History of Madagascar
By the 15th century, Europeans had wrested control of the spice trade from the Muslims. They did this by bypassing the Middle East and sending their cargo-ships around the Cape of Good Hope to India. The Portuguese mariner Diogo Dias became the first European to set foot on Madagascar when his ship, bound for India, blew off course in 1500. In the ensuing two-hundred years, the English and French tried (and failed) to establish settlements on the island.
Flora of Madagascar
French naturalist Alfred Grandidier was a preeminent 19th-century authority on Malagasy wildlife. His first visit in 1865 was followed by several other expeditions. He produced an atlas of the island and, in 1885, published "L'Histoire physique, naturelle et politique de Madagascar", which would comprise 39 volumes. Although his main contributions were in zoology, he was also a prolific plant collector; several plants were named after him, including Grandidier's baobab ("Adansonia grandidieri") and the endemic succulent genus "Didierea". The British missionary and naturalist Richard Baron, Grandidier's contemporary, lived in Madagascar from 1872 to 1907 where he also collected plants and discovered up to 1,000 new species; many of his specimens were described by Kew botanist John Gilbert Baker. Baron was the first to catalogue Madagascar's vascular flora in his "Compendium des plantes malgaches", including over 4,700 species and varieties known at that time.