alternatehistory.com

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?
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