Objects as Envoys: Cloth, Imagery, and Diplomacy in Madagascar.

National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., in association with University of Washington Press, Seattle and London, 2002. 208 pp., 40 b/w & 68 color photos, 4 maps, glossary, bibliography, index. $35 softcover.

Objects as Envoys: Cloth, Imagery, and Diplomacy in Madagascar is a collection of five scholarly essays that accompanies a related 2002 exhibition, "Gifts and Blessings: The Textile Arts of Madagascar," organized by the National Museum of African Art, Smithsonian Institution (reviewed on p. 82). While focusing primarily on textiles, the book and exhibition examined additional aspects of Madagascar's material culture including historical postcards, photographs, and documents. One goal of the project was to allow its curators and authors to collaborate in the effort to collect and research these materials. In her introduction Christine Kreamer writes: "This book, the result of that research and scholarly collaboration, explores how, in the circulation of cloth, images, and ideas, the Malagasy have forged relationships both with each other and with the wider world" (pp. 15, 17). Most significantly, one of the collective aims of the essays is to provide a broader and "more holistic approach" to understanding the production and circulation of the textiles and other objects by exploring the more precise historical, social, and political conditions of community formation and belonging among the peoples of Madagascar (p. 18). This point of departure for examining various aspects of Malagasy material culture, both historical and contemporary, will open up more possibilities for future scholarship than one in which objects are simply categorized according to narrowly defined ethnic groups and centers of production.

Objects as Envoys is handsomely laid out and richly illustrated with beautiful figures of textiles, photographs, postcards, and paintings. Particularly impressive are the illustrations of textiles, which capture the brilliant colors, intricate designs, and often subtle character of this extraordinary Malagasy art form. The excellent quality of the images is a major feat considering the textiles' enormous size (dimensions often in the range of 240cm x 180cm, about 95" x 71"). Close ups showing design and border details and subtle shifts in color convey the qualities of materiality, tactility, and dimension. A glossary of Malagasy terms and the bibliography at the end of the book are a gold mine for anyone wishing to learn more about the material culture of Madagascar.

In his background essay, Jean-Aim6 Rakotoarisoa briefly summarizes Madagascar's various climatic zones and its history of migration and settlement. He sketches one of the most fascinating aspects of the island's history, namely its location at a crossroad between Africa and Asia. Plating Madagascar in the context of pan-Indian Ocean history and culture, Rakotoarisoa informs us that for the past two thousand years the island has been populated by successive waves of settlers from Africa, Asia, the Arab peninsula and, after the sixteenth century, by Europeans. He writes that the Malagasy have "selectively appropriated and recombined elements-linguistic, material and cultural--from sources scattered across the vast Indian Ocean and turned them into something new" (p. 25). As many other scholars have previously pointed out (e.g., Maurice Bloch, Jennifer Cole, Robert Dewar, Manasse Esoavelomandroso, Gillian Feeley-Harnik, Pier Larson, Francoise Raison-Jourde, Henry Wright), the people and culture of Madagascar are neither "African" nor "Asian" but rather a unique combination of the two that have "developed in place, on the island" (p. 25). Rakotoarisoa's essay is disappointing, rehearsing these salient points but lacking the detail and insight that one would anticipate from a researcher who has an academic background in the history and geography of Madagascar and who has lived on the island for most of his life.

Sarah Fee devotes the first part of her essay, "Cloth in Motion," to the process of making textiles. She focuses on those elements closest to the loom, namely the weavers, materials, and the techniques of spinning, dyeing, and weaving. According to Fee, historically it was mostly women who practiced weaving in Madagascar, because clothing the family was among their chief domestic duties. Women were judged by how well they wove; male family members were, in turn, judged by the quality of cloth they wore. Men were also presented cloth as gifts (for example, to ease tension in a difficult marriage) or, in certain parts of Madagascar, as bridewealth. Fee points out that there is a strong association of women with the intensive labor and creativity involved with weaving and with passing on the art of cloth making to the next generation. This is evidenced by the number of Malagasy proverbs and sayings that are still heard today which allude to these themes. Fee's years of research and fieldwork on the island shine through in her ability to reclassify various kinds of cloth that were previously lumped together, to expand upon different fiber traditions (bark, cotton, hemp, raffia, silk) and loom types, and to clarify the distinctions among the enormous variety of widths and combinations of colored striping found in Malagasy textiles.

The second part of "Cloth in Motion" traces the "movements of cloth after it leaves the loom" (p. 33). Fee explores the historical "social significance" of cloth through its use as a "skin" for the protection, broadly construed identity, and legitimacy of its owners; as a marker of status in royal courts (curiously, the interface between textiles and architecture is overlooked); as a vital part in one of the most important and ubiquitous aspects of Malagasy culture, namely hasina (a cyclical process of offering "blessings" in the form of gifts e.g., cloth--to the ancestors who, in return, bestow beneficence on those who honor them); and finally, as diplomatic gifts from Malagasy sovereigns to foreign heads of state. Cloth, then, through the effort exerted during its creation, the details of its designs, the family to which it belongs, and other particulars of its life history, carries the community's history within it. To emphasize the evolving nature of textile arts on the island, Fee discusses contemporary weaving designs and the novel ways in which cloth is used and circulated locally and internationally for the tourist and fashion markets.

While I applaud Fee's ability to amass and synthesize so much material, the second part of her essay suffers from being overly ambitious. On several occasions it loses its focus as it jumps from one topic to another. Further more, covering so much ground prevented Fee from expanding on the textiles woven in the area of Madagascar she knows best and others know least, namely the Androy region in the south. More attention is paid to the textile traditions of the royal Merina, who are the principal ethnic group of the central highlands and who, by the 1820s, ruled more than two-thirds of the island. This focus seems to contradict the book's goal of including Madagascar's diverse peoples without privileging any single group.

"Gifts from the Queen" by Mary Jo Arnoldi traces the 120-year history of two handwoven Merina silk textiles (lamba akotofahana) that were presented in 1886 by the Merina Queen Ranavalona III to the newly elected President of the United States, Grover Cleveland. In her well-focused essay, Arnoldi sketches the "recontextualization" of these textiles as they were selected by the Merina court, received by President Cleveland, and eventually sent to the Smithsonian anthropological collections, where they remain today in the National Museum of Natural History.

Arnoldi points out that the Malagasy were well aware of the value Westerners placed on Merina prestige items such as cloth; it was a common practice of the Merina court to present foreigners with textiles. For the Merina, receiving gifts (silver, cloth) from the sovereign was another manifestation of hasina and a demonstration of his or her power to rule. I disagree, however, with Arnoldi's statement that "These cultural associations would have been totally lost on foreigners" (p, 98). Many foreigners, in tact, were familiar with the vital importance of hasina and used it to their advantage.

Once the textiles were in the Washington, D.C., they were reclassified several times as "embroidered linen table covers," "shawls," "robes," and eventually, using Malagasy terminology, as "lamba" and "lamba akolofahana." The main idea of this essay is that file two silks acquired new meanings "as they were inserted into new cultural and political contexts in the West" (p, 118). In one of the most historically interesting parts of the discussion, Arnoldi examines the early diplomatic relations and treaties between the United States and Madagascar during the late 1860s. She highlights the exchange of gifts from the United States to the Merina Queen Rasoherina and Prime Minister Rainilaiarivony, who received, among other items, a Singer sewing machine and a set of Smith and Wesson revolvers, respectively. Arnoldi correctly places these gifts in the context of the government's desire to represent American business abroad and to show the "ingenuity, manufacturing prowess, and engineering sophistication" (p. 100) of Americans who were competing with Europeans to expand trade in the region.

"Madagascar in the Minds of Foreigners" by Edgar Krebs and Wendy Walker is the least successful of the essays. Their contribution about Malagasy and American diplomacy is conspicuously out of place, since it does not deal with one of the principal themes of the book: the interface between diplomacy and material culture. It tells the fascinating story of an Afro-American, John Lewis Waller, who became the American consul to Madagascar in 1891, Waller's appointment fell on the eve of official colonization of the island by France in 1895. His story weaves together his diplomatic efforts to convince the United States to act on Madagascar's behalf, as colonization became inevitable, with his interest in his own commercial ventures, which set the stage for his own demise. Unfortunately the convoluted nature of the essay diminishes the thrust of this compelling and tragic personal history. Co-authorship may have been an issue, since the essay appears to be written by two authors, each writing separately rather than in a more fluid form of collaboration. Unfortunately, many of the most interesting and germane points appear in the endnotes. Note 16 (p. 146), for example, addresses the relation of Malagasy identity to ancestral tracts of land known as lanin-drazana. Explaining this concept in the main body of the text would have helped to clarify one of the chief obstacles Waller faced while attempting to purchase land.

"Views from Outside and Inside" by Christraud M. Geary traces the history of visual imagery in Madagascar. Geary explores the role of engravings, photographs, and postcards in "the construction and invention" (p. 150) of the Malagasy and Madagascar "from the outside" by Westerners. Later she examines how "from file inside" the Merino royals, who have interacted with increasing numbers of foreigners residents since the 1860s, "created and projected distinct identities" through photography and painting. Geary's simple declarative sentences address the images directly. Because her analysis so successfully grounds the visual materials in their historical context, this essay might have been better placed at tile beginning of file book. It would have assisted the uninitiated reader in understanding the rich historical surroundings of the illustrations in the balance of the essays.

Objects as Envoys is an important and timely contribution to Madagascar studies, a field that is often marginalized within Africanist scholarship. More than this, the essays are a clear demonstration of the insights that are gained from examining material culture, in all of its threads and intricacies, and how those details can in turn help us see larger patterns of history.

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Randall D. Bird received his Ph.D. in art and architectural history at Harvard University and is research coordinator for the "Bamun Art Worlds" project at Harvard University and Boston's Museum of Fine Arts. A trained architect, he has worked in Nepal and has conducted extensive research in South Africa and Madagascar.