Malagasy Empire (Yellowstone: 1936)

The Malagasy Empire is one of the few fully-industrialized African nations. It came to be after Eruption Day and the French government collapsed, and the colony became independent. After a series of wars the Empire managed to almost double in size, and is the super-power it is known to be today.

Ancient Times
The people of Madagascar were origianally Austronesian settlers, likey arriving from Borneo, which makes the Malagasy closer to Malaysians than to Mozambiqueens.

Pre-Colonial Times
The Malagasy were for a long time seperated and it several diffirent kingdoms and tribes. Eventually, less than a century before the French arrived, the origianl Kingdom of Madagascar was formed. Until the French came, toppled it, and installed a colonial governmant on it.

Eruption
The island of Madagascar itself was not too badly effected by the Eruption compared to many other nations. The skys were blackened and many plants did die as in every other nation, but in Madagascar the loss of life was much smaller, with the famine only taking 8% of the population, and the some of the worst ecological damage being that 1/5 of the jungles turned into plains.

Independance
In 1942 France effectivley collapsed. Many French soldiers, generals, and nobles remained on the islandm, but unfortunately were not united. As almost all heads-of-state and governmant officials were either French or Catholic Malagasy whom spoke French, the French language grew in use, but not overly substantially.

MadagascarEthniccities.pnga
Tanala was nation in Western Madagascar, ruled by former French general Aime de Luc, was soon formed and would go on to unify the islands. Almost immediately after the independanceof the nation of Tanala a question of which language would be official and which would not be arose. The two choices were Malagasy, the other language was French. Many argued that it would be best to stick with French as it was a language spoke it many diffirent places, others argued they should go with Malagasy, as only a fraction of the people actually speak French and Malagasy is the most common tongue. Instead of choosing one, the government decided to go with both.

Unification
After the collapse of France in the early 1940's a strong independence movement started in Madagascar. The island and small surround French islands collapsed into many small nation-states before before being re-unified in 1946 by the large western state of Tanala. Initially the Kingdom of the Malagasy the Kingdom focused heavily on ethnic unity and industrialization.

Post-Unification
The Emporer then began a nationalist policy in which he enforced the idea that no matter which ethnicity a citizen on Madagascar is he is always Malagasy, and stronlgy promoted the idea of one culture on the island. This policy would later become largley succesful, though not all ethnic groups ended up blending in.

Modernization
After the unification of the island the King began a intensive modernization campaign. As Madagascar was not nearly as effected by the Eruption as other nations refugees flooded in from other nations, mainly Arabia and Oceania, and from Arabia also came the rich and from Oceania the educated. The King decided to make use of this, granting land to former tycoons to start plantations and mines, and gave positions in the governmant to the educated.

The governmant's main priorities were to improve the infastruture, and build more schools. Luckily the King also recognized the island's mineral wealth. A state-run run company, Huile Malgache Inc. (Malagasy Oil Inc.) began to build oil fields accross the nation, most of which was unfortunately crude oil when sold, bringing in less revenue due to the nation's inability to build refineries. Another state-run company, Madagascar Minerals Inc. (Malagasy Minerals Inc.) was created to also bring in revenue by starting up Beryl, Chromite, Feldspar, Gold, Graphite, Kaolin, and Mica mines.

By 1952 the GDP per capita was $3,458 (campared to $945 OTL).