Slavery and Essentialism in Highland Madagascar by Denis Regnier

Author:Denis Regnier [Regnier, Denis]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Africa, East, Social Science, Anthropology, Cultural & Social
ISBN: 9781350102477
Google: kqm9xwEACAAJ
Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
Published: 2020-09-03T05:05:43+00:00

Ramarcelline attributes the reason for her family’s opposition to her marriage with Rasamuel to the alleged slave origins of her husband’s great grandmother. The great grandmother she refers to, Rapitsarandro, was the mother of Rakamisy who, as explained in Chapter 4, is remembered as one of the founders in Beparasy. My understanding of the story is that the elders in Ramarcelline’s family in Ambalabe opposed her marriage with Rasamuel, not by questioning the status of Rakamisy – who had been a slave before being freed and becoming one of the andevohova in Beparasy – but by questioning the status of his mother, Rapitsarandro, who, according to my free descent informants (see Chapter 4), had been a slave in Vinany (now called Mahasoabe) until she joined Rakamisy with Rainihosy and Randriatsoakely after the abolition.

Some details of the story told by Ramarcelline appear to be incorrect. First, according to my other sources, both from the Berosaiña and the free descent side, Rasamuel’s great grandmother Rapitsarandro was not married when she arrived in Beparasy and never married there. Randriatsoa had explained to me that Rakamisy had no father in Beparasy and that his mother had lived with him in Mahasoa. Moreover, Ramarcelline gives a genealogy for Rasamuel that is not correct: she indicates descent from Rapitsarandro through women, whereas it is in fact through his father and then his grandfather, Rakamisy, that Rasamuel is related to Rapitsarandro (see Figure 3.1). This is interesting, nonetheless, since her insistence on women (and their status) indicates perhaps that, since Rakamisy was regarded as a ‘clean’ commoner when he arrived, people in Beparasy might have developed suspicions about the unclear origins of some females in this branch, i.e. Rakamisy’s mother and his descendants’ wives.

Finally, Ramarcelline seems also to have somewhat mixed up the stories about the ‘ruler who divides land’, i.e. the andevohova. There is no doubt that Rakamisy was the andevohova – it was not Rapitsarandro’s husband, as implied in Ramarcelline’s story. The fact that Ramarcelline did not remember the name of this husband and that nobody told me about this man is also evidence that she is mistaken, since, had this man existed, he would have been the apical ancestor of the Berosaiña in Beparasy and would have been remembered as such. These discrepancies aside, her version of the story is interesting because, in spite of Ramarcelline’s explanations, it does suggest that Rapitsarandro may have been a slave who was originally kidnapped in an eastern region by a Bara ruler – Betroka is in the Bara area – in the nineteenth century, and that at some point she was offered to the ruler of Vinany because he had an alliance with the Bara ruler.5

It was rather moving to hear Ramarcelline explaining that Rasamuel had taken her to a mpitantara (historian) among his great grandmother’s relatives when they left Beparasy and arrived in Betroka. He had done so in order to convince her that his version of the story was true and that his great grandmother

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