Comoro Islands

Abstract

The four islands of the Comoro archipelago lie across the northern end of the Mozambique Channel between the African mainland and Madagascar. At the far southern reaches of the monsoon wind system, the islands constitute a southern outpost of the Swahili cultural zone as well as serving as stepping-stones between the continent and Madagascar: culturally and ecologically, the islands’ influences are from both. The islands may well have been first visited during the settlement of Madagascar; Islam arrived in the late first millennium and the islands’ economies grew as traders and slavers took advantage of their pivotal position in the Indian Ocean. Following the European arrival in the ocean in the late fifteenth century, the islands became important supply points for both the Portuguese in Mozambique and other Europeans travelling to Asia. Whalers, pirates, and explorers frequented the islands, particularly Mwali (Mohéli) and, later, Ndzuani (Anjouan), while Ngazidja (Grand Comore) developed as a center of religious scholarship. French and British interests in the archipelago in the nineteenth century were resolved in favor of the former, who attached them to the French colonial empire as a province of Madagascar, consigning them to economic and administrative neglect for the first half of the twentieth century. Since 1975 the three westernmost islands have formed an independent state, now known as the Union of Comoros—a member of the Arab league and the only Islamic country wholly within the Southern Hemisphere—while the fourth island, Maore, better known as Mayotte, chose to remain French and became a département d’outre-mer in March 2011. European neglect during the colonial period belies the social and cultural importance of the islands across the region. Comorian migrants served as civil servants and religious leaders the length of the East African coast, particularly in the British colonies, and a numerically important population in Madagascar was economically significant. Today, the local economy is dependent on a moribund spice industry and remittances from migrants in France. The lack of English language literature on the islands—a result of their colonial history—was exacerbated by Africanists who viewed the islands as part of the Indian Ocean world, and scholars of Madagascar, for whom the islands were African. Only recently has this in-between status been recognized as contributing to the islands’ pivotal role rather than marginalizing them. Nevertheless, although there are English-language texts in the natural sciences, in the humanities, and in the social sciences, the Comoros remain very much embedded in a Francophone world. For more on the wider Indian Ocean world, see also the following Oxford Bibliographies articles: Swahili City States of the East African Coast, Indian Ocean Trade, and Indian Ocean and Middle Eastern Slave Trades.