The colonial period

Malagasy princes in the archipelago

In the early 19th century, the expansion of the Merina kingdom upended Madagascar and its neighbours. Ramanetaka, a Merina general, settled on Mohéli around 1830 and took power there under the name Abderemane. Andriantsoly, the former Sakalava king of Boina defeated by the Merina, took refuge in 1831 on Nosy Be and then in Mayotte, where he became sultan in 1832.

The two princes clashed, while Anjouan claimed Mayotte. Threatened on all sides, Andriantsoly looked for a protector.

1841–1843: Mayotte becomes French

On 25 April 1841, Andriantsoly ceded Mayotte to France by a treaty signed with Commander Pierre Passot. France, which had lost Île de France (Mauritius) to the British, was looking for a foothold in the Indian Ocean. The treaty was ratified in 1843 and formal possession was taken on 13 June 1843.

Dzaoudzi became the seat of the administration. Slavery was abolished in 1846 and sugar cane plantations developed, worked by indentured labourers.

Mohéli, a queen between the powers

On Mohéli, Djoumbé Fatima, Ramanetaka's daughter, reigned from 1842 to 1865, then from 1874 until her death in 1878. Her reign was marked by the rivalries between France, Britain and Zanzibar, and by the influence of the French adventurer Joseph Lambert, who obtained vast concessions and for a time acted as regent.

Her daughter Salima Machamba, born of her union with the French officer Émile Fleuriot de Langle, became queen in 1888. She reigned under the protectorate until 1909, then settled in France.

1885–1886: the protectorates

On Grande Comore, the naturalist Léon Humblot arrived in 1884. On 5 November 1885, Sultan Saïd Ali of Bambao, seeking support against his rivals, granted him the right to exploit the island's land. On 6 January 1886, a treaty placed Grande Comore under a French protectorate. Humblot, both resident and great landowner, soon controlled most of the cultivable land.

Anjouan (April 1886) and Mohéli (1886) also became protectorates. On Anjouan, the revolt of 1891 that followed the death of Sultan Abdallah III led France to intervene militarily and install a new sultan.

1908–1912: annexation and attachment to Madagascar

A decree of 1908 attached the archipelago to the general government of Madagascar. The law of 25 July 1912 annexed the three protectorates: the four islands became a province of the colony of “Madagascar and dependencies”. The sultanates disappeared.

A remote outpost of a colony that was itself poor, the archipelago received few schools, roads and hospitals. The Comorian historian Mahmoud Ibrahime has shown the close alliance between the administration and the settlers during these decades.

A plantation economy

Large companies obtained immense concessions, at the expense of the villages. They grew vanilla, cloves, copra, sisal and perfume plants, including ylang-ylang. Peasants, short of land, had to pay a poll tax and provide days of labour.

Resistance

• 1891, Anjouan: uprising of slaves and peasants from Nyumakele and Koni.
• July 1915, Grande Comore: some 1,200 peasants, notably from Mbude and Dimani, revolted against the tax and the confiscation of land. The repression was harsh, but the tax was suspended.
• March–April 1940, Anjouan: in Nyumakele, where thirty villages had only 200 hectares left to live on amid the plantations, the villagers rose up against forced labour. The negotiations brought to the fore a young doctor, Saïd Mohamed Cheikh.