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Conquest of Madagascar

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  Quote Guests Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Topic: Conquest of Madagascar
    Posted: 09-Sep-2007 at 13:10
Thousand of years ago, Indonesian sailors, belonging to the same family of people of Polynesians, sailed west from South East Asia and arrived to Madagascar, just across Africa. They brought theirs culture and technology to that island and influenced the cultures of South East Africa.
 
This is its history
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
BOROBUDUR EXPEDITION

The Aim is to build a reconstruction of the 'Borobudur Ship'  (dated to the learly 8th century AD) and to sail it from Indonesia to Africa.   view voyage route.....

The Objectives
The expedition plans to make a j
ourney that will recreate the ancient trading voyages between the two regions and demonstrate that this was the most likely vessel to have been responsible for spreading Indonesian influence and trade to Madagascar and the African mainland.  

Cultural Links
One of the objectives of the Borobudur Ship Expedition is to highlight the cultural influence that Indonesia and Asia contributed to the Indian Ocean and Africa during the first millennium AD. This is a complex story with many strands and differing interpretations. However, whilst there are many possible links, there are three main influences and activities that stand out.  read more.....


The Borobudur Temple
( CLICK IMAGE to enlarge to full page )

The Borobudur Temple 
Borobudur is one of the most impressive monuments ever created by man. It is both a temple and a complete exposition of doctrine, designed as a whole, and completed as it was designed, with only one major afterthought. It seems to have provided a pattern for Hindu temple mountains at Angkor (see above Cambodia and Vietnam), and in its own day it must have been one of the wonders of the Asian world. Built about 800, it probably fell into neglect by about 1000 and was overgrown. It was excavated and restored by the Dutch between 1907 and 1911. read more.....

Background Information  
Borobudur is the worlds largest Buddhist Stupa and was built in Java, Indonesia in the 8th Century. The vast temple of Borobudur probably took over a hundred years to complete, such is the scale and intricacy of the stonework. There are over 1460 reliefs on the walls of the temple, 11 reliefs illustrate the shipping of the time and depict 5 vessels in all. The most prominent of these vessels is known as the Borobudur Ship and provides the focus for the expedition.   

read more
.....

 
 
 
 

The Borobudur ship returns home from Ghana

After the arrival of the ship in Ghana on 23rd February 2004 in the port of Tema, the crew worked very hard dismantling key pieces of equipment and removing excess stores from the ship which were given to a local orphanage. Samudra Raksa was then taken out of the water to await arrangements for shipping back to Indonesia, which proved more complicated than one might have imagined. After many months delay the ship was eventually shipped to Indonesia late last year.

The Ship Museum Samudra Raksa was opened by Coordinating Minister for Welfare Prof.Dr. Alwi Shihab of the Republic of Indonesia on 31st August 2005. The museum is located within the grounds of the Borobudur Temple and is just a hundred or so yards from the great temple itself. A fitting tribute to the crew and all who worked with and supported the Borobudur Ship Expedition.  

The task of erecting her and placing her in the new museum was started in July 2005 by Pak Assad the original builder of the ship. 

To help preserve the timbers she has been lightly painted with lime , a traditional preservative used on such craft. It gives Samudra Raksa a slightly surreal and timeless quality as she sits happily in her new home.

 
 


Edited by pinguin - 09-Sep-2007 at 13:11
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  Quote Sander Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 13-Sep-2007 at 18:09
The Borobudur ship was an Indonesian cargo ship. 
 
Those typical sails were still used in  the 1500s as  Dutch engravings of the Java coast show.
 
 
 


Edited by Sander - 13-Sep-2007 at 18:12
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  Quote Guests Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 13-Sep-2007 at 18:15
You bet!
 
And they were the most advanced outside Europe at those times.
 
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  Quote jayeshks Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 15-Sep-2007 at 16:08
That's an Arabian Dhow.  I'm confused about what this expedition is trying to replicate.  Surely the original Polynesians must have arrived in Madagascar in canoes and catamarans, not dhows.
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  Quote Guests Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 15-Sep-2007 at 16:55

Arabian dhow? I won't bet on that at all. Indonesian ships had the system of ballancing and a different technique of building.

By the way, Astronesians, a term that group together both Indonesian and Polynesians, besides other related people, had very advanced nautical techniques, and the catamaran, far from being just a "canoe" it was a sort of Formula one race car of the pacific. Those people were the best sailors up to the Age of Discovery, far better sailors that the Arabs, I am afraid. You can see that catamarans are not just simple canoes at all:

Indonesian ships
 
 
 
The dhow arab, by constrast, is just a large boat kept together using cords and knots. It just can't compite:
 
Dhow
 
By the way, both Arabs and Indonesians met at the Indian Ocean, so certain similarities between theirs ships are inevitable.
 
Pinguin
 
 


Edited by pinguin - 15-Sep-2007 at 17:12
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  Quote pekau Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 02-Oct-2007 at 16:39
Nice pics, Pinguin.
 
It's off topic, but I didn't even know what Madagascar is until I saw the trailer for the movie called, "Madagascar". Big%20smile
     
   
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  Quote Sander Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 03-Oct-2007 at 22:34
Not arab and not Indian,  as the usual india centric/philic 'people /sites  claim ( almost looks like they claim everything )
 
Nothing mysterious about that ship.  Its was a normal  Javanese cargo ship  and one of the many shiptypes  they had (warboats,  fishing vessels, voyaging crafts  ;  small, medium, large sized etc  etc ).


Edited by Sander - 03-Oct-2007 at 23:52
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  Quote pekau Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 08-Oct-2007 at 20:36
Originally posted by Sander

Not arab and not Indian,  as the usual india centric/philic 'people /sites  claim ( almost looks like they claim everything )
 
Nothing mysterious about that ship.  Its was a normal  Javanese cargo ship  and one of the many shiptypes  they had (warboats,  fishing vessels, voyaging crafts  ;  small, medium, large sized etc  etc ).
 
Can't be Japanese. It either must have been Korean or Chinese merchant ships. Japanese never explored beyond Korea, China and... in some rare case, India. But almost all Japanese going to India never used ship as their means of transportation. They went through China due to religious piligrim.
     
   
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  Quote Sander Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 08-Oct-2007 at 22:40

^ Very funnyLOL

 
 this is a P
 
 this is a V
 
 Its Javanese.


Edited by Sander - 08-Oct-2007 at 22:49
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  Quote pekau Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 08-Oct-2007 at 22:45
Originally posted by Sander

^  Very funnyLOL
 
 this is a P
 
 this is a V
 
 Its Javanese.
 
It's about time for me to get glasses...LOL
     
   
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  Quote Guests Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 08-Oct-2007 at 23:14
LOL
 
In any case, the Javaneses and Indonesian people are recorded as the most skillful sailors in South East Asia, and probably in the whole Asia.
Getting to Madagascar, and conquering it is not a small achievement at all.
Today people of Madagascar speak malgache, and indonesian languaje.
 
Just an example of those Malgache peoples today,
 
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  Quote Sander Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 08-Oct-2007 at 23:29
 
Seems there are 18 etnic groups home to the island (not counting recent immigrant groups). Many are racially  merely African/ Bantu. Some etnic groups are of Indonesian type  or Afro Indonesian mixed typ.
 
Anyhow, they all speak dialects of  the same Malayo Polynesian language . Some interesting explanation in an old article :
 
"It is most improbable that the ancestors of this Bantu element colonized Madagascar bytheir own unaided efforts. So far as historical and other evidences go, no Bantu tribe has ever adventured oversea or out of sight of land ; as far back as A.D. 1154 we find Edrisi stating  definitely that " the Zenjs [i.e. the Bantus of East Africa] have no ships for voyaging."
 
Except they were carried to Madagascar as prisoners or slaves, there is no satisfactory alternative solution to the problem of the presence of Bantu tribes in Madagascar. The association between the ancestors of the present Bantu stock and the Indonesian immigrants must have been exceedingly intimate to cause the Bantus to give up their own language and adopt the Malayo-Polynesian dialect of the immigrants. Slavery involves just such intimate relationship between peoples of different races as is necessary to bring about this result. It is because of this that the languages of American negroes conform to those of the men who held their forefathers in the bonds of slavery ; in the United States and Jamaica, English is the speech of the negropopulation ; in Brazil, the negroes speak Portuguese ; in Spanish America their speech is a corrupt Castilian, and in Haiti it is French. "
 
"Indonesian Influence on East African Culture"., by James Hornell
The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 1934


Edited by Sander - 08-Oct-2007 at 23:39
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  Quote Guests Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 09-Oct-2007 at 01:43
Yes.
 
Now, let's think a little bit. If the Indonesians brough slaves from Africa, like it seems to be because of the demography of the island, then they had to go often to the mainland, to brough enough people to make a demographic impact. Therefore, there was a relation of commerce with the tribes in that region. So, it is not far off to think, Indonesians problably influenced the developments in Mozambique and the territories arount it.
 
Now, many people agree that the most probable origin of the marimba or xilophone in Africa was through Indonesian/Javanese influences. There are more than that, but nothing is more clear than the link with that instrument.
 
Some people claim that the influences go beyond that, and that includes cloths, metalurgy and certain rituals. For instance, the Great Zimbabwe could had certain stylistic influences.
 
The influence of the Indonesians in mainland Africa is a field of study than is almost virgin. It is only known that it is a valid question
 
 
 


Edited by pinguin - 09-Oct-2007 at 01:45
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  Quote Sander Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 10-Oct-2007 at 04:03
 
Dont know about metallurgy etc ( when did it appear in  that part of east Africa ? ) but xylophones  seem likely. That outriggers and some other nautical things were introduced by them there (including east africa coast )can hardly be doubted .
 
Historical records support Hornell 's explanation that it was a sort of overseas slavecolony ruled by these islanders.   As he said,  the Arab records state that the people of Zabag ( Indonesia) made long journeys to raid the Africa coast ( Bilad al- Zenj ) to get Zenj/Zanj ( Arabo- Persian for Bantus ) slaves, because they were needed in China .  The chinese records on their turn state that the Indonesian kingdoms of Sumatra and Java supplied them with Zengi slaves , that are recorded in the javanese inscriptions as Jengi slaves. It fits well. 
 
 


Edited by Sander - 10-Oct-2007 at 04:23
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  Quote Guests Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 11-Oct-2007 at 02:04

I read a book, called Phantom Voyagers, where the author claims a lot of African cultural patterns were brought by Indonesian/Javanese sailors. I don't know how reliable the book is, but the guy knows a lot about the topic. I was e-mailing him after I bouugh the book, and he really got something.

In the chapter about music he got the following:
 
 

 
Bronze Igo Ukwu
 
 
wooden post of Madagascar
 
 
stone post of Zimbabwe
 
You can read about the book in this page:
 
 
 
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  Quote jdalton Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 14-Oct-2007 at 08:37
Originally posted by Sander

Except they were carried to Madagascar as prisoners or slaves, there is no satisfactory alternative solution to the problem of the presence of Bantu tribes in Madagascar. The association between the ancestors of the present Bantu stock and the Indonesian immigrants must have been exceedingly intimate to cause the Bantus to give up their own language and adopt the Malayo-Polynesian dialect of the immigrants. Slavery involves just such intimate relationship between peoples of different races as is necessary to bring about this result. It is because of this that the languages of American negroes conform to those of the men who held their forefathers in the bonds of slavery ; in the United States and Jamaica, English is the speech of the negropopulation ; in Brazil, the negroes speak Portuguese ; in Spanish America their speech is a corrupt Castilian, and in Haiti it is French. "

I want more proof and a theory not written in 1934 before I'll just accept that they must have been slaves. I can accept that it is logical that the Africans did not arrive in Madagascar until after the Javanese. Otherwise the Javanese would have arrived to find an island full of Bantu-speakers and they would never have come to dominate Madagascar with only a few shiploads of people. But there are many other possible explanations for how Africans got to Madagascar. They could have come as traders. Or hired labourers. Or they could have started building ships on their own after the Javanese arrived. I'm very suspicious that everyone (and I include medieval Arab historians in "everyone") jumps straight to the idea that they must have been slaves.

And the Bantu already had ironworking technology long before the Javanese arrived. One of the major reasons the Bantu were able to spread out from Nigeria to Mozambique (across from Madagascar) in the first place was because of their iron spears and knives. Even if the last few hundred kilometres of their journey is a matter of debate, the reason there were Bantu people within 5000 km of Madagascar at all is because of Bantu ingenuity.


Edited by jdalton - 14-Oct-2007 at 08:57
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  Quote Guests Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 14-Oct-2007 at 15:27
Originally posted by jdalton

...
And the Bantu already had ironworking technology long before the Javanese arrived.
 
Do you have evidence of this? That would be interesting to check out
 
Originally posted by jdalton

...
One of the major reasons the Bantu were able to spread out from Nigeria to Mozambique (across from Madagascar) in the first place was because of their iron spears and knives. Even if the last few hundred kilometres of their journey is a matter of debate, the reason there were Bantu people within 5000 km of Madagascar at all is because of Bantu ingenuity.
 
As far as it is known, Indonesian/Javaneses influenced Madagascar as well and spread several cultural patterns and technologies throughout the region. You can still see Javanese style boat (those with a counterweight) in the coasts of South East Africa, right across madagascar. And the influences are deeper of what catches the eye.
 
By the way, I found this page about Indonesian traditional boats.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 


Edited by pinguin - 14-Oct-2007 at 15:27
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  Quote Sander Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 14-Oct-2007 at 18:53
Originally posted by jdalton

Originally posted by Sander

Except they were carried to Madagascar as prisoners or slaves, there is no satisfactory alternative solution to the problem of the presence of Bantu tribes in Madagascar. The association between the ancestors of the present Bantu stock and the Indonesian immigrants must have been exceedingly intimate to cause the Bantus to give up their own language and adopt the Malayo-Polynesian dialect of the immigrants. Slavery involves just such intimate relationship between peoples of different races as is necessary to bring about this result. It is because of this that the languages of American negroes conform to those of the men who held their forefathers in the bonds of slavery ; in the United States and Jamaica, English is the speech of the negropopulation ; in Brazil, the negroes speak Portuguese ; in Spanish America their speech is a corrupt Castilian, and in Haiti it is French. "

I want more proof and a theory not written in 1934 before I'll just accept that they must have been slaves. I can accept that it is logical that the Africans did not arrive in Madagascar until after the Javanese. Otherwise the Javanese would have arrived to find an island full of Bantu-speakers and they would never have come to dominate Madagascar with only a few shiploads of people. But there are many other possible explanations for how Africans got to Madagascar. They could have come as traders. Or hired labourers. Or they could have started building ships on their own after the Javanese arrived. I'm very suspicious that everyone (and I include medieval Arab historians in "everyone") jumps straight to the idea that they must have been slaves.

And the Bantu already had ironworking technology long before the Javanese arrived. One of the major reasons the Bantu were able to spread out from Nigeria to Mozambique (across from Madagascar) in the first place was because of their iron spears and knives. Even if the last few hundred kilometres of their journey is a matter of debate, the reason there were Bantu people within 5000 km of Madagascar at all is because of Bantu ingenuity.
Well, the Javanese have been mentioned a few times (often in relation with the depicted Borobudur ship ). This might suggest that the immigrants descend from them but that not the case. Linguistically , the settlers were related to other groups ( south Borneo and south Sulawesi ) This does not mean that there was no relation with the Javanese or sumatran kingdoms of that time, since these polities also employed other island groups for commercial and piratical activities.
 
Regarding the slavery theory. Other factors could have contributed to the presence of the Bantus .  Yet, the  oldest historical evidence  ( from 3 different sources )confirm an east African slavetrade carried out by these islanders.  So ,  based on that , it seems this was an important factor, at least for the beginning.
 
About metallurgy. I m not not sure when it appeared in east Africa . If it is pre CE , then  the case of an introduction from overseas by those sailors is more  unlikely than when if would appear in lets  say 4 th century AD. And even then , one should  not automatically exclude other sources or even independent invention.


Edited by Sander - 14-Oct-2007 at 18:58
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  Quote jdalton Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 16-Oct-2007 at 04:10
Originally posted by pinguin

Originally posted by jdalton

...
And the Bantu already had ironworking technology long before the Javanese arrived.
 
Do you have evidence of this? That would be interesting to check out

That the Bantu spread across the southern half of Africa because of their superior technology (specifically ironworking and farming) and pushed out or assimilated the hunter-gatherers previously living there is one of the most basic assumptions of pre-colonial African history. I've never seen it once questioned. There is ample archaeological and cultural evidence but I'm more familiar with the linguistic evidence. The Bantu languages are all very much related, and moreover the languages get more similar and less diverse as you move further from Nigeria. There are hundreds of languages (Bantu and non-Bantu) in Nigeria and only about 30 in Mozambique (all Bantu and all the same family within that heading). Google the words Bantu and history and you will no doubt find the Bantu expansion front and centre. There is still some uncertainty about who first started using iron south of the Sahara and why, but everyone agrees it happened in either West Africa or just south of Nubia and that it happened before the year 1. I'll start a thread on African iron some day.

I'm not saying that the Indonesians of Madagascar had no impact on the African mainland. I seem to remember reading somewhere about Asian crops spreading across Africa and adding to the diet of the entire continent? I'll see if I can find where I read that. In the meantime I'm only trying to defend the innovations that were clearly African. You might as well claim that the Mayans learned to write from the Spanish as say that the Bantu leaned to smelt iron from Indonesians.

Sander, I continue to doubt your Arabian source. It claims, for example, that African slaves were brought to China because they were "needed." But China hasn't had slavery as an institution since before Confucius, and he died in 479 BCE.


Edited by jdalton - 16-Oct-2007 at 04:14
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  Quote Sander Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 16-Oct-2007 at 20:42

Originally posted by jdalton

Sander, I continue to doubt your Arabian source. It claims, for example, that African slaves were brought to China because they were "needed." But China hasn't had slavery as an institution since before Confucius, and he died in 479 BCE.

Confucius' time aint a reason for doubts. This specific account about the raids from SEA on east Africa  is related to the second half of the first millenium AD ( 900s ). Older references related to this ' trade' in Zenj people ( or Zanj since in Arab does not distinguish much between the vowels ) are from the 800s and earlier.
 
BTW, There was also normal trade between the Far East and Zanj coast.   El- Indrisi 12 th century :  
"The people of Zabag and the surrounding islands come to seek here [at Sofala, on the south-east coast of Africa] for iron to transport to the Indian mainland and islands [Indonesia], where they sell it profitably, for it is an important article of trade ..." 

About the Hornell article.  In those days, anthroplogists and historians were generaly speaking more biased than today. Some views are now outdated. Now, we dont have to throw all the old scholarship away. We only have to distinguish between those views which are now considered as outdated and wich are not.

 


Edited by Sander - 16-Oct-2007 at 21:33
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