Malagasy Uprising
Madagascar had been a French colony since 1896, and Malagasy soldiers had fought for France in both world wars — a service that, as elsewhere in the empire, produced expectations of political return that Paris did not intend to meet. The nationalist MDRM won the colony's seats in the French National Assembly in 1946 while pressing for autonomy within the French Union. The rising that began in March 1947 attacked military installations and settler plantations in the east. France deployed some 18,000 troops, many from Senegal and North Africa, and the campaign included aerial bombardment, mass internment, torture, and the widely reported killing of prisoners by throwing them from aircraft. The MDRM was dissolved and its deputies tried despite parliamentary immunity. The scale was largely unreported in metropolitan France at the time, and official acknowledgement did not come until President Chirac described the repression as unacceptable in 2005.
- Year: 1947 CE
- Category: Military
