Who were the first inhabitants of the island? Malagasy chronicles mention hairy dwarfs, the Vazimbas. Anyway, nowadays everybody thinks that the people of the great Island do come from Indonesia or the south-west of Asia. Everything in their customs and physical feautures is evidence of this origin. And the very tradition of the Merina reports about it. But when and how did they come? It is not known. As a matter of facts, it was not until the first Portuguese navigators had to come to madagascar that the island was ever mentioned in Europe. At the same period, the Merina Chief Andrianjaka founded Antananarivo, the town of 'the thousand warriors' ~ or 'the thousand villages') and turned the surrounding marshes into rice-fields. Arab traders or sailors who had sailed down from Zanzibar or the Comoro islands, tried to settle especially on the north-western coast. Despite the relatives failure of a settlement in Fort-Dauphin as early as the XVIIth century, the French also persisted in settling in Madagascar, particularly on Saint Marie Island with 'Corporal-King' La Bigorne. At the biginning of the XIXth century, Andrianampoinimerina - more commonly called Nampoina, captured Tananarive and undertook the conquest of a great part of the island. His son, King Radama I, completed his work and began to carry on sustained relationships with the English and the French who were trying to win his favour. When he died at 36, a succession of queens, among whom the first one, Ranavalona I,was a kind of Catherine of Russia with her Potemkine, the Frenchman jean Laborde, was involved in a series of intrigues, plots and revolts which about 1890, resulted in General Gallieni deposing the last one, the very young Queen Ranavalona III. At the end of the XIXth century, the French troops occupied the whole island and Madagascar became a French colony. But the people went on resisting, and in 1960 the country recovered independence.