Betsileo

ETHNONYMS: The main political units in what is now Betsileo territory, prior to its conquest in 1830 by the Merina, northern neighbors of the Betsileo, were Lalangina (east), Isandra (west), and the various statelets and chiefdoms of Arindrano (south). The ethnic label "Betsileo" is a product of Merina conquest; it does not appear on a list of Malagasy societies published by Etienne de Flacourt in 1661. The term "Arindrano" (Eringdranes) was in use by the mid-seventeenth century, according to French explorers.

Bibliography

Dubois, H-M. (1938). Monographie des betsileo. Paris: Institut d'Ethnologie.

Flacourt, Étienne de (1661). "Histoire de la grande île de Madagascar." In Collections des ouvrages anciens concernant Madagascar, edited by A. Grandidier, 9:1-426. Paris: Union Coloniale.

Kent, R. (1970). Early Kingdoms in Madagascar (1500-1700), New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.

Kottak, Conrad R (1971a). "Cultural Adaptation, Kinship, and Descent in Madagascar." Southwestern Journal of Anthropology 27(2): 129-147.

Kottak, Conrad P. (1971b). "Social Groups and Kinship Calculation among the Southern Betsileo." American Anthropologist 73:178-193.

Kottak, Conrad P. (1972). "A Cultural Adaptive Approach to Malagasy Political Organization." In Social Exchange and Interaction, edited by Edwin N. Wilmsen, 107-128. University of Michigan, Anthropological Papers of the Museum of Anthropology, no. 46.

Kottak, Conrad P. (1977). "The Process of State Formation in Madagascar." American Ethnologist 4:136-155.

Kottak, Conrad P. (1980). The Past in the Present: History, Ecology and Cultural Variation in Highland Madagascar. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

Kottak, Conrad P., J-A. Rakotoarisoa, Aidan Southall, and P. Vérin (1986). Madagascar: Society and History. Durham, N.C.: Carolina Academic Press.

Vérin, P., Conrad P. Kottak, and P. Gorlin (1970). "The Glottochronology of Malagasy Speech Communities." Oceanic Linguistics 8(1): 26-83.

CONRAD P. KOTTAK