European scholars long claimed Madagascar’s population descended from biblical Jews

Evidence

A considerable literature was produced particularly toward the end of the nineteenth century on the supposed Jewish origin of some of the island’s population. One proponent of the idea was the French Madagascar expert Alfred Grandidier; another, Augustus Keane, a onetime professor of Hindustani at University College, London. They both claimed that there were great links between Madagascar and the ancient Jews. In The Gold of Ophir, Whence Brought and by Whom (1901) Keane argued that Madagascar had been the offshore base for the colony of Havilah with Tarshish its port of entry and that Madagascar had links with ancient Israel, “certainly as early as the time of Solomon and possibly even during the reign of his father David.” Grandidier’s monumental work Histore Physique, Naturelle et Politique de Madagascar, also published in 1901, made similar claims arguing that parts of the local population were descended from Jewish settlers of biblical times. Such views continued to be expressed throughout the twentieth century: a suggestion that substantial traces of Hebrew were to be found in Malagasy was made in L’hébreu à Madagascar by Jospeh Briant, published in 1946! — Ivan Davidson Kalmar, Derek Penslar, Orientalism and the Jews, 336

Categorization

• SEED: Article angle: the persistence of pseudo-scholarly theories of lost Israelite tribes as an unbroken genre from colonial racism to modern conspiracy (e.g., Lemba DNA testing and Bnei Menashe).