Historic Handweaving in Highland Madagascar: New Insights from a Vernacular Text Attributed to a Royal Diviner-Healer, c. 1870

AbstractIn comparison to the western half of the continent, East Africa’s long and rich textile history has received less attention in the literature. A wave of new scholarship is beginning to redress the balance. A number of works focus on the island of Madagascar, one of the region’s oldest and most important historic centres of cloth production. Drawing special interest are the Merina weavers of the central highlands who, from at least the eighteenth century, were among the island’s most prolific and innovative cloth makers. This article introduces a key Merina-authored text — thus far overlooked by scholars — with novel insights into historic highland handweaving. Entitled Things for Making Cloth, it forms part of a larger work known as the ‘Ombiasy Manuscript’ written in 1870, reputedly by a healer to the royal Merina court. In providing a first translation and commentary, this essay draws on museum specimens and field interviews to reveal fully the text’s unique information on spinning, dyeing, weav...