According to Western standards, people in the world are mainly divided into three major races: yellow, white and black, originally yellow people are distributed in eastern Asia and the Americas, white people are distributed in western Asia and Europe, and blacks are distributed in sub-Saharan Africa.
In modern times, due to the opening of new shipping routes, large-scale immigration of Westerners, coupled with the black slave trade, etc., the distribution of races around the world has undergone tremendous changes, such as the former yellow race dominated the Americas, mainly whites, blacks, mixed races, Oceania also distributed a large number of white people.
World Ethnographic Distribution
In the public's impression, Africa is mainly the homeland of blacks, there are many white people in North Africa, in fact, Africa also has yellow people, Africa also has a country dominated by yellow people, that is, Madagascar, the largest island country in Africa.
For many people, Madagascar is a relatively unfamiliar country, except for an animated film of the same name, many Chinese people have no understanding of Madagascar at all, this yellow country, its racial structure is not caused by modern Western colonization, but thousands of years ago human primitive sailing activities are caused.
Capital of Madagascar
Africa's largest island, isolated overseas, was only inhabited more than 2,000 years ago
The coastline of the African continent is relatively straight, and there are basically no big islands, and Madagascar in the southeast corner of Africa is the largest island in Africa, larger than the French mainland, and it is also a fairly large island in the world, this island with an area of nearly 600,000 square kilometers, separated from the African continent more than 80 million years ago, because the time is too early, there are no primitive humans on the island, but leave a lot of strange species.
Today, Madagascar has many unique flora and fauna, all because Madagascar left the African continent too early, and for a long time, Madagascar was an independent world, and no human beings set foot on it.
Polynesians were very good at sailing
It was not until about two thousand years ago that the first primitive humans arrived on the island, and more than two thousand years ago, whether it was the continent or ancient India, the West, and the Middle East, civilization was already relatively mature, and the people who arrived on the island came from Southeast Asia, where civilization was relatively backward, that is, the famous Polynesians.
In the Pacific region, Polynesians are still very famous, because the indigenous people of those island countries in the South Pacific are basically Polynesians, such as the Maori of New Zealand, etc., and in Southeast Asia, there are also a large number of indigenous groups belonging to the Polynesian branch, and their ancestors are mixed with the natives of the wandering Polynesians.
Polynesians are yellow
The yellow race dominated the island for thousands of years, and the black entered Madagascar
Polynesians belong to the yellow race, they belong to a very good seafaring group, more than 2,000 years ago, a Polynesian across the sea to Madagascar, settled there, the huge island of Madagascar, the coastal area is full of dense rainforest, very hot and humid and dangerous, so people continue to migrate inland to cool plateaus.
At this time, southern Africa was still in a very barbaric state, and the African continent west of the Mozambique Channel was mainly nomadic, hunter-gatherer and gatherer Khoisan people, who lived inland and did not develop mature navigation technology, so they did not set foot on the huge island of Madagascar.
Antananarivo
Around the Eastern Han Dynasty of China, Polynesians from Southeast Asia continued to travel to Madagascar, who not only brought relatively advanced agricultural planting techniques, but also primitive religions, and the religions in most parts of Madagascar today are very similar to the indigenous religions of Indonesia, the Philippines and other places.
In this way, hundreds of years later, Polynesians have always been the masters of Madagascar, until the rise of the Arab Empire in the Middle East around the seventh century AD, Arabs who are good at navigation and commerce, extended their interests to the coastal areas of eastern Africa at that time, and the influx of Arabs also allowed the Bantu people and other ethnic groups in Africa to master advanced navigation technology.
The Arab Empire flourished
In this situation, the Bantu began to gradually migrate to the island of Madagascar, and by this time, the Polynesians had already established themselves in the area and developed into a new people called the Merina.
In addition to the Bantu people, there are a small number of Arabs, Persians and even Indians who migrate to Madagascar, who intermarry with the native Merina people and form other ethnic groups, but after all, they are a minority, in Madagascar, the more inland the Merina people, the purer the blood and lighter the skin color, and the coastal plains are dominated by mixed descent.
Madagascar President Rajolina and his wife are both Merina
In contrast to the European powers, the number of blacks increased slightly
The Merina established their own kingdom on the island, and the new ethnic groups formed by intermarriage also established their own small kingdoms, but most of them were very weak.
After the opening of the new shipping route, the Portuguese first discovered this place and called it Madagascar, because the island is too large and populous, coupled with the harsh environment, the Portuguese did not operate too much on the island except for occupying a few coastal areas as trading posts, which gave Madagascar a period of relatively peaceful development.
At the end of the eighteenth century, the Kingdom of Merina successively took the small kingdoms along the coast, unified the whole island, and then took the initiative to establish contact with European countries, signed treaties with Britain, the most powerful United Kingdom at that time, introduced Western technology, and even spelled the native language with the Western alphabet, and created the Malagasy script, which at that time was committed to large-scale westernization.
Antananarivo
Of course, the Western colonists were not good at it, and the purpose of signing a contract with Madagascar was to gain benefits, and the British expanded and profited there, using it as one of the transit points for the sale of black slaves from East Africa to the Americas and other places, while Madagascar's attitude was to try not to directly conflict with it, which also led to an increase in the number of local blacks.
In the late nineteenth century, France took advantage of the British to seize the island of Madagascar and turn it into its own colony, and then introduced black slaves on a large scale to open up plantations, and these people were the last blacks to enter the island on a large scale, and decades later, with the rise of the global abolitionist movement, hundreds of thousands of black slaves were liberated in Madagascar.
The Chimisaraka people, the second largest ethnic group in Madagascar
Although Madagascar has had a large influx of blacks in the modern colonial years, this has not changed the reality that the local main ethnic group is the yellow race, because before the Bantu and other blacks entered, the Merina people had already occupied the main position on the island and were very strong, and relatively few blacks entered later.
The blacks who were introduced to the island as labor came from all over the African continent, they belonged to different tribes, languages and cultures were all different, and they could not compete with the local Merina people in a rope, but could only succumb to the people, gradually intermarry with the local tribes, and become a minority group in Madagascar.
Now Madagascar four major ethnic groups, occupy the main body is still yellow Merina people, and the second to fourth place, all are black and yellow mixed races, the number is not very much, as the only country in Africa dominated by yellow people, the locals to outsiders actually feel more like Southeast Asia and the South Pacific, and there is no African look.
Malagasy people are more like tanned yellow people