Forget the Numbers: The Case of a Madagascar Famine

Abstract

“Famines gather history around them,” we are told, even more so, it seems, with high numbers of dead. These numbers are treated sometimes like monuments for famines, increasing over time according to utilitarian concerns. Sources for a famine on Madagascar show that though high numbers may be useful in drawing attention to a calamity, people closer to the event may not locate this history or situate their memory via numbers. Emphasizing numbers in lieu of other ways of remembering and also forgetting a calamity appear not to be very good guides to this history.The killing famine that struck southern Madagascar in 1930–31 attracted substantial written comment among the French. Everyone seemed to have an opinion about this famine, which followed the surprising and dramatic killing of the predominant species of prickly pear cactus by cochineal insects in the late 1920s. A large area, a seventh of the island (approximately a sixth of France), with a population at the time of around a half million people and perhaps two million head of cattle, was effected by the biological war on cactus. “Cactus pastoralists” were suddenly without a very resourceful plant. It had provided thick fences of protection to these herders and their cattle; its fruit and water a mainstay for people; its singed cladodes a critical source of water and sustenance for cattle.The “furnace of contamination”—the rapidly reproducing cochineal choking to death their cactus hosts—started in 1925 at the southwest provincial center of Toliara and spread to the east, north, and south at a rate of 100 kilometers per year.

From Ratsiraka to Ravalomanana

“…13. Moral evaluations of new raketa varieties were significantly more complex and ambivalent than those reported from the Androka region (Mahafale) c.1995 by Kaufmann (2000). Kaufmann stresses the sense of continuity in local perceptions of raketa production and consumption.…”

“…37. For example, Decary's elaborations upon the local proverb of ''kinship'' between Tandroy and raketa [gasy] (Decary, 1930: 127), and, more recently, Kaufmann's (2000) concept of ''cactus pastoralism''.…”

The Kere of Madagascar: a qualitative exploration of community experiences and perspectives

“…tomentose, O. robusta, O. monacantha, and O. vulgaris [Decary 1929]) vegetation of the Deep South with an introduced beetle parasite (Kaufmann 2001). Prior to that, the Deep South was densely vegetated by thorny bushes dominated by raketa plants that provided an effective food source and served as a barrier to colonial military control (Decary 1929, Kaufmann 2000. Tribal anti-colonial fighters, referred to by participants in this study as the Sadiavahe ("loincloth made from wood-root"), utilized the protection afforded by the raketa to resist the French colonial forces for over two decades (Pearson 1997, Middleton 1999, Kaufmann 2001.…”

“…In November 1924, the French introduced canisters of biologically manipulated cochineal beetles (Dactylopius coccus) into healthy raketa thickets in the region of Tsongobory (Allorge and Matile-Ferrero 2011). The parasite decimated the plants at a rate of ~100 km per year (Kaufmann 2000). By the end of April 1929, an official report of the "death of the raketa" was sent to the colonial governor (Kaufmann 2000).…”

Inverting the impacts: Mining, conservation and sustainability claims near the Rio Tinto/QMM ilmenite mine in Southeast Madagascar

“…Many scholars have shown how degradation narratives are embedded in ideological biases associating Malagasy people with 'irrational' or 'inefficient' resource use, a myth tracing back to the colonial period (Kaufmann 2000, Kull 2000, Simsik 2002, Klein 2004. Political ecologists have long pointed out that many local populations are often wrongly criticized for a perceived lack of productivity and wrong use of the environment, misconceptions which have long shaped global perceptions of landscape degradation (see Conklin 1954, Blaikie 1985, Fairhead and Leach 1996 though irrespective of complex factors leading to forest loss (Lambin et al 2001, Angelsen and Kaimowitz 1999, Kull 2000.…”