ocean. Further east lie the islands of Reunion (a French territory) and Mauritius. To Madagascar’s northwest lie the Comoros and the French territories of Mayotte and the Glorioso Islands. The capital is Antananarivo.

The nation of Madagascar includes numerous smaller peripheral islands, but the main island is the fourth-largest island in the world (after Greenland, New Guinea and Borneo). It was prehistorically connected to the Indian peninsula, some 88 million years ago. Since then, plants and animals have evolved in isolation, so that over 90 percent of Madagascar’s wildlife is unique to that location.

Evidence indicates that human presence dates to about 2000 B.C. Long after these foraging expeditions, people traveling by outrigger canoe from Borneo settled there between 350 B.C. and 550 A.D. East Africans joined them around 1000 A.D., forming at last the Malagasy ethnic group.

The first unified Kingdom of Madagascar did not form until the early 19th century; it ended in 1897 when Madagascar became a colony of France. Independence was achieved in 1960, and since then there have been four republics under successive constitutions. The current constitutional democracy has existed since 1992 (though it was interrupted from 2009 to 2014).

Madagascar today is one of the world’s least developed countries, though under the current president, ecotourism and agriculture are improving, along with greater investment in education, health and private enterprise. Quality of life remains low.

Official state languages include Malagasy and French; religion tends to be folk religion, Christianity or a syncretistic system involving both.

Vocabulary:

Which word above means:

1. native, indigenous

2. looking for food and supplies

3. a special type of small boat

4. separately

5. small animals that live in trees in Madagascar and come out mostly at night

6. cartoon movies

7. on the edges, not central

8. uniting different ideas

9. following one after another

10. before recorded history, in ancient times