History of Madagascar
Europe knew of Madagascar through Arab sources; based on them "The Travels of Marco Polo" claimed that "the inhabitants are Saracens, or followers of the law of Mohammed", without mentioning other inhabitants. Other than its size and location, everything about the island in the book describes southeastern Africa, not Madagascar. European contact began on 10 August 1500, when the Portuguese sea captain Diogo Dias sighted the island after his ship separated from a fleet going to India. The Portuguese continued trading with the islanders and named the island "São Lourenço" (Saint Lawrence). In 1666, François Caron, the director general of the newly formed French East India Company, sailed to Madagascar. The company failed to establish a colony on Madagascar but established ports on the nearby islands of Bourbon (now Réunion) and Isle de France (now Mauritius). In the late 17th century, the French established trading posts along the east coast. On Île Sainte-Marie, a small island off the northeastern coast of Madagascar, Captain Misson and his pirate crew allegedly founded the famous pirate utopia of Libertatia in the late 17th century. From about 1774 to 1824, Madagascar was a favorite haunt for pirates. Many European sailors were shipwrecked on the coasts of the island, among them Robert Drury, whose journal is one of the few written depictions of life in southern Madagascar during the 18th century. Sailors sometimes called Madagascar "Island of the Moon".
Education in Madagascar
The first formal European-style school was established in 1818 on the east coast of Madagascar at Toamasina by members of the London Missionary Society (LMS). King Radama I (1810–1828), the first sovereign to bring about half the island of Madagascar under his rule, was interested in strengthening ties with European powers; to this end, he invited LMS missionaries to open a school in his capital at Antananarivo within the Rova palace compound to instruct the royal family in literacy, numeracy and basic education. This first school, known as the Palace School, was established by LMS missionary David Jones on December 8, 1820, within the Besakana, a building of great historic and cultural significance. Within months, due to the rapid increase in the number interested in studying there, classes were transferred to a larger, purpose-built structure on the Rova grounds. By 1822, LMS missionaries had successfully transcribed the Merina dialect of the Malagasy language using the Latin alphabet. This dialect, spoken in the central highlands around Antananarivo, was declared the official version of the Malagasy language that year — a status that the highlands dialect has retained ever since. The Bible, which was incrementally translated into this dialect and printed on a press (a process completed in 1835), was the first book printed in the Malagasy language and became the standard text used to teach literacy, thereby spreading the tenets of Christianity in Imerina.