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The Sacred Musket. Tactics, Technology, and Power in Eighteenth-Century Madagascar

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2009

Gerald M. Berg
Gerald M. Berg
Affiliation:
Sweet Briar College
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Extract

The idea that firearms promote centralized government has a venerable pedigree in European historiography. Friedrich Engels observed that the new weapons of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries wrought substantial changes on class relations as merchants allied themselves with monarchs to wrest control of firearms from nobles and to reap the benefits of emerging mercantile states. The history of firearms thus conceived highlights the cultural content of technology and may provide more than a barren chronicle of destructive tools, as illustrated in J. U. Nef's classic study of technology and war and, in the same tradition, William McNeill's recent synthesis outlining the manner in which European culture framed innovations in military technology

Type
Profane Uses of the Sacred
Information
Comparative Studies in Society and History , Volume 27 , Issue 2 , April 1985 , pp. 261 - 279
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1985

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References

1 Cited in Law, Robin, “Horses, Firearms, and Political Power in Pre-colonial West Africa,” Past and Present, no. 72(1976), 125.Google Scholar

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7 The principal historical source for eighteenth-century Malagasy trade is the work of Nicolas Mayeur, an interpreter for the French East India Company and a resident in Madagascar for more than thirty years. He arrived there in 1762 at the age of twenty, and had a keen eye for relevant detail and a uniquely dispassionate view of Malagasy cultures. His firsthand experience on the east coast and later in the interior highlands provided an opportunity to compare politics, trade, and warfare in both regions. Mayeur's, “Histoire de Ratsimila-hoe roi de Foule-point et des Betsi-miçaracs,” British Museum (cited hereafter as BM), Add. MSS 18129, pp. 183–308,Google Scholar was compiled in 1806 from notes made from 1762 to 1768. He drew on conversations with Andrianzanahary, Ratsimilao's son, who came to the throne in 1762. In subsequent years, Mayeur added information gained from informal discussion with local “blancs et naturels.” For a description of the east coast before the advent of overseas trade, see Faye, de, “Mémoire sur I'état present de l'isle Dauphine (10 février 1668),” Archives nationales de France, Colonies (cited hereafter as ANFC), sous-series C5A/ 1, No. 19Google Scholar. For a continuation of the east-coast story after the death of Ratsimilao in 1762 until the end of the eighteenth century, see Lescalier, Baron Daniel, “Voyage à l'isle de Madagascar” [ca. Baron Daniel Lescaliers], BM, Add. MSS 18128, pp. 158–331Google Scholar (published in Monthly Magazine and British Register, 19:3 (04 1805), 222–25,Google Scholar and 19:6 (July 1805), 548–53); Josserie, Julien Pierre Dumaine de La, “Voyage fait au pays d'Ancaye en 1790,” BM, Add. MSS 18128, fols. 127–45Google Scholar (published in Annales des voyages, 11 (1810), 146–218);Google ScholarMayeur, Nicolas, “Voyage au pays d'Ancove par le pays Ancaye”Google Scholar [1785, redacted by Josserie, Julien Pierre Dumaine de La 1793], BM, Add. MSS 18128, fols. 196–234Google Scholar (published in Bulletin de l'Académie malgache, 12:2 (1913), 13–49);Google Scholar and idem, “Voyage dans le nord de Madagascar, nov. 1774-jariv. 1776” [ca. 1780,Google Scholar redacted by Froberville, Barthelemy Huet de, ca. 1807Google Scholar], BM, Add. MSS 18128, fols. 6–38 published in Bulletin de l'Academie malgache, 10:1 (1912), 93–156.Google Scholar

8 Mayeuer, , “Histoire de Ratsimila-hoe,” 192–95, 206–7, 209.Google Scholar

9 Ibid., 207, 35.

10 Filliot, J.-M., La traite des esclaves vers les Mascareignes au XVIIIe, siècle (Paris, 1974), 208.Google Scholar

11 For the situation elsewhere in Africa, see Smaldone, , Warfare in Sokoto Caliphate, 110–13Google Scholar: Smith, , Warfare and Diplomacy, 71–72, 108–9;Google ScholarFisher, H. J. and Rowland, V., “Firearms in the Central Sudan,” Journal of African History, 12:2 (1971), 239;CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Headrick, Daniel R., “The Tools of Imperalism,” Journal of Modern History, 51:2 (1979), 251–52.Google Scholar

12 Mayeur, , “Histoire de Ratsimila-hoe,” 201–2.Google Scholar

13 Ibid., 186, 206–19.

14 Mayeur, Nicolas, “Voyage au pays d'Ancove, autrement dit des hovas (1777),” BM, Add. MSS 18128. fol. 189vGoogle Scholar. For the published version, see Bulletin de l'Académie malgache, 12:1 (1913), 139–76Google Scholar. See also Dumaine, . “Voyage fait au pays d'Ancaye” (Annales), 181,Google Scholar who claimed that most slaves destined for “nos des” came from Imerina. Callet, Francois, ed., Tantara nv Andriana eta Madagascar (Antananarivo, 1908), 903,Google Scholar notes vaguely that overseas trade accounted for Merina muskets. Tantara is a collection of oral traditions assembled in Imerina in the mid-nineteenth century. Its use as an historical source forms a major subdiscipline of Malagasy studies dominated by Delivré's L'histoire. See also Berg, Gerald M., “The Myth of Racial Strife and Merina Kinglists,” History in Africa, 4 (1977), 1–30;CrossRefGoogle Scholar and idem, “Some Words.” In general, oral traditions are used in this article according to techniques popular among African historians and best represented by Vansina, Jan, Oral Tradition (Chicago, 1965);Google ScholarMiller, , ed., African Past Speaks; and numerous issues of History in Africa. A Journal of Method.Google Scholar

15 Canet, , Tantara, 140, 247–48;Google ScholarGrant, Charles Le Grand, “History of Mauritius”Google Scholar [1768, 1801], in A., and Grandidier, G., Collection des ouvrages anciens concernant Madagascar (cited hereafter as COACM) (Paris, 1907), V, 210–35;Google ScholarDrury, R., “Madagascar or Robert Drury's Journal” [1729], in COACM (Paris, 1906), IV, 357;Google ScholarSalle, Jacques de La, “Notes sur Madagascar,” Marie-Claude, Antoine Marrier baron d'Unienville, ed., 1816, BM, Add. MSS 18135, fol. 127v;Google ScholarDumaine, , “Voyage fait au pays d'Ancaye,” fol. 136x;Google ScholarMayeur, , “Voyage au paus d'Ancove (1777),” fol. 174r-v;Google ScholarMayeur, ,“ Voyage au pays d'Ancove (1785),” BM, Add. MSS 18128, fol. 210;Google ScholarHugon, B., “Lois, police et coutumes des peuples de Madagascar” (mai 1818),Google Scholar Archives nationales de France, Section Outre-mer Madagascar (cited hereafter as ANFOM), 7/15, p. 30; “Mémoires for the curious” (1709), BM, Sloane MSS 3392, fol. 866;Google Scholar and Guillain, Charles, Documents sur l'histoire, la géographie et le commerce de la partie occidental de Madagascar (Paris, 1845), 40.Google Scholar

16 Mayeur, , “Voyage au pays d'Ancove (1785),” BM, Add. MSS 18128, fol. 196v, is quite specific about Me?na musket manufacture:“… ils soft parvenus à faire toures les pieces d'un fusil; ils savent assembler toures celles de sa batterie.”Google Scholar See also Decary, R., Coutumes guerrieres et organization militaire chez les anciens malgaches (Paris, 1966), 1, 53Google Scholar. Musket repair and assembly also occurred among the Betsimisaraka and Bezanozano, but the industry seems rudimentary when compared to the gunmakers of Ime?na. See Mayeur, , “Voyage dans le nord,” fol. 62;Google ScholarMayeur, ,' Histoire de Ratsimila-hoe,' 195, 207;Google ScholarLescalier, , “Voyage,” 19:6, 551;Google Scholar and Dumaine, ,' Voyage fait au pays d'Ancaye' (Annales), 177–78.Google Scholar

17 Mayeur, , “Voyage au pays d'Ancove (1777),” 171;Google Scholar Chevalier de Sanglier (28 sept. 1777) ANFC, C5A/8, No. 107; and Dumaine, , “Voyage fait au pays d'Ancaye” (Annales), 179–180Google Scholar. Callet, , Tantara, 924,Google Scholar notes that the prevailing mix in Imerina included equal parts of imported and local powder, but records also that on the whole imported powder with its high sulpher content was more desireable than local powder. Thus, under ideal conditions, the Merina would have preferred the one-part-local to two-parts-imported formula that Mayeur describes. On the problems associated with early gunpower, see Ropp, Theodore, War in the Modern World (New York, 1962), 50.Google Scholar

18 Filliot, , La traite des esclaves, 207Google Scholar. My estimate of the number and types of firearms imported was derived from Pierre Poivre,' Etat des objets pour la traite à Madagascar à envoyer en 1768,' ANFC, C5A/2, Nos. 6, 6b; Glemet, “Extrait du registre (1 déc. 1767),” ANFC, C5A/2, No. 36; Louis-Laurent de Féderbe Modave,' Etat de ce qui est necessaire pour former en trois ans une colonie considerable (3 nov. 1769),' ANFOM, Department des Fortifications des Colonies, St. Marie 88/36. Figures indicate that the Compagnie des Indes expected to sell between eight and ten thousand firearms over a three-year period. Three thousand firearms per year should be considered a conservative estimate because unauthorized trade, though not conducted on a grand scale, added muskets to coastal markets. In addition, Me?na could obtain muskets from the west coast, though only a trickle of munitions flowed by this route as the east coast became the dominating focus of overseas trade by the 1770s. See Callet, , Tamara, 360,Google Scholar and Delivré, , L'histoire, 232.Google Scholar

19 For Merina contacts with the east coast, see Mayeur, , “Histoire de Ratsimila-hoe,” 195;Google Scholaridem,“Voyage au pays d'Ancove (1777),” fol. 89v;Google ScholarDumaine, , “Voyage fait au pays d'Ancaye” (Annales), 177–81;Google Scholar and Salle, La, “Notes sur Madagascar.” fol. 127vGoogle Scholar. For the earliest presence of muskets in Imerina, see Callet, , Tantara, 140, 247–48. 360;Google Scholar and Dez, J., “A propos du mot bash et du premier fusil en Imerina,” Bulletin de Madagascar, 285 (1970), 148–50Google Scholar. It would be useful indeed if the names of various firearms cited in Malagasy in Callet, , Tamara, 360, 490,Google Scholar could be correlated with the European names that appear in the French documentation and in Filliot, , La traite des esclaves, 207.Google Scholar

20 Mayeur, , “Voyage dans le nord (1774),” fols. 31r-32v;Google ScholarDumaine, , “Voyage fait au pays d'Ancaye” (Annales), 179–81Google Scholar. Mayeur's description of the internal workings of trade is perhaps the most subtle and intimate piece of ethnography for eighteenth or nineteenth-century Madagascar. See also Valette, Jean, “De quelques renseignements sur le commerce à Madagascar à la fin du XVIIIe siècle,” Bulletin de Madagascar, no. 238 (1966), 275–78.Google Scholar

21 As there is no extended study of the musket trade in Madagascar, conclusions presented here are admittedly provisional. For the sources of the early period, see note 18, and for comparisons at the peak of slave trading in the closing decades of the eighteenth century, see Filliot, , La traite des escalves, 62, 207, n. 8;Google ScholarDalrymple, A., “Geographical Collections (1756),” BM, Add. MSS 33765, fols. 18–19;Google ScholarNoble, Charles F., “Some Remarks Made at the French Islands of Mauritius and Bourbon” [1755], in Dalrymple, A., ed., Oriental Repertory (London, 1808), II, 113–22, 133–39;Google ScholarDéveaux, S., 'Déclaration (11 mars 1769); ANFC, C5A/3, No. 23;Google ScholarMayeur, , “Voyage dans le nord (1774),” fol. 4;Google Scholaridem,“Voyage au pays d'Ancove (1785),” BM, Add. MSS 18128, fols. 160–63;Google ScholarMaillart-Dumesle, Jacques, “Marché passé par des assises avec le s. Jérôme Pajot (27 oct. 1774),” ANFC, C5A/4, No. 113,Google ScholarAsselineau-Desmazures, , “Mémoire (15 avr. 1775),” ANFC, C5A/4, No. 124;Google ScholarCoquereau, , “Etat des marchandises (30 janv. 1777),” ANFC, C5A/8, No. 15 ter.; and “Etat Général des effets et marchandises (15 mai 1777),” ANFC, C5A/8, No. 41.Google Scholar

22 Callet, , Tantara, 488, 680, 686.Google Scholar

23 Ibid., 680; Guenne, Guiard et Le, “Mémoire sur la traite (1787),” BM, Add. MSS 18135, fols. 184–90;Google Scholaridem,“Memoire (1783),” Service historique de l'armée, Paris, MR 1676, pp. 4–9;Google Scholar“Projet de Marché (c. 1780),” ANFC, C5A/9, No. 1012;Google Scholar“Comparaison entre le traité fait au nom du roi (30 sept. 1781), Art. IX,” ANFC, C5A/9, No. 1012;Google Scholar“Tableau de comparaison (30 sept. 1781),” ANFC, C5A/9, No. 1013;Google Scholar“Etat des operations (31 mars 1785),” ANFC, C5A/9, No. 781.Google Scholar

24 Bloch, , “Disconnection,” 124–29Google Scholar. See also Richardson, J., A New Malagasy-English Dictionary (Antananarivo, 1885), 236.Google Scholar

25 On Andrianampoinimerina's use of rituals of inequality, see Berg, , “Royal Authority”;Google Scholaridem,“Historical Traditions and the Foundations of Monarchy in 'merina” (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1975), 201–5;Google ScholarLaSalle, , “Notes Sur Madagascar,” fol. 128.Google Scholar

26 Callet, , Tantara, 680, 914–16, 924.Google Scholar

27 Ibid., 686.

28 Ibid., 915.

29 Ibid., 912, 916.

30 European descriptions of local Merina markets in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries focus almost entirely on the commodities traded to the exclusion of the manner of trading, and they assume that markets in Ime?na worked according to the principles of free trade. Thus, though Dumaine, , “Voyage fait au pays d'Ancaye” (Annales), 178–79,Google Scholar claims that slaves “captured in local quarrels” and “criminals” were sold in “public markets,” he does not describe the sale. Public markets, in the European sense, seem to have existed in Imerina in the early eighteenth century (Callet, , Tantara, 360Google Scholar), but by the time European traders arrived on the scene those places of exchange were securely controlled by royal agents. In a similar vein, Paul Lovejoy has shown that markets played little role in the distribution of slaves within the Sokoto Caliphate. Slaves were distributed by a central government as a means of rewarding service. See Lovejoy, , “Plantations in the Nineteenth-Century Sokoto Caliphate,” American Historical Review, 84:5 (1979), 1290.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

31 I am indebted to Gillian Feeley-Hamik for clarifying Marcel Mauss's ideas on gifts, from which my analysis is derived. She elaborates further in her analysis of Paul's gift to Philemon of the slave Onesimus, a gift in which the transformation of raw power to authority tums on the ambiguity of the slave's status as a person or a thing. See her “Is Historical Anthropology Possible? The Case of the Runaway Slave,” in Humanizing America's Iconic Book, Tucker, G. M. and Knight, D. A., eds. (Chico, Calif., 1982), 95–125. In the Merina case, the inanimate musket that transforms power into authority—the Three Guns—assumes personality insofar as it is used in sacred exchanges of hasina.Google Scholar

On the history of meat offerings, see Berg, , “Historical Traditions,” 193–222;Google Scholar on the Mamiomby and related conquests involving new forms of hasina, Callet, , Tantara, 490, 539–40;Google Scholar on the Three Guns, Ibid., 756; and for an example of gun ritual on the east coast, Mayeur, , “Histoire de Ratsimila-hoe,” 202.Google Scholar

32 Callet, , Tantara, 140, 216Google Scholar: “… nasain'ny sampy arao amim basy.” On the sampy systern, see Berg, , “Royal Authority”;Google ScholarDomenichini, J.-P., Histoire des Palladium. Texte bilingue,Google Scholar Museé d'Art et d'Archéologie de 1'Université de Madagascar, Travaux et Documents, VIII (Antananarivo, 1971); and Raison-Jourde, , “De la restauration.”Google Scholar

33 For casualties in Merina combat, see Mayeur, , “Voyage au pays d'Ancove (1785),” in Bulletin de l'Académie malgache, 28;Google Scholar for drilling under Radama I, see Catlet, , Tantara, 692.Google Scholar For European comparisons, see Preston, R. A. and Wise, S. F., Men in Arms. A History of Warfare and Its Interrelationships in Western Society, 4th ed., (New York, 1979), 104–41;Google Scholar and Ropp, , War in Modern World, 49–51.Google Scholar

34 Callet, , Tantara, 655–86Google Scholar. Emphasis on the spiritual aspect of combat tactics is evident also in oral traditions of nineteenth-century Kano, as explained in Gidley, C. G. B., “Mantanfas. A Study of Oral Tradition,” African Language Studies, 6 (1965), 32–51. I am indebted to Ann Dunbar for this reference.Google Scholar

35 Ropp, , War in Modern World, 47, 50–51. At Blenheim in 1704, the French fired into the English line at a mere thirty paces, just the effective range of Merina gunpowder.Google Scholar

36 Bary, M. de (extract of a 1764 letter), in Decary, Coutumes guerrières, I, annex, 154–56Google Scholar. The remark refers to the east coast where muskets were even more widely available than in Ime?na. On the inefficiency of firearms in West Africa, see Smith, , Warfare and Diplomacy, 108–9, 166.Google Scholar

37 Callet, , Tantara, 675–77, 686.Google Scholar

38 Ibid., 502.

39 Ibid., 428, 489.

40 Mayeur, , “Voyage au pays d'Ancore (1785),” Bulletin de l'Academie malgache, 28;Google ScholarRopp, , Warfare in Modern World, 141.Google Scholar

41 Mayeur, . “Voyage au pays d'Ancore (1785),” BM, Add. MSS 18128, fol. 215.Google Scholar