THE FRENCH IN MADAGASCAR.
THE French Government have evidently determined to Occupy the time during which they are paralysed in
Europe in carrying out a policy of Colonial expansion. It is, too, a well.considered and, from their point of view, an able one. They have revived the old policy of the Monarchy, and instead of establishing colonies in the English sense, which, with their stationary population, they do not want and cannot fill, are seeking to acquire populated dependencies which will pay at once, and •y,ield abundantly the semi-tropical produce after which French economists always hanker. They have a notion that India, and not North England, is the source of the British wealth. It is a commercial marine, too, as much as a colonial empire, which, the colonial division of the French Admiralty is seeking to build up. The Government is aware that the French peasantry, though bitterly opposed to any enterprise which. can produce European war, either do not dislike or do not notice the acquisition of dis- tant dependencies ; and besides seizing Tunis—an act which, owing to the disgraceful mismanagement of the hospitals, irritated the voters—they have ordered expeditions against Tonquin on such a scale, that the wakeful Chinese Cabinet has begun to watch them in an ominous way, and an official denial as to the arrival of remonstrances from Pekin has been published in Paris ; have despatched a staff of engineers, guarded by soldiers, to lay down a railway from Senegal to the Niger ; have annexed Tahiti, which was only protected before ; have, it is reported, opened and failed in negotiations for the purchase of the Philippines ; have listened favourably to a project for acquiring the Valley of the Congo ; and are now intent on commencing a conquest
of Madagascar. They have nibbled at this plan for 200 years, and now they not only appear to be in earnest, but they have devised a scheme which, if immoral, is de- cidedly clever, and which unites the maximum of chance with the minimum of draft upon the military resources of France. To conquer Madagascar cheaply, it is necessary to have the aid of a native people who can fight, who have no hope of conquering the island for themselves, and who have a permanent grievance against the Hovas, the dominant race, who occupy the lofty and healthy plateaus of the centre, within and above the marshy coast-line and its belt of deadly forest. There is such a people in Madagascar, the Sakalavas, who claim, and more or less hold, the whole north-west of the island; who, like their rivals, the Hovas, are of Malay extraction, and speak a dialect of that tongue, but who, probably from some remote cross in the blood, are bigger, braver, and wilder men than their more civilised iivals. The accounts of their number differ, but that patient and well- informed statist, Dr. Mullens, who surveyed part of the island and traversed three-fourths of it, and who had unrivalled ex- perience in the study of half-civilised statistics, rejected the popular accounts as foolish, and estimated the whole popula- tion of Madagascar at 2,300,000, of whom the Sakalavas make 500,000. If that estimate is correct, the Sakalavas can produce 100,000 fighting men. The Hovas dread them, for their valour ; while the Sakalavas, though unable to conquer the plateaus, or wholly to resist their better organised adversaries, despise the Hovas individually, and call them by a whimsical nickname compounded of dogs and pigs. These people, who are, of course, thoroughly acclimatised, the French have gained over by promises of protection, and with a little drill, 100,000 chassepOts, some mule batteries, and 5,000 men, they can if they please conquer Madagascar. It would be amagnificent possession. It is nearly as large as France—the precise size arrived at by Dr. Mullens and Mr. Sibree, from a comparison of many maps and journeys, being an average of 815 by 250, or a superficial area of 203,750 square miles—it is, excluding the malarious forest belt, quite healthy, it will grow anything from wheat to pine-apples, it is as rich in fine woods as Honduras, and there is geological reason to believe that it is full of minerals, besides the iron in which it is known to be rich, and which the Hovas work. The thin population could be reinforced, both from Pondicherry and Saigon, and the island could, under wise management, be turned into a smaller India.
That this is the plan devised, and at least partially adopted/ in Paris, is evident from the semi-official statement that M. Grevy will refuse to receive the Hove Envoys, unless they acknowledge from the beginning that the Sakalavas are inde- pendent of the Hove Queen, and that the French possess an exclusive and legal protectorate, either of the Sakalava terri- tory, or—a still more dangerous claim—of all the Sakalava tribes. The Envoys cannot make the latter concession, which would girdle the Hove possessions with protected enemies, and will not make the former ; and whether they do or not, will make no difference. If they accept the terms, France reigns in Sakalava territory, and will conquer from thence ; and if they reject them, France will land troops in that territory, which the Hovas cannot defend from their plateaus, and then declare the Sakalavas independent of all but herself. If France means conquest, the nego- tiation is a farce ; and we regret to believe she does mean it. We say we regret, because she will spend a great deal of energy for a very doubtful result, because the French do not manage their tropical possessions in a vivifying manner—they over-govern to an absurd degree, and though not naturally cruel to the obedient, destroy the disobedient with too little scruple—and because the Hovas have a considerable interest for humanity. They are not such nice people as Mr. Ellis painted them, being extremely cruel and oppressive ; but they are energetic, teachable, and accumulative, and possess an autochthonous civilisation which has advanoed with a certain steadiness for .500 years. They have built cities, though only of wood ; they have displayed a readiness to adopt Christianity ;
and though all the Malagasy retain the African curse, the tribal form of government, the Hovas have for two centuries shown a capacity to rise to the Asiatic form,—a despotism supported by an Army and by a regular Administration, but tempered by popular feeling. Their admirers believe that this might be improved into the European form, and at all events, the novas have codified their laws ; and the Mission- aries, who know them best, say they will adhere to treaties. It seems a pity that an indigenous and advancing, though low, civilisation should be broken up by violence, as it will be, if the French persist in their design ; and that the only branch of the Polynesian Malays with " go" in them should be subjugated, for no reason, except that France wants to increase her sugar- producing empire. The Hovas are not as tameless as the Arabs, but they will not take kindly to planter administration.
When, however, we are asked, as the Standard asks us, and as the Missionary world in a week or two will be asking us, with one mouth, to prohibit the French enterprise, we must hesitate to answer in the affirmative. It hardly lies in our mouths to declare that the subjugation of the African Maoris is in itself an unendurable injury to the world. The Hovas are not in themselves a feeble people, but a strong one, and though their best "generals, Forest and Fever," will not help them against their new opponents, Saltalavas disciplined by. French officers, they are sure to make such a fight of it as to obtain good terms. As to the feebleness or unfairness of the pretexts used by the French Consuls, that does not rest on English conscience, we having, on the whole, behaved well in Madagascar, while the talk about our" interests" and Protestant hopes and Jesuit intrigues is talk merely. We cannot go to war to secure Protestant Missions against Catholic rivalry, and the French will not persecute Protestants as such. Those who believe that the Republican Government of France is going to conquer Mada- gascar for Jesuit benefit, have a faith which, if it cannot remove mountains, can at least remove facts out of the way ; and as to our interests, our interest is not to give France a sense of being throttled by Great Britain in all directions. The English people are not going to annex Madagascar, and it is not their business to protect the Malagasy against an invasion which -will possibly fail, and which, if it succeeds, is certainly no worse than the French conquest of Cambodia. We might as well be asked to intervene on behalf of the Tonquinese, or those tithes of the Congo for whose subjugation M. de Brazza is so anxiously pleading with Paris. As to the cry that the French in Madagascar will endanger our alternative route to India, we are sick of the argument. The French can "en- danger our route" a great deal better from Marseilles ; and we cannot defend the whole world, because at some future time, under some undefined circumstances, it may be more
difficult for British ships to reach Calcutta. It would be easier to monopolise the ocean at once. Madagascar is three hundred miles from the nearest African coast, a channel surely wide enough for anybody, while on the eastern side there is the wide water of the South Pacific. English statesmen cannot forfeit an alliance essential to the good order of the world for such visionary dreams, nor even to'protect the independence of a Malay race whose progress towards civilisation they have watched with interest. They may regret, as we do, most heartily, that French states- men should have fixed their eyes on Madagascar ; but they can do no more, without endangering interests far more im- portant than the right of Queen Ranavalona to be rid of the counsel of a French Resident. There is something, after all, though we may not like it, in the French and Portuguese argument that they only conquer the half-civilised, because the British have already conquered all the savage races of the world. There is no more room for anybody, because of the British Flag ; and the less we needlessly obtrude that fact, upon mankind, the better for our peace.
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