Not much is known about the early part of the Bara people's history, as most of the data comes from the kingdom era and French colonial rule. The Bara traditionally were organized through kinship-based structures in their early history until a Mahafaly noble invaded the region and established a dynasty ruled by the members of his family line under the name of the Zafimanely. After the nobleman's death a power struggle ensued, disrupting Bara life until the early nineteenth-century when Raikitroka, a Zafimanely king, ushered in an era of peace.
After Raikitroka's death the family line split into multiple principalities and by 1895 the Bara were divided into three major kingdoms and over twenty lesser kingdoms. During the 19th century conquests of the Merina Kingdom the Bara managed to evade subjection, even with the dispersed power of the many kingdoms.
Even though the power was dispersed among multiple kingdoms, the noble Zafimanely rulers rivaled the Merina and Sakalava Kingdoms as a top political force in Madagascar. This all changed when the French colonized the island in the late nineteenth-century. The French dissolved all standing kingdoms on the island and tried to assimilate the Bara people, which was not possible due to being in separate kingdoms for so long. A rebellion ensued in 1897 against French rule by the Bara people and the whole of southern Madagascar rebelled in 1904-05. The French remained in control of Madagascar until the late twentieth-century.
Encyclopedia Britannica
2014 Bara. Electronic Document,
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/52506/Bara, accessed June 3, 2015
Ellis, Stephen
2014 The Rising of the Red Shawls. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.
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1992 Africa from the Sixteenth to the Eighteenth Century. Paris: UNESCO.
It is hard for me to relate to the Bara people directly, as my home has not been conquered by either another local group or a foreign power. Traditional American society is also not divided up in kinship structures as the early Bara were. The system of states in the United States of America,however, could be related to an extent to the numerous Bara kingdoms, though the kingdoms were more autonomous. Personally I can relate to the Bara on a major issue though. I would also resist assimilation, as I am a strong advocate for enlightened individualism and cultural relativism, which is respecting and acknowledging other ways of thinking and culture but creating your own identity as well. I tend to buck the system and think in an unorthodox way and I am not a fan of authority systems so I can sympathize with the Bara people on that front.
ReplyDeleteAs a history major I see instances of colonization, revolution and war throughout the topics that I study. The fact that I am a history major also gets me to sympathize with the Bara people, as their traditional history is not written down for others to experience and learn about, as if it is lost to the outside world. I personally believe that the best way to understand a person or group is to learn about them and with a lack of information on the early history of the Bara this is very difficult.