Boeny

Boeny is a historic coastal region of northwestern Madagascar, where bays and river mouths face the Mozambique Channel. Its sheltered waters drew merchants from East Africa and other shores of the wider Indian Ocean. Archaeological sites around the bay preserve traces of successive coastal settlements and valuable imported ceramic goods, showing the importance of exchange long before the rise of the Sakalava kingdom.

In the later seventeenth century the Sakalava prince Andriamandisoarivo expanded north from Menabe and founded a kingdom in Boeny, also known as Boina. He brought the established coastal trading communities under his authority. His successors drew wealth from overseas commerce, including the trade in enslaved people, while relationships with merchants and rival rulers shaped the kingdom's fortunes.