Recently, however, another and a very different version of Malagasy history has been produced. It begins by casting reflections upon our work in Madagascar. We are told that the British missionaries have never done anything for the Malagasy, except to teach them to sing a few hymns and make hypocrites of them! We are seriously asked to believe that the Malagasy owe all their knowledge of civilization, and of the various arts and handicrafts of civilization, to a French sailor, who was wrecked on the coast of the island, found his way up to the capital, and there became the very intimate friend (or more, as some French writers maintain) of Rànavàlona I, the persecuting queen. Voltaire is credited with saying that he could ‘write history a great deal better without facts than with them.’ This ‘New Version of Malagasy History’ fully conforms to his ideal—the facts are lacking. This ‘old man of the sea’ is a myth like his prototype.
Whatever else they may have done, it cannot be denied that the British missionaries were the first to reduce the language to writing. When the missionaries arrived in Madagascar the people had no written language. The king had four Arabic secretaries, and, but for the advent of the missionaries, in all probability the characters used in the language of Madagascar would have been Arabic, which of course would have made the acquisition of the language much more difficult to foreigners than it is. When the king saw the Roman characters, he said: ‘Yes, I like these better, they are simpler, we’ll have these.’ And so the character in which the language of Madagascar was to be written and printed was settled by the despotic word of the king under the influence of the missionaries.
When the language was mastered, and reduced to writing, the first task the missionaries undertook was the translation of the Scriptures. Here lies the radical distinction between Protestant and Roman Catholic missionaries. The former always give the people as soon as possible the Word of God in their own tongue; the latter never give it. There have been Roman Catholic missionaries in various parts of Madagascar since 1641; but they have never yet translated the Scriptures into Malagasy, and are not likely to do so. When the missionaries had translated and printed the Gospel of St. Matthew they sent up a copy to the king. It was read to him by one of his young noblemen whom the missionaries had taught to read. The king did not seem particularly interested in the Gospel until the account of the Crucifixion was reached, when he asked: ‘Crucifixion, what is that?’ It was explained to him. ‘Ah!’ he said, ‘that’s a capital mode of punishment; I will have all my criminals crucified for the future. Call the head-carpenter.’ He was called, and ordered to prepare a number of crosses. I was very intimate for fourteen years with a Malagasy native pastor who had seen some of those crosses. During the dark and terrible times of persecution, tyranny, and cruelty under the rule of Rànavàlona I, some criminals, it is said, were really crucified.
When there was an addition to his family, Radàma I used to proclaim an Andro-tsì-màty—a day of general and unrestrained licentiousness. The whole country, and the capital in particular, was turned into a pandemonium of bestiality. Similar licence attended the great gatherings for the ceremony of circumcision. Mr. Hastie, the British Agent, compelled Radàma to put a stop to these orgies. He threatened, if another were proclaimed, to publish the proclamation in every gazette in Europe, and thus expose and hold him and his court and people up to the execration of Christendom. This had the intended effect. The king was always anxious to stand well with the nations of Europe; but when his wife came to the throne, she, being herself a shameless and outrageously licentious woman, restored these hideous customs.
Some years ago a missionary on the Congo stated in Regions Beyond that moral purity was quite unknown where he was labouring. A girl morally pure over ten years of age could not be found. It was the same in Madagascar, and is the same there to-day among the tribes that have not yet been reached by Christianity. Heathenism presents an indescribable state of things, and yet it never was so bad in Madagascar as in some other lands. A missionary from Old Calabar declared some years ago that in the sphere where he laboured he did not know a woman either in the Church or out of it who, in the days of heathenism, had not murdered from two to ten of her own children. The dark places of the earth are not only the habitations of cruelty, but of every unutterable abomination.
Radàma I was an extraordinary man. He has been called the ‘Peter the Great’ of Madagascar, and from some points of view perhaps he deserved the title. Some called him the ‘Noble Savage’; but he hardly deserved the epithet of ‘noble,’ for he was ruthless and cruel. At his first interview with Mr. Hastie and Mr. Jones he seems to have been so pleased with them that he invited them back to dine with him next day. They accordingly went to the palace, and while they were seated at table a slave bringing in a tureen stumbled and spilt a little soup on it. Radàma turned and looked at one of the officers who stood behind him, and the latter left the room. When Mr. Hastie and Mr. Jones quitted the presence of the king, they saw the headless body of the poor slave lying in the yard. He had had his head struck off for insulting the king by spilling soup on the table in the presence of the sovereign and his guests! On another occasion, in 1826, the king went down to the port of Tàmatàve to see a British man-of-war. While at Tàmatàve he sent a slave up to the capital with a message, giving him six days to go up and return. It is still regarded as a hard journey either to go up to the capital or to come down in six days. This poor slave must have run every hour of those nights and days; and yet because he did not return on the evening of the sixth day, but the morning of the seventh, he was killed! Terrible as such things are, they are mild compared with some of the enormities perpetrated in heathen countries.
Radàma died in 1828, a victim to his own vices. Rabòdo, his wife, or rather one of his wives, for he had twelve, by the aid of a number of officials, who were most of them opposed to Christianity and to the changes introduced by Radàma I, had herself proclaimed queen as Rànavàlona I. She soon made her position secure by murdering all the lawful heirs to the throne. Radàma had designated Rakòtobè, his nephew, the eldest son of his eldest sister, as his successor. He was a young man of intelligence who had been trained by the missionaries in their schools. He and his father and mother were put to death, as were also a number of the more enlightened officials. Andrìamihàja, a young Malagasy nobleman who had been a very great favourite with the queen, and had been mainly instrumental in placing her on the throne, and who was believed to be the father of her child, the future Radàma II, soon fell under her displeasure and was murdered. He had been considerably attracted towards Christianity, and at the time when his executioners reached his house he was reading the recently translated New Testament.
The original plan had been to banish all Europeans at once; but on the ground that they were useful in the work of education and civilization, he had secured their continuance for a time in the island, and had also aided and encouraged the work of the artisan missionaries. The queen sent to the missionaries to say that she did not mean to interfere with them or their work, as she was no less anxious than her late husband that the people should learn to be ‘wise and clever.’ The missionaries therefore thus continued to labour, and such great progress was made that they and their converts very soon got into trouble.
Rànavàlona I was an able, unscrupulous woman. Her subjects regarded her with terror. She combined the worst vices of barbarism with the externals of semi-civilization. Brutal amusements and shameless licentiousness were conspicuous at her court. Her extravagance was great, yet her subjects condoned this, and even her acts of cruelty, on account of her extraordinary capacity for government. She had her rice picked by her maids of honour, grain by grain, so that no atom of quartz or stone might be found in it. If a single particle of grit reached Her Majesty’s tooth, it cost the offending maid of honour her life.
‘Among those who had gained a slight knowledge of the doctrines of Christianity before the missionaries were expelled in 1836 was Rainitsìandàvaka, in some respects a remarkable man. He was then a middle-aged man, of extra sanguine temperament. He did not belong to the congregation of Ambàtonakànga. He had never been baptized, but he had conversed with some of the church members and with some of the missionaries. After a time he began to make a stir in and around his own village in the north, teaching the people that Jesus Christ was to return to the earth, when all men would be blessed and perhaps never die; that there would be no more slavery, for all men would then be free; that there would be no more war, and that cannons, guns, and spears would be buried. Even spades might be buried then, for the earth would bring forth its fruits without labour. The idols, he said, were not divinities, but only guardians.