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The Malagasy ( or ) are a group of Austronesian-speaking indigenous to the island country of Madagascar, formed through generations of interaction between Austronesians originally from southern Borneo and Bantu peoples from Southeast Africa. Traditionally, the population have been divided into sub-ethnic groups. Examples include "Highlander" (ethnically mixed ancestry but more Austronesian and slightly less Bantu) ethnic groups such as the Merina and Betsileo of the central highlands around Antananarivo, Alaotra (Ambatondrazaka) and Fianarantsoa, and the "coastal dwellers" (predominantly Bantu with less Austronesian traits sometimes like mulatto) such as the Sakalava, Bara people, Vezo, Betsimisaraka, Mahafaly, etc.
The Merina are further divided into two subgroups. The “Merina A” are the Hova and Andriana, and have an average of 34% African ancestry (20% of which is Bantu and Yoruba). The second subgroup is the “Merina B”, the Andevo, who have an average of 58% African ancestry (50% of which is attributed to Bantu and Yoruba). The latter make up 2/3 of Merina society. The Malagasy population was 2,242,000 in the first census in 1900. Their population had a massive growth in the next hundred years, especially under the French colonial period as French Madagascar.
But the proportion of ancestral genes differs. Coastal Malagasy populations, including the Temoro people, Vezo, and Mikea, etc. have approximately 70% African ancestry and 30% Asian ancestry, while highlander tribes tend to have lower African ancestry at around 45%. In a recent island-wide survey the male-only of African origin are more common than those of East Asian origin, but it varies depending on the study (70.7 vs. 20.7 or 51% vs 34%). However the mtDNA lineages, passed down from mother to child, are the opposite (42.4% African origin vs. 50.1% East Asian origin). Male-only Y chromosome of East/Southeast Asian paternal frequencies such as Haplogroup O-M175 varies from 45% in Antalaotra, 16% in the Ampanabaka, 5% Anteony. In contrast, African male haplogroup such as E1b1a1 constituted 76% of the Ampanabaka genetic diversity, but only 7% in the Antalaotra and 12% in the Anteony.
Due to the proximity to Africa, the connection with Asian populations aroused the most curiosity. Around 1996, a study was launched in an attempt to identify the presence of the Polynesian motif in the Malagasy population (mtDNA haplotype B4a1a1a). A more recent study identified two additional mutations (1473 and 3423A) found in all Polynesian motif carriers of Madagascar, hence was named the Malagasy motif. The frequency varied among three ethnic groups: 50% in Merina, 22% in Vezo, and 13% in Mikea.
Based on this result, a study suggested that Madagascar was settled approximately 1,200 years ago by a very small group, which consisted of approximately 30 women; 28 (93%) of them had maritime Southeast Asian descent and 2 (7%) of them were of African descent. The Malagasy population developed through the intermixing of the first small founding population with African males. The closest Asian parental population of the Malagasy are found in what is now Indonesia, among the Banjar people and other South Kalimantan Dayak people of south east Borneo. Language footprints of their ancestors from Southeastern Asia can be traced by the many shared words of basic vocabulary with Ma'anyan, a language from the region of the Barito River in southern Borneo.
The Malagasy diaspora in the United States includes those descended from people who, slave or free, came during the 18th and 19th centuries. Wendy Wilson-Fall on Malagasy Americans, Afropop.org, Accessed January 18, 2020 Other Americans of Malagasy ancestry are recent immigrants from Madagascar. Some notable Americans who have Malagasy ancestry include Andy Razaf, Katherine Dunham, Regina M. Anderson, William H. Hastie, George Schuyler and Philippa Schuyler, Muhammad Ali, Robert Reed Church and Mary Church Terrell, Frederick D. Gregory, NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project, April 29, 2004. Accessed May 15, 2020. Thomas P. Mahammitt, An American Family: The Mahammett Family of Maryland, Muslimsinamerica.org, Accessed January 18, 2020 Paschal Beverly Randolph, Maya Rudolph, “Finding Your Roots”: Maya Rudolph, Shonda Rhimes and Keenan Ivory Wayans, Familytreemagazine.com, Accessed May 15, 2020 Claude McKay, Jess Tom, Ben Jealous,Henry Louis Gates Jr., Finding Your Roots, Season 2: The Official Companion to the PBS Series, University of North Carolina Press, 2016, pg. 163 and Keenen Ivory Wayans. “Finding Your Roots”: Maya Rudolph, Shonda Rhimes and Keenen Ivory Wayans, Familytreemagazine.com, Accessed February 10, 2020
The first recorded African slave in Canada, Olivier Le Jeune, was taken from Madagascar to New France in 1628.
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