“Hale!” “Halele!”
On 1 November 1874, in Fomboni, a little girl was born: Salima Machamba, daughter of Queen Djoumbé Fatima and the Frenchman Émile Fleuriot de Langle. She was barely four when her mother died. Mwali was already no longer entirely free: in 1886, France imposed its protectorate there.
In 1888, the girl, then thirteen, was proclaimed queen. But it was France that governed. The young ruler was sent to Réunion, to a religious boarding school. There she converted to Catholicism and took the name Ursule. Far from her island, she gradually lost the use of her mother tongue.
In Réunion, she met a gendarme from Burgundy, Camille Paule. On 28 August 1901, they were married in Saint-Denis. To live this union, the queen of Mwali gave up her kingdom.
The couple had three children and settled in France. Salima Machamba spent the rest of her life far from the islets of Nioumachoua and the forests of Mwali. She died on 7 August 1964 in Pesmes, in Haute-Saône, where she is buried.
The kingdom, for its part, had disappeared long before her: in 1912, France annexed the four islands and made them a province of its colony of Madagascar.
What we know about it
This story is historical. The dates of her reign vary from source to source: queen from 1888, Salima Machamba gave up the throne at the beginning of the 20th century (1902 or 1909 depending on the author, the latter date corresponding to the official end of the kingdom). The birthplace of her children is not always specified. Her fate, often recounted in France as in the Comoros, is a reminder of how completely the last queens of the archipelago had lost all real power under the protectorate.
Read also: Portraits and The colonial period.
Further reading
- Outside view Jean Martin, Comores : quatre îles entre pirates et planteurs (2 tomes), 1983 – 1984. L'Harmattan.
- Outside view Académie des sciences, arts et belles-lettres de Dijon, Décès d'Ursule Salima Machamba, dernière reine de Mohéli devenue bourguignonne.
- Voices of the archipelago Habari za Comores, Ursule Salima Machamba, dernière reine de Mohéli, 2013.