Madagascar: The Red Island Uprising

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On March 29, 1947, peasants armed with sticks and knives attacked the French garrisons in Madagascar. The revolt would end twenty months later with the death of the last insurgents, shot down by the expeditionary force. France, accustomed to memory lapses, knew nothing of this insurrection and its trail of torture and abuses. In Madagascar, well after independence, the events of 1947 were never discussed. For more than a generation, parents refused to speak of them to their children. It wasn't until the 1980s that the silence was broken.