Betsileo

The Betsileo are Madagascar's third largest people, highlanders of the southern plateau between the Mania River and Andringitra Massif, around Fianarantsoa. Their name means the many invincible ones, earned when King Besilau repelled the Sakalava of Menabe in the 1670s.

From the seventeenth century they were split among small kingdoms, until Radama I of Imerina conquered them in the 1810s and 1820s. Radama made Fianarantsoa seat of the central and southern Betsileo and attached the north to Antsirabe, making them a Merina administrative division rather than a single kingdom; many were enslaved and sold on the island or to European slave traders.

Their society ranked into nobles, commoners and slaves under elders, and they became the island's most skilful rice farmers, carving terraces around Fianarantsoa. They honoured the creator Zanahary and ancestors through the famadihana ceremony, rewrapping the dead in fresh shrouds.