Madagascar without Malagasy

The Malagasy are one of the oddest quirks of history... Seafarers from Borneo for some reason decided to sail across the Indian Ocean and settle on a distant island off the coast of Africa. Given that the reality seems improbable enough, what if it never happened?

The common belief is that Bantu people from the African mainland settled Madagascar around the same time as the Borneo arrivals. The two cultures fused together, so that today the people have a mixed range of phenotypes between Southeast Asian and East African, with a sprinkling of Bantu-origin vocabulary in their Austronesian-based languages.

It's also known that Muslim merchants from the north established trade ports along the coast several centuries after the settlement.

So, without the Borneo seafarers, how is Madagascar's history shaped?

If the Muslim traders find the island populated with Bantu language speakers, might Swahili catch on there, leading the island to be more thoroughly integrated into the medieval Indian Ocean trade?

What happens when the Europeans show up?

Though this is a curve ball, what if the progenitors of the Malagasy were redirected elsewhere... Say, Australia?
 

Valdemar II

Banned
Likely the Bantu was brought over by the Malagasy, so Madagascar is quite likely still empty when they Arabs find it. My guess is that they Arabs which were primary mechant, would find it uninteresting and leave it alone. So it could still be empty when the Portugese find it, and they would likely ignore just as the Arabs, Likely we will see it be colonised Boer- or Caribian-style by the Dutch and we end up with a Creaole culture with a Coloured mix of Dutch, African and Indonesian in the lowland and a more White highland.
 
The Bantu are purported to have settled independently, actually... The Bantu and the Borneans settled from different directions, and DNA studies show that the population is half-and-half, with the Bornean features more prominent in the central highlands and Bantu features more common along the coast.

It's difficult to believe that with Madagascar's close proximity to Africa, that people from the continent wouldn't stumble upon it at some point before the European Age of Exploration.

*Also, Malagasy tradition as well as limited archaeological and linguistic evidence indicates that the island may have been populated by small numbers of hunter-gatherers before the Austronesians.
 
No thoughts? I know that Madagascar history probably isn't too many people's area of expertise, but this is the internet...
 
quite interesting scenario... Without the Malays, Madagascar would be rather different ethnically but I don't think that would REALLY change history...
So, let's assume that were there some pre historical khoisan hunter gathers, they would be probably assimilated/exterminated by the bantu newcomers. The northern part of the island would be regularly visited by arab/swahilli sailors and will probably integrate some of the states of the african east coast. The swahillis would make the majority of the population of the coastal areas. The portuguese would later occupies the island like the african islands of the atlantic coast, creating a creole society, just like Cabo Verde or the Caribbean Islands. The swahillis would run into the highlands, which, by the way, would be kinda fun, because the word swahilli means 'coast dweller'... Maybe the dutch/british/french would take the island later, but I don't think that it wouldn't change demographics there, the main value of this island was it's geographical position.
 
quite interesting scenario... Without the Malays, Madagascar would be rather different ethnically but I don't think that would REALLY change history...
So, let's assume that were there some pre historical khoisan hunter gathers, they would be probably assimilated/exterminated by the bantu newcomers. The northern part of the island would be regularly visited by arab/swahilli sailors and will probably integrate some of the states of the african east coast. The swahillis would make the majority of the population of the coastal areas. The portuguese would later occupies the island like the african islands of the atlantic coast, creating a creole society, just like Cabo Verde or the Caribbean Islands. The swahillis would run into the highlands, which, by the way, would be kinda fun, because the word swahilli means 'coast dweller'... Maybe the dutch/british/french would take the island later, but I don't think that it wouldn't change demographics there, the main value of this island was it's geographical position.

Do you think that geographic position might make for a stronger Madagascar? If the island was dominated by Swahili states rather than Malagasy, it would have stronger ties to East Africa and the Middle East. It then may end up somewhat wealthier, more successful, and less isolated.
 
It's difficult to believe that with Madagascar's close proximity to Africa, that people from the continent wouldn't stumble upon it at some point before the European Age of Exploration.
Well it stayed empty for thousands of years till the Malagasy, & Bantu arrived only 2000 yeas ago.

A lot depends on whether the Bantu discovered the Island Independently, or whether it was the Malagasy, exploring toward the Mainland, that brought knowledge of the Island to the Bantu.

?How much of a sailing Culture did the Bantu have?
 
The Bantu are purported to have settled independently, actually... The Bantu and the Borneans settled from different directions, and DNA studies show that the population is half-and-half, with the Bornean features more prominent in the central highlands and Bantu features more common along the coast.
.

Hrm. I never thought of the Bantu as being sailors.
 
Well it stayed empty for thousands of years till the Malagasy, & Bantu arrived only 2000 yeas ago.

There's growing evidence that Madagascar had a hunter-gatherer population before the Malagasy and Bantu arrived, which a present day population called the Mikea is believed to descend from.
 
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