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Ep. 64 Ranavalona I: How This Powerful Queen of Madagascar Might Be Totally Misunderstood

• Shea LaFountaine • Episode 64

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Ranavalona I, Queen of Madagascar has a bad reputation, to say the least. Few biographical sources exist about her but they all make their opinions well known in the titles alone: "Ranavalona I: Reign of Terror,” “Female Caligula: Ranavalona the Mad Queen of Madagascar,” “The Terror of Queen Ranavalona I in Madagascar.” But, I see reason to question this reputation. Was Ranavalona really a bloodthirsty tyrant or was she simply a powerful woman determined to put a stop to European imperialism at a time when history was recorded almost exclusively by European imperialists. You be the judge! 

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“She is certainly one of the proudest and cruelest women on the face of the earth, and her whole history is a record of bloodshed and deeds of horror,” wrote explorer Ida Pfeiffer in reference to Ranavalona I, Queen of Madagascar, in 1857. Ranavalona is one of the least known and yet most notorious female rulers in history. She’s been called “Ranavalona the Cruel” and the “Mad Queen of Madagascar.” Limited reports of her reign, coming mostly from the Christian missionaries and converts she persecuted list horrifying deeds, unspeakable cruelty, and mass executions under her rule as she ruthlessly fought off European conquest for decades. But how accurate are these reports? History remembers Ranavalona as a bloodthirsty tyrant. Was she really a quote “female Caligula,” or has her story been misconstrued by the European invaders who sought to conquer her kingdom and destroy her way of life? Let’s fix that. 


Hello, I’m Shea LaFountaine and you’re listening to History Fix, where I discuss lesser known true stories from history you won’t be able to stop thinking about. I have a truly lesser known story for you today and what a story it is, my goodness, another one that should be a movie. Today I’m taking you to 19th century Madagascar like the animated film with the lemur and stuff. Actually, to be honest I’ve never seen it. I’m only assuming there’s lemurs in it cause lemurs come from Madagascar. But also this is nothing like an animated children’s movie. This is, there’s some demented stuff in this one. You don’t get likened to Caligula for nothing. And, side note, if you don’t know about Caligula you should check out episode 11 about Mad Kings. I’m trying to challenge myself to step outside of western European history somewhat and explore some other parts of the world, some non white people history if you will. But, let me tell ya, they creep right on in no matter where I go. These dudes are everywhere. Specifically British dudes. British dudes are just busting into everybody else’s history. I was like, cool, let’s go to Madagascar, focus on this like African woman queen, get out of Europe or America for a minute but no. They’re freaking everywhere. 


Our story today is about Ranavalona I, queen of Madagascar from 1828 until her death in 1861. And if you couldn’t tell from the opener, she earned herself quite the reputation during that 33 year reign. Today, we’re going to try to get to the bottom of whether or not that reputation was actually warranted. Because Ranavalona’s story, although I knew almost nothing about it before researching this episode, reminds me of another queen, one I talked about briefly in my six wives two parter episodes 19 and 20, and that is Mary Tudor AKA “Bloody Mary.” Mary was the daughter of Henry VIII and his first wife of 24 years, Catherine of Aragon. Henry, of course divorced Catherine, splitting with the Catholic church in order to do so, all so he could marry his mistress Anne Boleyn. Henry’s justification for divorce, or annulment really, rested on the claim that Catherine had previously been married to his older brother and, therefore, their marriage had never been legitimate. BS. But, basically, in casting Catherine aside, Henry also sort of casts Mary aside as his heir. But also, you have to understand that at this point, England has never had a queen. Never. Literally never, since the beginning of time. It’s not something that they did. Right? So Henry, I don’t think, ever thought of Mary as an heir to the throne which is why he was so desperate for a son which he finally got with his third wife, Jane Seymour. And that son, Edward VI took the throne after Henry’s death but he was a sickly child and he died a few years later leaving Mary and Elizabeth, the daughter of Anne Boleyn, as Henry’s only surviving legitimate children. I mean sort of. I question Elizabeth’s legitimacy but whatever. Mary is older than Elizabeth by quite a bit so she is the obvious choice to take the thone next. But there’s a problem, Mary is super Catholic, like her mother, and Catholicism is so six wives ago. So when Edward dies, the powers that be put his protestant cousin, Lady Jane Grey, on the throne. And just the complete betrayal of that, for Mary and Elizabeth. They ain’t having it. Mary starts gathering the support of nobles from all over the country and she marches on London, with Elizabeth by her side. And it wasn’t like this huge conflict. People saw them ride in and they were like “oh thank God, get this rando off the throne, here’s our real queen.” 


So Mary takes the throne as the rightful successor with tons of support, despite being Catholic in a now very protestant country. Well, sort of, according to Meilan Solly in a Smithsonian Magazine article called “The Myth of Bloody Mary, England’s First Queen” quote “England was still fundamentally a Catholic country when Mary took the throne,” end quote, with only a small educated minority sort of deluding themselves into thinking they were now protestant. At that time anyway. Which explains the fanfare when Mary strode into London to take the throne back. 


During Mary’s reign, she focused on trying to restore Catholicism. This split with the Catholic church, this is what had cast her mother out. Mary was never allowed to see her mother again. So she obviously wants to right that complete injustice by reverting back to Catholicism. Now the reason she got the nickname “Bloody Mary” is because she may have had 280 protestants burned at the stake as heretics, for going against the Catholic faith. And that sounds awful but within its context, it’s actually not that bad. Solly says quote “in Tudor England, bloody punishments were the norm, with execution methods ranging from beheading to boiling to being hanged, drawn and quartered… During the early modern period, Catholics and Protestants alike believed heresy warranted the heavy sentence it carried. Mary’s most famous victim, Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, was preparing to enact similar policies targeting Catholics before being sidelined by Edward’s death… Even though Mary’s father, Henry, only had 81 people burned at the stake over the course of his 38-year reign, heresy was far from the sole charge that warranted execution in Tudor England. Estimates suggest Henry ordered the deaths of as many as 57,000 to 72,000 of his subjects—including two of his wives—though it’s worth noting these figures are probably exaggerated. Mary’s brother, Edward,... sanctioned the suppression of the Prayer Book Rebellion, resulting in the deaths of up to 5,500 Catholics. Mary’s successor, Elizabeth… ordered the executions of around 800 Catholic rebels implicated in the 1569 Rising of the North; and had at least 183 Catholics, the majority of whom were Jesuit missionaries, hanged, drawn and quartered as traitors. If numbers are the main reasoning behind such sobriquets as “Bloody Mary,” then why aren’t Mary’s family members dubbed “Bloody Henry,” “Bloody Edward” and “Bloody Bess”? Why has the myth of “Bloody Mary” persisted in Great Britain’s collective imagination for so long? And what did Mary do that was so different from not only other Tudor monarchs but also other kings and queens across early modern Europe? These questions are complex and predictably fraught. But several recurring themes persist. As England’s first queen, Mary faced the same challenge experienced by female rulers across the continent—namely, her councilors’ and subjects’ lack of faith in women’s ability to govern.” end quote. So, bear all of that in mind please as we delve into the story of Ranavalona of Madagascar today. I see a lot of parallels between their stories. Okay, enough of England. Let’s go to Madagascar. I can’t ever seem to get out of England. But it was important that I shared that with you, the connection between Mary and Ranavalona because we don’t have records and statistics for Ranavalona like we do for Mary. Her culture did not have a written language. We can’t compare the numbers because they were never accurately recorded but I suspect that similar themes would be revealed. 


Madagascar is an island off the southeast coast of Africa and the people are a mix of Asian and African ethnicities. The island was uninhabited until around the first century when people arrived by boat from Indonesia, so southeast Asian people. Once on Madagascar, they imported African wives and enslaved African people and the two groups sort of melded together. According to the US Department of State page on Madagascar, 18 separate tribal groups emerged with groups of Asian descent mostly in the central highland areas and groups of African descent mostly on the coast. One of those predominantly Asian groups is called the Merina. The main language is called Malagasy which is of Malayo-Polynesian origin but today they also speak French and English. Most people, even today, practice traditional religions that emphasize a connection between the living and the dead, pretty similar to the Nazca beliefs I talked about last week, actually, that the ancestors become, almost god like, and basically have a say in what happens to the living. And they actually have this kind of crazy thing they do in Madagascar. It’s called famadihana or “turning over the dead.” So they remove their dead loved one’s bodies from the family tomb, they take the corpse out. They rewrap it in a new silk shroud and have a ceremony in that person’s honor. But they aren’t like in a coffin in the corner, they are the guest of honor at the celebration. People eat and drink and dance with the dead bodies before they are returned to their tombs for another 7ish years. It’s a little controversial today but it is very traditional. Around 41 percent of people in Madagascar are Christian today but even they have incorporated some of these cult of the dead rituals. 


There was no written history of Madagascar at all until around the 7th century when Arabs set up trading posts there. There was no written form of their language, Malagasy, at the time. So the Arab people were the first to record anything about Madagascar in writing. European contact started in the 1500s when a Portuguese ship captained by Diego Dias became separated from a fleet heading to India and spotted the island. And I’m sure they were like “Look at this awesome island we discovered!” Even though three other groups were already there first. By the 1600s, the French had set up trading posts along the east coast and in the 1700s it became a bit of a pirate hang out. It’s believed that one of these pirates, Captain John Thurber was responsible for bringing Malagasy rice from Madagascar to South Carolina in 1685. And after that, rice became a major cash crop in both South Carolina and North Carolina up until the Civil War when the end of slavery basically killed that industry. So interesting Madagascar Carolina connection there. 


So we have all these different groups living all over Madagascar in different areas and our girl Ranavalona was part of the Merina tribe. But she was not born into nobility. Actually the story of her rise into the ruling class is basically straight out of a fairy tale, what every peasant girl dreams of. She was born in the late 1700s to an average Merina family. But her father happened to find out about a plot to kill the king at that time whose name is one of the craziest names I’ve ever seen, bear with me here, Andrianampoinimerinandriantsimitoviaminandriampanjaka. That his name, the king. I’m just gonna call him the king. So Ranavalona’s father finds out about a plot to kill the king and let’s him know, he foils the plot, turns the plotters in, and saves the king’s life. And as a thank you, the king adopted Ranavalona as his own daughter and also betrothed her to his son Radama, who was to inherit the throne. So this gave any children Ranavalona would have a double claim to the throne. Her children were to be the next rulers of the Merina tribe. But, she and Radama didn’t have any children. Ranavalona was 22 and Radama was 16 when they married but he married a bunch of other wives after her. He had something like 12 wives. A lot of the sources I read say like “oh, they just didn’t have a very good relationship, she wasn’t a favorite wife, he had some of her relatives killed so she didn’t like him, they had different ideas about how the kingdom should be run” which all may be true. But from what I can tell, he didn’t have any children with any of his wives. So this makes me think that, for whatever reason, Radama was just unable to sire children. 


Radama took the throne in 1810 after his father’s death. And during the time of his reign, France and Britain were basically duking it out for control of Madagascar and Radama sort of took advantage of this. He sided with the British, allowing Christian missionaries to come in and build schools and develop a written language. Sound familiar? It should if you listened to episode 59 about Hawaii. This is the same mess that happened there. He also abolished the slave trade at Britain’s request because they had abolished it in 1807. And, I know, this is all sounding actually really good right? Schools and literacy and no more slave trade. I know, it sounds amazing. But, once again, if you joined me for the Hawaii episode, we both know there’s a lot more to the story than that. Britain has motives. They want to take over Madagascar and they want to destroy the Malagasy religion and culture. Ranavalona sees this immediately and she is horrified. She is very opposed to her husband letting the British in like this. But he’s getting something out of it too. In return for letting the British do whatever they want, Radama is given weapons, right, guns, which is something the Merina did not have. And with the weapons they get from the British, Radama gradually begins to conquer all the other territories in Madagascar and the Merina tribe starts to take over until he is king of Madagascar, not just of the Merina. So there’s a give and take going on. 


Radama died young and childless and his officers made plans to place his nephew, Rakatobe, on the throne. Rakatobe was his sister’s son. But, in Merina culture, if any of Radama’s widows gave birth, even well after his death, even so far after his death that it definitely couldn’t be his kid, didn’t matter, that kid would be heir to the throne. Because the Merina practice matrilineal descent. So a child of the King’s wife was an heir to the throne through his or her mother, not father. Didn’t even matter if they were Radama’s kid or not. Now because of this though, all of Radama’s wives are in danger if Rakatobe takes the throne. Because, in Merina culture, it was quite typical to eliminate all possible threats when a new king took the throne. Anyone else who had a halfway claim or could one day have a halfway claim, say, by having a baby, would be killed and that secured the new king’s reign and made it so that, you know, his rule couldn’t be challenged. 


So Ranavalona knows she has to either seize the throne herself or die and she chooses the seize the throne option. So she starts gathering powerful friends. This is very Mary Tudor isn’t it? This is basically the same thing Mary did when Lady Jane Gray stole her crown. Hmm. Ranavalona reaches out to two army colonels who were from her home village and they swear an oath of allegiance to her. They got to work persuading the chief priests and judges and the general of the army to swear oaths to Ranavalona as well, or be killed, there was an ultimatum here but according to Lori Davis on a Her Half of History podcast episode about Ranavalona, only 4 officers chose death over allegiance. The rest swiftly switched sides and Ranavalona was placed on the throne as Queen of Madagascar, the first Queen of Madagascar. Once again we have a clear Mary Tudor parallel. And just, quick side note, I discovered Lori’s podcast, Her Half of History, while researching this episode and it’s awesome, I’m an immediate fan, you guys would love it. I loved it so much I actually reached out to Lori and we are currently planning some sort of collaborative episode so, be on the lookout for that.  


As was Merina custom, Rakatobe and his mother and father and some other family members were killed because their very existence was a threat to the new queen. His mother was actually locked in a room and starved to death. That’s how they killed her. And already people look at that and say “wow, man she killed her nephew and her sister and, this is her family she’s killing, already her vicious nature, her cruelty is showing.” But remember, this was just the way things were done. This was one of their customs. If she hadn’t taken the throne and killed Rakatobe, he would have taken the throne and killed her. But where are the accounts, perspectives, and opinions coming from? Who is writing this stuff down? The only one’s there who can write, the British missionaries who do not understand Merina culture and so to them this probably did look vicious and cruel. Also, it didn’t help that Ranavalona refused to honor any agreements her late husband, Radama had made with the British. They had to have been a bit sour about that so they aren’t exactly going to be singing her praises. She sent the British diplomats and missionaries away, forbade the teaching of Christianity, and reinstated the slave trade. And you may say “well that’s terrible, the slave trade needed to go,” and you’d be right. It was terrible and it did need to go. So why did she bring it back? Well before it was abolished, it was a large part of the Merina economy and now they don’t have the support of the British, they’re not trading with Europeans, they kind of need it economically, unfortunately. So the way this worked was, if a rebellion broke out or something, officials would rush in, put down the rebellion, and sell the rebels into slavery and the government profited this way. And I’m not going to try to justify it, I’m not, but I do want to point out that slavery in Africa and, I assume Madagascar, was not like slavery in the American colonies. I talked about this a bit in episode 12 about Abolition. It was much less brutal. Enslaved people in Africa were treated much more like family than livestock and Africans were in fact horrified to learn the fates of the people they were selling to the Americas. It was almost a different institution entirely. So, not saying it’s right or even better or anything like that, but different. 


Ranavalona was determined to ward off European imperialism and preserve the Merina way of life. And part of doing that was by eliminating people who practiced Christianity. This was a foreign religion that had forced its way in and threatened to erase the Malagasy religion. This is Mary burning Protestants. Except, I think it’s safe to say that Ranavalona took it way farther than Mary. She apparently specialized in coming up with brutal ways to kill people. They were beaten, tortured, starved, pushed off of cliffs, poisoned, boiled, burned, and beheaded while their relatives were forced to watch. She also reverted from trial by jury back to the more primitive trial by ordeal or, more specifically, trial by tanguena. Tanguena is a poisonous plant, a shrub. So basically, if someone was accused of a crime, they were forced to eat 3 chicken skins, followed by a seed from the tanguena plant. If they vomited up all three chicken skins, they were innocent and if they didn’t they were guilty. And I don’t know if that means like three pieces of chicken skin or like all of the skin from three whole chickens. I don’t know but from what I can tell, not many people were found innocent this way. And the punishment for most infractions was execution. 


So Ranavalona has thoroughly ticked off the British by essentially running them off the island. The French see this as their opportunity to finally get in there. They mistakenly saw Britain as the obstacle and not Ranavalona. So Britain is out of their way, they’re gonna make a move for it. The French fleet arrives on the east coast and tries to negotiate with Ranavalona but she doesn’t respond, straight up cold shoulders them like “you’ve got to be kidding me right now.” So they start bombarding the town of Tomatave. They’re like “okay, she’s not gonna talk, we’re just gonna attack,” cause that solves everything, right? No. The Merina destroy them. And they’re able to destroy the French fleet because they have all these British weapons. Remember Radama was getting guns from the British but even after Ranavalona kicked them out, she used profits from the reinstated slave trade to purchase European weapons. But this is kind of a problem. In a way, she’s dependent on Europeans, the very people she’s trying to defend against. 


But then the answer to this problem literally just washes up on shore in the form of a shipwrecked Frenchman named Jean Laborde. Laborde had trained as a blacksmith back in France but spent the last few years in the army and later as an explorer and treasure hunter until he found himself stranded in Madagascar. He was sort of a blacksmith without borders, if you will, which was pretty much exactly what Ranavalona needed. He knew how to make guns and gunpowder and cannons and he helped Madagascar become militarily independent from their oppressors. He was technically enslaved by Ranavalona but sort of enjoyed a life of luxury among the nobility. I’m telling you, it’s not the same type of slavery that was happening in the Americas. It was very different. Laborde is thought to possibly be the father of Ranavalona’s only child, Prince Rakoto. 


With this strange stroke of luck, Laborde washing up on shore and helping Ranavalona get weapons without relying on her enemies, the kingdom starts to really flourish. They build a new palace which was said to be the largest timber building in the world at the time. And they also begin construction on “Black Versaille” which was a European style stone town for the royal court. So they’ve really ushered in this new age of luxury and the cherry on top is to be this grand triumphal procession throughout the kingdom. Ranavalona and the royal court and all of the people they collectively enslaved, which amounted to around 50,000 people, were going on tour essentially. But there weren’t really functional roads throughout the country. So they had to build roads to travel on as they went. So a crew of road builders frantically worked to construct the road, trying to stay a few days ahead of the court so as not to delay them. And according to records that may or may not be true, an estimated 10,000 people were said to have died while trying to construct the road from overwork, starvation, and malaria. Also, apparently, no food was provided. These 50,000 people were supposed to just sort of find food for themselves. Now another source that I read called this trek a buffalo hunt not a royal procession. So, I don’t know. This is part of the problem with this story. So much of what was recorded was being recorded by people who didn’t really know what was going on. But whatever the reason, a bunch of people set out on this 4 month long journey during which 10,000 of them died, but I guess they built a road, so there’s that. I mean, just, keeping it in perspective, an estimated 20,000 to 30,000 people died constructing the Panama Canal. 


So Ranavalona has become extremely powerful, she is self sufficient, she is successfully holding off French and British attempts to take over her kingdom, destroying them in battle and mounting their heads on pikes along the beaches to ward off others. She’s not taking crap from anybody. And yeah, she’s killing people who cross her, possibly excessively but who’s to say? I don’t know how many people were typically killed for heresy or treason or whatever by other monarchs of Madagascar. They seem to have implemented harsh punishments in general just based on the whole, killing anyone who was possibly a threat when a new king took the throne thing. They just kind of did things that way. They weren’t squeamish about executing mostly innocent people. But I think it’s safe to say, you don’t want to cross this lady. She is not messing around. And at some point, Jean Laborde, her French lover blacksmith dude must have realized that Ranavalona absolutely hated Europeans. I mean she really hated them, and with good reason, honestly. But then it must have hit him, he was a European. Would there possibly come a time that she began to see him as a threat? Would his ties to France ultimately be a death sentence? He wasn’t going to risk waiting around to find out and a conspiracy was born. 


Supposedly Laborde hatched a secret plan in which he plotted the takeover of Madagascar by France. He roped in Ranavalona’s son, Prince Rakoto, who didn’t always see eye to eye with his mother’s… intensity. And he also got another Frenchman involved, a businessman and adventurer named Joseph-Francois Lambert. So now we have Laborde and Lambert and they’re very similar characters, it’s confusing, I know. These guys write a letter to France’s Napoleon III, asking France to essentially invade Madagascar, take over, and act as its protector. And their justification for this is, I’m sure, “the Queen’s crazy, she’s killing people in all of these horrendous ways, she’s unstable, France needs to step in.” So once again we see this scenario where, the only ones capable of writing, stand to gain something from portraying her this way, as a “Mad Queen.” Because Rakoto couldn’t write much of anything in French. He signed the letter but he didn’t write it. One of the Frenchmen, Laborde or Lambert most likely wrote it. But, nothing comes of it. France is like “no, dude, what do you think we’ve been trying to do all this time? We keep losing and she keeps putting our heads on pikes. We’re, no, not interested, sorry.” 


But Britain’s still willing to take a crack at it, not taking over, they just want to resume trade. They show up in the 1850s and they’re like “look, let’s just put all this mess behind us so we can trade with each other again.” But Ranavalona’s still a bit salty about an 1845 incident in which British troops attacked her kingdom and then refused to apologize and pay for damages. Because, I mean, they just weren’t used to that, you know. They typically just showed up and took whatever they wanted. But not in Madagascar, not with Ranavalona as queen. She destroyed their troops, mounted their heads on pikes and refused to trade with them until an apology and retribution were received. So now here they are again begging to resume trade and once again she demands compensation for that attack which, this time, they pay. They pay for the damages and trade resumes and the heads on pikes are finally taken down after 8 years on display. So, you know, she’s not unreasonable, she’s just not letting these white dudes walk all over her like they walked all over everybody else. 


But, behind closed doors, Laborde and Lambert are still plotting their little takeover, planning to stage a coup to remove Ranavalona from the throne. But Lambert did not arrive in Madagascar alone, he brought with him a female explorer named Ida Pfeiffer that he met in South Africa and she is a bit of an enigma. She certainly defied gender norms for the time just in being a female explorer. And explorer is an understatement. Ida traveled through Southeast Asia, the Americas, the Middle East, and Africa, including two trips around the world. She’s also credited as the “World’s First Solo Female Travel Writer,” because she published books about her travels - “A Vienna Woman’s Trip to the Holy Land,” “Trip to the Scandinavian North and the Island of Iceland,” “A Woman’s Journey Round the World,” “My Second Trip Around the World,” and finally “Trip to Madagascar.” In her lifetime, she traveled an estimated 20,000 miles by land and 150,000 miles by sea. But Madagascar was to be one of her final destinations. 


When she arrived there with Lambert, she had no idea he was part of a secret plot to overthrow the queen and when she discovers this, she is terrified. Because, already, Ranavalona had this reputation as a cruel and violent tyrant, this reputation that came from French and British reports as their repeated attempts to take over Madagascar failed, thanks to her. Ida had heard rumors that Ranavalona killed as many as 20 to 30,000 of her own people each year. What would she do to an Austrian explorer who accidentally got herself roped up in a coup to overthrow her? It was not a good situation for Ida who was just here to satisfy her wanderlust and write a new book. But, luckily, the coup was never to be. On the scheduled night, the guy charged with opening the palace gates so the conspirators could storm inside, just wouldn’t do it. He was like “nah, I think I’ll keep my head, actually.” He refused to open the gates and the coup just died. It never happened. 


But, you know the jig was up at this point, there was no way Ranavalona didn’t know what they were up to. She had spies everywhere. Ida suspected that she had known all along and just couldn't be bothered by it. But now, now surely she would act, surely punishment was coming. And I’m sure Ida’s mind was racing. What would she do to them? This woman with such a reputation for bloodshed who seemed to take pleasure in coming up with more and more demented ways to kill people? But, in the end, she just… banished them. Which seems a very light punishment when you consider what all she was known for. She didn’t make it easy for them though. The journey to the port where they’d be taken off the island was treacherous and made intentionally even more treacherous by their escort. According to Lori in her podcast episode, they were marched through swamps, intentionally delayed, and refused any medical attention. A trip that should have taken a week took 53 days. But, all of them survived, sort of. Ida Pfeiffer contracted a disease, probably malaria, during this trek and never recovered. She died two years later. Lori says, quote “maybe Ranavalona’s mercy was actually just another creative execution,” end quote. 


Ranavalona would continue to rule Madagascar as an independent kingdom until she died peacefully in her sleep in 1861. Throughout her 33 year reign, she successfully thwarted all attempts to overthrow her - from France, from Britain, and from inside her own court. But with Ranavalona gone, a European takeover was imminent. France finally succeeded, officially taking the island in 1895. 


So who was Ranavalona I really? Was she a vicious killer, a cruel tyrant, responsible for the deaths of nearly half of her people during her time as queen as the reports suggest? Maybe, but I have my doubts. I have my doubts because of who wrote those reports. They were written by people who, number one, didn’t understand the cultural norms and practices of this group of people, and, number two, had a lot to gain from portraying Ranavalona in a negative light, casting her as the villain. But who is the villain here really? The Queen of Madagascar, desperate to hold on to her people’s land, culture, religion, way of life, determined to do anything to preserve it, or, the dudes who are trying to take it all from her? And she bested them again and again and that had to have really ticked them off, especially because she was a woman. I can only imagine the sorts of things one might write, the sorts of rumors that get started, when the reporter is that mad and that selfishly motivated. Just something to think about. 


If I’ve learned anything from studying Mary Tudor, a queen for whom we do have somewhat reliable records, it’s that women who seize power and rule unabashedly in a culture that doesn’t accept female rulers aren’t likely to be remembered fondly by history. Bloody Mary. Ranavalona the Cruel. But apparently few others are seeing the parallels between Mary and Ranavalona. There’s not a lot of information out there about Ranavalona, to be honest, but the titles alone typically give away the author’s position on the matter: “Ranavalona I: Reign of Terror,” “Female Caligula: Ranavalona the Mad Queen of Madagascar,” “The Terror of Queen Ranavalona I of Madagascar,” just to name just a few. It concerns me that so many history writers aren’t seeing a reason to question her reputation. And maybe they’re right. Maybe she was pure evil, but maybe she wasn’t. Maybe history just cast her in that role because she didn’t fit the pattern. She shattered expectations for women and she shattered expectations for European imperialism. And, at the end of the day, most of history has been written by male European imperialists. So, who was Ranavalona I? Villain or hero… she was one powerful woman.


Thank you all so very much for listening to History Fix. I hope you found this story interesting and maybe you even learned something new. Be sure to follow my instagram @historyfixpodcast to see some images that go along with this episode and to stay on top of new episodes as they drop. I’d also really appreciate it if you’d rate and follow this podcast on whatever app you’re using to listen, and go ahead and tell a friend or two about it, that’ll make it much easier to get your next fix.  


Information used in this episode was sourced from Her Half of History podcast by Lori Davis, Medium, Mada Magazine, teamqueens.org, the US Department of State archive, Smithsonian Magazine, CNN, Carolina Plantation, Harvard Library, and womeninexploration.org. As always, links to these sources can be found in the show notes.