Malagasy Uprising

The Malagasy Uprising (Insurrection malgache; Tolom-bahoaka tamin' ny 1947) was a Malagasy nationalist rebellion against French colonial rule in Madagascar, lasting from March 1947 to February 1949. Starting in late 1945, Madagascar's first French National Assembly deputies, Joseph Raseta, Joseph Ravoahangy and Jacques Rabemananjara of the Mouvement démocratique de la rénovation malgache (MDRM) political party, led an effort to achieve independence for Madagascar through legal channels. The failure of this initiative and the harsh response it drew from the Socialist Ramadier administration radicalized elements of the Malagasy population, including leaders of several militant nationalist secret societies. On the evening of 29 March 1947, coordinated surprise attacks were launched by Malagasy nationalists, armed mainly with spears, against military bases and French-owned plantations in the eastern part of the island concentrated around Moramanga and Manakara. The nationalist cause was rapidly adopted in the south and spread to the central highlands and the capital of Antananarivo by the following month, with the number of Malagasy nationalist fighters estimated at over one million. By May 1947 the French began to counter the nationalists. The French tripled the number of troops on the island to 18,000, primarily by transferring soldiers from French colonies elsewhere in Africa. The colonial authorities sought to fight on the physical and psychological fronts and engaged in a variety of terror tactics designed to demoralize the population. The French military force carried out mass execution, torture, war rape, torching of entire villages, collective punishment and other atrocities such as throwing live Malagasy prisoners out of an airplane (death flights). The estimated number of Malagasy casualties varies from a low of 11,000 to a high of over 100,000. The nationalists killed approximately 550 French nationals, as well as 1,900 Malagasy auxiliary men of the French army.

About this result

This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.

Related publications (1)

Related concepts (5)

Stratégies villageoises pour la gestion des paysages forestiers du Menabe Central, Madagascar

Clémence Dirac Ramohavelo

Introduction In order to reduce deforestation, the current attitude of conservation programmes and forest politics does no longer ban the local populations from the forests, because such measures present negative consequences for the communities. Today's t ...

EPFL2009

Indigénat

The Code de l'indigénat (kɔd də lɛ̃diʒena "native code"), called régime de l'indigénat or simply indigénat by modern French historians, were diverse and fluctuating sets of laws and regulations characterized by arbitrariness which created in practice an inferior legal status for natives of French colonies from 1881 until 1944–1947.

Battle of Madagascar

The Battle of Madagascar (5 May – 6 November 1942) was a British campaign to capture the Vichy French-controlled island Madagascar during World War II. The seizure of the island by the British was to deny Madagascar's ports to the Imperial Japanese Navy and to prevent the loss or impairment of the Allied shipping routes to India, Australia and Southeast Asia. It began with Operation Ironclad, the seizure of the port of Diego-Suarez (now Antsiranana) near the northern tip of the island, on 5 May 1942.

Algerian War

The Algerian War (also known as the Algerian Revolution or the Algerian War of Independence) was a major armed conflict between France and the Algerian National Liberation Front (Front de Libération Nationale – FLN) from 1954 to 1962, which led to Algeria winning its independence from France. An important decolonization war, it was a complex conflict characterized by guerrilla warfare and war crimes. The conflict also became a civil war between the different communities and within the communities.