Editing History of Madagascar (section)

====European settlements====
By the 15th century, Europeans had wrested control of the [[spice trade]] from the Muslims. They did this by bypassing the Middle East and sending their cargo-ships around the [[Cape of Good Hope]] to India. The Portuguese mariner [[Diogo Dias]] became the first European to set foot on Madagascar when his ship, bound for India, blew off course in 1500. In the ensuing 200 years, the English and French tried (and failed) to establish settlements on the island.

Fever, dysentery, hostile Malagasy, and the trying arid climate of southern Madagascar soon terminated the English settlement near [[Toliara]] in 1646. Another English settlement in the north in Île Sainte-Marie came to an end in 1649. The French colony at [[Tôlanaro]] (Fort Dauphin) fared a little better: it lasted thirty years. On Christmas night 1672, local Antanosy tribesmen, perhaps angry because fourteen French soldiers in the fort had recently divorced their Malagasy wives to marry fourteen French orphan-women sent out to the colony, massacred the fourteen grooms and thirteen of the fourteen brides. The Antanosy then besieged the stockade at Tôlanaro for eighteen months. A ship of the French East India Company rescued the surviving thirty men and one widow in 1674.

In 1665, [[François Caron]], the Director General of the newly formed [[Louis XIV's East India Company|French East India Company]], sailed to Madagascar. The Company failed to found a colony on Madagascar but established ports on the nearby islands of Bourbon and Île-de-France (today's [[Réunion]] and [[Mauritius]] respectively). In the late 17th century, the French established trading-posts along the east coast.<ref name="HISTORY OF MADAGASCAR"/>