When firearms first arrived on the island of Madagascar at the beginning of the 16th century, they soon became a very much sought-after commodity for the local population. This contribution traces for the first time the history of firearm technology on Madagascar during precolonial times, until the French colonization in 1896, in a systematic perspective. A case study on the use of firearms around 1710 shows that firearms became integrated into an already long-established logic of intensive war. On the political level, the firearms gave rise to a new form of chieftaincy that has endured for more than three centuries: the “lords of muskets.”
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