Trans Atlantic Slave Trade: Madagascar and the Malagasy People
Most people hear Madagascar and think penguins, turtles and the Madagascar movies. Very rarely do they think slavery, transatlantic slave trade and possible ancestry from this island tucked away in such a humble location of the globe, especially New Worlders in the Americas. East of the Mother Land she lays…. 791.89 miles off the shores of Mozambique.
The people of Madagascar are called Malagasy are of Afro-Indonesian origins. It is the belief of archaeologists that the first arrivals to the Island were Indonesia/Malaya about 2,000 years ago. Other experts agree that is it likely other immigrants from Southern India an East Africa arrived in much later migrations.
Merina People of Madagascar
The Merina people in the highlands still carry very strong Indonesian characteristics.
I recently became very interested in Madagascar. I became interested because a small group of African Americans have claimed a Malagasy ancestor(s) via oral traditions. There are some who believe this group of people may actually have some *genetic* input on a few descendents of the African Diaspora, but to what extent?
Madagascar did have a role to play in the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, but from a slightly different route. Around the Cape of Hope in Southern Africa. We can see by looking at the map, they were on the international arena, at a smaller scale but not meaningless in their burden.
Slavery was alive and well in Madagascar prior to the Portuguese and Dutch in the early 1600's when they landed in southern Madagascar.
In the Indian Ocean was slavery already in practice with Comoros, Madagascar, Mauritius and Reunion.
Thanks to the English, Madagascar became fresh ground and elevated the Malagasy people to market for the international slave trade. September 27, 1896 was it then abolished.
North American Malagasy Ancestry
Did slave ships land in North America carrying Malagasy slaves? There is not a lot of historical evidence but we find tid bits here and there. It is estimated that about that between 1719 and 1725 a little over than 1,000 Malagasy's arrived in Virginia.
South American Malagasy Ancestry"The first systematic venture from New England to Africa was undertaken in 1644 by an association of Boston traders, who sent three ships in quest of gold dust and black slaves. One vessel returned the following year with a cargo of wine, salt, sugar, and tobacco, which it had picked up in Barbados in exchange for slaves. But the other two ran into European warships off the African coast and barely escaped in one piece. Their fate was a good example of why Americans stayed out of the slave trade in the 17th century. Slave voyages were profitable, but Puritan merchants lacked the resources, financial and physical, to compete with the vast, armed, quasi-independent European chartered corporations that were battling to monopolize the trade in black slaves on the west coast of Africa. The superpowers in this struggle were the Dutch West India Company and the English Royal African Company. The Boston slavers avoided this by making the longer trip to the east coast of Africa, and by 1676 the Massachusetts ships were going to Madagascar for slaves. Boston merchants were selling these slaves in Virginia by 1678. But on the whole, in the 17th century New Englanders merely dabbled in the slave trade." http://www.slavenorth.com/profits.htm
Let's take a dramatic shift to Afro-Peruvians, in Latin America's Peru.
"Recently it has been verified that the community with the greatest concentration of Afro-Peruvians is Yapatera in Morropón (Piura), made up of around 7,000 farmers who are largely descended from African slaves of "malagasy" (Madagascar) origin. They are referred to as "malgaches" or "mangaches". Formerly, Chincha to the south of Lima and other communities in Ica were known as the towns of greatest Afro-Peruvian concentration, but due to the excessive mixing between the Afro inhabitants native to the area and the Andean migrants, the Afro-Peruvian root has been more hybridized. Also, many of the Afrodescent residents of these communities migrated towards Lima for better opportunities." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afro-Peruvian
IIs Their Proof in the Pudding?
So do we have an genomic evidence for this? I currently share on 23andMe with a African American who's mtDNA (mitochondrial) Halopgroup is E1a1a as the one shown above. Madagascar has the largest concentration of this Halpogroup according to 23andMe. This does not automatically mean *Madagascar* but it makes it more interesting.
My question I purpose....How many Malagasy people do you think would have a large *genomic* impact today? How much Malagasy ancestry, given the smaller input to the overall slave trade would exist today in the western hemisphere? East African and Asian Ancestry? Were there enough Malagasy that many people in North and South America would find obvious ancestors today? I'm curious what other's can offer in valuable information, especially anything historical.
Peace and Light.