Madagascar's Choice

Atop a hill in Tananarive, the capital of the great French island of Madagascar, stands a rose-colored palace that once housed the royal rulers of the land. Pointing to it one day last August, Charles de Gaulle, the first French Premier ever to set foot on the island, solemnly told a throng of 30,000: "Tomorrow you will be a state once more, as you were when that palace was inhabited." Last week, having voted an overwhelming (79%) yes for De Gaulle's constitution, the Malagasy, as the inhabitants of Madagascar are known, took the general at his word. In Tananarive cannons boomed 123 times to proclaim that Madagascar had become the first French territory to opt for independence within the French community. "We are no longer a colony," cried Prime Minister Philibert Tsiranana. "We are a free nation, and we will have a national anthem and a national flag."

"Better to Advance." Lying 250 miles east of the African mainland, larger than France and Belgium combined, Madagascar had a highly developed form of law and government before the Europeans ever got a foothold there. Its people are not African, being predominantly of Malayo-Polynesian stock. Nor are its plants and animal life. Madagascar is the home of the wide-eyed lemur, of some 800 known varieties of butterflies, nearly 300 kinds of birds, half of which are found nowhere else. It is also the home of the once proud Merina tribe, which conquered the island at the end of the 18th century.

Greatest of the Merina kings was Andrianampoinimerina ("The Prince desired by the Merina"), who ruled from 1787 until 1810. Riding in state about his kingdom in a purple-draped palanquin, he divided the country up into well-administered provinces, organized a corps of professional civil servants. His warrior son Radama I--a stern disciplinarian who would warn his soldiers, "Better to advance and risk being killed by the enemy than to retreat and be sure of being burned alive"--carried on his work. He imported British soldiers to train his army, welcomed the schools of French and British missionaries. But his successors began to quarrel with the growing French settlement. In 1895 France finally took over.

Promise Kept. Relations between the two countries reached their lowest point in 1947, when the French ruthlessly put down a rebellion (estimates of rebel dead run from 10,000 to 80,000). They reached their highest point last year, when Madagascar elected its first territorial government, achieved a surprising degree of political stability under Philibert Tsiranana, 46, who became Madagascar's first Premier.

A schoolteacher who got into politics through the teachers' union, French-educated Tsiranana campaigned vigorously for the De Gaulle constitution. As De Gaulle promised, the Tsiranana government will run all local affairs, leaving to the French "community" currency, foreign policy and defense.

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