Saint Augustin Bay

Saint Augustine Bay opens on Madagascar's southwestern coast at the mouth of the Onilahy River. Pale limestone cliffs rise near the river, whose valley reaches inland from the Mozambique Channel. The bay offered ships a place to obtain provisions and brought foreign merchants into contact with the communities of the coast.

English vessels called frequently during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, exchanging goods for food and other supplies, as well as enslaved people destined for distant settlements. An English attempt to establish a settlement in 1645 was short-lived, but the bay remained a place of maritime trade. By the beginning of the eighteenth century Sakalava rulers sought to control commerce in the southwest, as political competition and overseas demand reshaped relations around the Onilahy.