page_title: History of Madagascar
section_title: Merina monarchy
hierarchical_section_title: History of Madagascar / Feudal era (1500–1895) / Merina monarchy
caption_attribution_description: English: Madagascar—Gathering of The People for The Making of Laws (LMS, 1869, p.52)
context_page_description: The history of Madagascar is distinguished clearly by the early isolation of the landmass from the ancient supercontinent containing Africa and India, and by the island's late colonization by human settlers arriving in outrigger canoes from the Sunda islands between 200 BCE and 500 CE. These two factors facilitated the evolution and survival of thousands of endemic plant and animal species, some of which have gone extinct or are currently threatened with extinction due to the pressures of a growing human population. Over the past two thousand years the island has received waves of settlers of diverse origins including Austronesian, Bantu, Arab, South Asian, Chinese and European. The majority of the population of Madagascar today is a mixture of Austronesian, Bantu, North Indian, Arab and Somali settlers.
  Centuries of intermarriages created the Malagasy people, who primarily speak Malagasy, an Austronesian language with Bantu, Malay, Arabic, French and English influences. Most of the genetic makeup of the average Malagasy, however, reflects an almost equal blend of Austronesian and Bantu, especially in coastal regions.
context_section_description: King Andrianampoinimerina (1785–1810) and his son, Radama I (1810–1828) succeeded in uniting nearly all of Madagascar under Merina rule.  These kings and their successors descended from a line of ancient Merina royalty who ruled the lands of Imerina in the central Highlands of Madagascar since at least the 16th century. Even prior to their eventual domination and unification of the entire island, the political and cultural activities of Merina royalty were to leave an indelible mark on contemporary Malagasy identity.
  With the establishment of dominion over the greater part of the Highlands, Andrianampoinimerina became the first Merina monarch to be considered a king of Madagascar.  The island continued to be ruled by a succession of Merina monarchs until the last of them, Ranavalona III, was deposed and exiled to Algeria by French forces who conquered and colonized the island in 1895.
caption: Madagascar—Gathering of The People for The Making of Laws (LMS, 1869, p.52)[70]
exif: {}