Excerpts from Books and Wikipedia
"Only 400 kilometers (250 mi) off Africa’s central east coast lies the world’s fourth-largest island, Madagascar. But Madagascar is part of neither East Africa nor Southern Africa. The first human settlers arrived here about 2000 years ago--not from nearby Africa but from distant Southeast Asia. Subsequently, the powerful Malay kingdom of the Merina came to flourish in the highlands, and its language, Malagasy, became the indigenous tongue of the entire island. Today the Merina remain the largest of nearly 20 ethnic groups in the population of 25 million. Like the African mainland, Madagascar experienced colonial invasion and competition, but the Merina successfully resisted conquest for centuries. Madagascar finally was forced to become part of France’s empire in 1897; as soon as it could, it split from France in 1960 at the height of Africa’s independence movement. Because of its deep Southeast Asian imprint, Madagascar’s staple food is rice, and many of its people also depend on fish. It has some minerals, but the economy is weak and constantly bedeviled by political turmoil." [Geography: Realms, Regions, and Concepts, 17th Edition, p. 312]