The world's fourth largest island, with a unique biological and physical
endowment, Madagascar is home to an extraordinary insular civilization that
has struggled for more than a century against external domination. In this
sensitive introduction to the Indian Ocean's "great island," Philip Allen
shows how family affinities and community loyalties at the foundation of
Madagascar's culture have influenced Malagasy nationalism and forged
islandwide traditions. These same principles have nonetheless engendered
social cleavages and resistance to economic and political change.

In chapters on modern Madagascar, Allen analyzes the inability of a se-
ries of regimes to maintain authority among a people deeply bound to rituals
of communication with their spiritual environment. He demonstrates how
the first Malagasy Republic became stigmatized by its lingering identification
with French colonialism and how the nationalist revolution in 1972 soon
hardened into autocratic radicalism. Allen explores the complex challenges
facing Madagascar's resurgent democratic forces -- including a need to con-
serve the island's irreplaceable biodiversity and to facilitate authentic partici-
pation in public affairs without offending ancestral customs and local prece-
dents. Finally, he discusses efforts to end Madagascar's economic and
political dependence and to improve living conditions for its tragically im-
poverished population.

Philip M. Allen is dean of the School of Arts and Humanities at
Frostburg State University in Maryland. A former U.S. Foreign Service Offi-
cer, Fulbright lecturer in Senegal and Algeria, and officer of the African-
American Institute, Dr. Allen lived in Madagascar during the 1960s and was a
member of an international elections observation team in 1993. He is the au-
thor of Security and Nationalism in the Indian Ocean (Westview, 1987).

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