Early history of the central highlands of Madagascar, called Imerina, must be written from oral literature. The first European account dates only to the late eighteenth century, long after the Merina monarchy arose, and it is not until the nineteenth century with the establishment of the London Missionary Society that detailed written sources appear. Moreover, unlike his colleagues in African history, the historian of Imerina cannot refer to archeology to test conclusions derived from oral sources since archeology in Imerina has only a few years of work behind it. Thus oral literature alone holds the key to questions about the foundations and growth of the Merina monarchy which by the mid-nineteenth century ruled all of Madagascar.

In one respect, however, the historian of ancient Imerina is more fortunate. The Merina have produced perhaps the largest corpus of historical literature in any part of Africa. I intend first to describe this literature and to point out in very general terms the problems of using it. I will focus not only on the Malagasy milieu which gave rise to historical material, but also on two related aspects of European influence. First, I will show how European ideas of social evolution penetrated Merina thinking. Second, and perhaps more important because it has received such scant attention, is the effect of the introduction of writing and printing on Malagasy texts. I consider this the outstanding historiographical problem: how did writing, editing, and redacting change the Merina's own view of their distant past. Finally, to illustrate general points raised in the first section of this study, I will examine a particular historical problem, the founding of monarchy, and show how the transformation of Merina kinglists through years of editing created a new vision of the past. I see this transformation of Malagasy texts by writing as the most important European influence on the development of a Merina history.

In the late eighteenth century Imerina was checkered with a myriad of tiny principalities, each ruled from hilltop fortresses. In just fifty years from 1780 to 1830, it was unified under a single ruler, drawing Merina into increasingly wider systems of obedience and creating a vast imperium that held sway over most of the island of Madagascar, a landmass the size of France, Belgium, and Holland combined.

And yet, the half century of tumultuous change that characterized the empire's rise brought no revolution in the Merina's own understanding of the world of power, a view which I have termed hasina ideology. Merina saw historical reality as the product not of human agency, but of ancestral beneficence, hasina, which flowed downwards on obedient Merina from long—of dead ancestors in a sacred stream that connected all living Merina. For obedient Merina, politics consisted in nothing more and nothing less than the lifelong quest to position oneself favorably in that sacred stream as close as possible to ancestors and then to reap the material benefits of that cherished association. Ancestors made their pleasure known by bestowing blessings, “superior” hasina, on those who honored them.

In the late eighteenth century, Imerina was checkered with a myriad of tiny principalities, each ruled from hilltop fortresses. In just fifty years from 1780 to 1830, it was unified under a single ruler, drawing Merina into increasingly wider systems of obedience and creating a vast imperium that held sway over most of the Island of Madagascar, a landmass the size of France, Belgium, and Holland combined.

And yet, the half century of tumultuous change that characterized the empire's rise brought no revolution in the Merina's own understanding of the world of power, a view which I have termed hasina ideology. Merina saw historical reality not as the product of human agency, but of ancestral beneficence, hasina, which flowed downwards on obedient Merina from long-dead ancestors in a sacred stream that connected all living Merina. For obedient Merina, politics consisted in nothing more nor less than a lifelong quest to position one's self favorably in that sacred stream as close as possible to ancestors and then to reap the benefits of that cherished association. With the passage of time, the hasina stream flowed into new generations and so generated new social relations expressed in terms of kinship. The vast transformation of the Merina political landscape only enhanced Imerina's devotion to ancestral hasina.

The origins of hasina ideology are not known, though by the time Andrianampoinimerina began to unify Imerina in the closing decades of the eighteenth century, its character is clearly perceptible. Andrianampoinimerina's son Radama built on his father's legacy. In the 1820s he transformed Imerina from a small and isolated kingdom into an empire capable of projecting its power over the length and breadth of Madagascar.

In the Jesuit scheme of things the missionary fields of Madagascar and Maduré (that is, Madura in south India) fell to the Order's Toulouse province. What follows is a brief description of some of the materials relating to Madagascar in the archives of the Toulouse Jesuits, based on a recent short visit there.

I might mention first the most important Jesuit missionary journal of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries relating to Madagascar. Like most missionary periodical publications, this particular journal underwent several changes of title. Beginning publication in 1838 as Lettres des Scolastiques de Vals, the title was later changed to Lettres du scolasticat de Vals, and then to Lettres de Vals. From 1882 to 1897 it was known as Lettres d'Uclès, then until 1901, again as Lettres de Vals; finally, from 1903 until 1914 it was called Lettres de Gemert. The Toulouse archives has a complete set of these, none of which was originally issued for public consumption and hence are difficult to locate. As each of the titles suggests, this journal consisted of letters written from missionaries in the field to their Apostolic Vicars. Such letters were then excerpted and summarized and sent on to Vals, a Jesuit training seminary, for circulation among the missionaries in training there. Originally the excerpts were handcopied and arranged by region: Madagascar, India, Oceania, etc., but later they were lithographed or printed.

In the 1820s, when Imerina expanded to control most of Madagascar, remarkably few Merina rose in organized opposition to the king's extensive plans to change basic social and political relations. Tradition conferred sacred legitimacy on innovative royal interpretations of ideology and secured public consent with little resort to force. Potential conflicts between the king and Merina elites were muted by negotiations that proceeded within the premises of traditional ideology. As the king managed to monopolize organized force, occasional acts of violence assured that royal views of ideology dominated all others.

King Radama occupied the central position in the stream of blessing that ran from Imerina's collective ancestors downwards through him to all living Merina. As the ultimate living representative of all long-dead ancestors, he had the power to dispense their good will in the form of “superior” hasina in exchange for his subjects' offerings of “inferior” hasina. As mediator between heaven and earth, Radama alone determined how Imerina's hasina ideology would apply to the vicissitudes of everyday life. Merina, however, saw the reality that he created not merely as the product of human agency, but of ancestral beneficence as well. Since opposition to royal will implied the rejection of ancestral beneficence, attempts within Imerina to challenge the monarch's authority or the ideology on which it rested were rare indeed. Yet such cases of opposition did arise, and they reveal the nature of royal authority as seen from below.

The idea that firearms promote centralized government has a venerable pedigree in European historiography. Friedrich Engels observed that the new weapons of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries wrought substantial changes on class relations as merchants allied themselves with monarchs to wrest control of firearms from nobles and to reap the benefits of emerging mercantile states. The history of firearms thus conceived highlights the cultural content of technology and may provide more than a barren chronicle of destructive tools, as illustrated in J. U. Nef's classic study of technology and war and, in the same tradition, William McNeill's recent synthesis outlining the manner in which European culture framed innovations in military technology

Between 1775 and 1810 Andrianampoinimerina laid the foundations of the Merina state which in subsequent decades was to rule most of Madagascar. Though various circumstances such as the development of irrigated riziculture and slavery, the monopoly of profits and of muskets from coastal trade, and the manipulation of ritual, contributed in part to the nascent monarchy's strength, they equally touched other political formations within Imerina and elsewhere and therefore do not explain why Andrianampoinimerina's organization endured while others did not. The distinctiveness of Andrianampoinimerina's case is revealed by returning to particular events, those culminating in his first successful attempt to rule at Ambohimanga in 1783. His success depended upon exploiting both good luck and pervasive kinship values which recognized individual financial prowess. Thus the resurgent trade with the east coast did not redefine Merina kinship. Rather, trade provided an expanded arena of economic activity in which Andrianampoinimerina demonstrated superior skill at kinship politics, expanding his kin group and assuming the role of sole mediator between the residents of Ambohimanga and their ancestors.

Many observers of Merina history have suggested that the organization of labour required to build and maintain irrigation works for paddy rice growing formed the basis of Merina monarchy. Though little direct evidence is available, inferences from land-use models and consideration of oral traditions and written accounts help to explain why irrigated riziculture became popular and how it spread through the central highlands to Imerina.

Rice had been cultivated on the east coast of Madagascar for centuries and reached Imerina through the southern plateau but the hydraulic technology of Merina paddy rice growing arose from local needs from the late seventeenth to mid-eighteenth centuries. As swidden farmers exhausted the forests, paddy rice cultivation and water management systems attending it became increasingly important. Though irrigated riziculture enhanced the value of co-operative labour among hitherto isolated groups within Imerina, it cannot be seen as the direct cause of the monarchy's authority. It is suggested instead that the sacredness of land and the accumulation of rights in newly irrigated land by those who controlled water hastened the evolution of a rigid social hierarchy which exalted a few and subjugated the rest.

We examined change in neuropsychological test performance related to type 2 diabetes mellitus across a 6-year interval. A population-based sample of 274 elderly participants (36 with diabetes and 238 without diabetes) was examined at four occasions at a 2-year interval. The participants were 80–93 years of age (M = 82.8 years) and without dementia at baseline. The test battery included tests of speed, visuospatial ability, short-term memory, semantic memory, episodic memory, and the Mini Mental Status Examination. Several models, taking into account diabetes and demographic data, were analyzed using SAS Proc Mixed multilevel modeling. At baseline, there were no significant differences in the neuropsychological tests related to diabetes. The longitudinal analyses, however, showed that diabetes was a significant predictor of decline for many of the tests. These findings points to the conclusion that type 2 diabetes is associated with accelerated cognitive decline in old age that may result in dementia. (JINS, 2004, 10, 599–607.)