‘To reconfigure how we think of language and culture change in the European colonies’ of the western Indian Ocean islands (p. 8), no less, is the goal of this lucid, thoroughly worked, and stimulating book on Madagascar and its diaspora. Few could be better equipped to address this challenge than Pier M. Larson, eminent historian of Madagascar, who grew up on the ‘Big Island’. As a crucial tool for this task, his mastery of the Malagasy language opens up wide and far-reaching perspectives on social relationships in the age of empire, through textual sources from the mid-seventeenth to the late nineteenth century. The book seeks a paradigm shift in the (historical) study of creolization processes. Shifting the focus from ‘ethnicity’ to ‘language’, and especially to regional languages, Larson argues, redirects research towards the investigation of multilingual realities and vernacular practices in colonial and diasporic settings. This allows for the recognition and appropriate analysis of the creative and flexible language use by diasporic subjects, and thus for a richer exploration of their social realities. According to Larson, such linguistic versatility, in the creole as well as their vernaculars, characterizes creole contexts and their social agents more adequately than the celebrated but somewhat inflexible idea of ethnic ‘hybridity’. Thus, against ‘creolité-as-mixing’, Larson convincingly develops a paradigm of ‘creolité-as-versatility’ (p. 352) over the course of the book. Chapter by chapter, he covers various key phases and aspects of more than two centuries of engagement with Malagasy language, all inextricably linked to the experience of colonial encounter.

In a sequence of case studies, Larson conveys how the Malagasy language was learned by missionaries, colonial administrators, and engaged men-of-letters (self-styled researchers). Early linguistic engagement with south-eastern Malagasy dialects was started in the 1650s by French missionaries, and, from the 1820s, written Malagasy – then standardized according to the northern Merina dialect, with the help of Welsh missionaries – was used extensively in administrative and personal letters in the Merina kingdom. Larson's study takes a long-noted and enduring feature of the wider Malagasy region as its point of departure: its linguistic unity in the face of ethnic diversity (p. 35). As major sources, Larson draws on a wealth of Malagasy letters (of refugees, travelers, laborers) not previously considered by other researchers. These span a web of connections across the diaspora and are thoughtfully complemented by selections from the French and British colonial archives, documenting the strands of missionary and colonial efforts, through (Bible) translation and dictionary projects, to create literacy and standard Malagasy. This illustrates administrative processes of ‘colonial vernacularism’, what Larson qualifies as ‘the use of colonial linguistics in vernaculars for imperial purposes’ (p. 133). These, in turn (as standardization policies), also fed into the building up of the Merina kingdom as a regional empire whose anti-Christian politics (from 1835) led to a substantial wave of refugees. Larson's excerpts from their letters show powerfully how they are torn between their love of their homeland and their Christian creed that forced them away. The flow of letters between the Big Island and its diaspora reflects imperial, social, and personal connections. These are discussed most prominently with a view to Mauritius but also other neighboring islands, the southern African coast (notably Cape Town), and the colonial metropoles.

Larson's overall argument draws on an impressive range of sources and observations. One important aspect is his emphasis on the linguistic agency of creole subjects in contexts determined by colonial circumstances. His approach seems not only adequate on the ground, with a view to the social actors and their attitudes that we seek to understand and convey as researchers. It also stimulates us to think beyond supposedly pre-determined frameworks, about the interrelationships between historical experience, language use, and the dynamics of identity construction (of individuals and groups), in socially restrictive contexts. Larson also sheds light on the internal diversity of the diasporic field, by providing examples of how Malagasy speakers in different sub-regions and places devise alternate strategies of communication and adaptation. Overall, he characterizes the Malagasy ecumene as an ‘ocean of letters’ and, at the same time, a ‘sea of ethnicity’ (p. 348). As he puts it, the tensions between these connecting and diversifying idioms also foreshadow important features of Madagascar's political history in the twentieth century.

For Larson, ‘vernacularization’ and ‘creolization’ are the two central linguistic processes in the diasporic arena, and they develop in parallel, whereby neither can be fully understood without reference to the other (p. 225). They are both ‘historical dimensions of forced labor imperialism’ in the multicultural diasporic settings shaped by colonial politics. They interact productively, and for individual actors they provide, as Larson puts it, arsenals of ‘learned capacity’, tools or registers for orientation and navigation through the cultural and linguistic diversity that characterizes diasporic societies (p. 352–3). Using the vernacular or the creole mode of expression is a choice that people have and make use of. The multicultural character of islands and ports in the western Indian Ocean, he argues, has always included multilingualism and flexible language choice as part of the overall setting. When working with vernacular sources, as researchers we face neither heuristic need nor archival evidence to assume (as is commonly done) a receding relevance of vernacular language use among the local population, in favor of an exclusive shift to the use of a colonial creole. Larson argues that such an ultimately teleological conception of creole history (p. 230) has obstructed the view on the actual ‘coexistence and interaction of multiple colonial languages and life-ways’ in this region (p. 223). As he demonstrates, the vernacular appropriation and adaptation processes in colonial language policies here, in turn, open up possibilities for the renaissance of vernacular languages and their re-invigoration in terms of political and cultural relevance. Yet for this to be taken on board, researchers need to know the relevant languages well. Otherwise, by neglecting these languages further, their ongoing and constantly re-adjusted relevance in new and changing environments can be neither properly observed nor understood (p. 354).

To conclude, final praise for the presence of extensive Malagasy quotations (mostly from letters) throughout the book: Larson provides Malagasy originals of all the important quotes that he uses throughout the book. This gives Malagasy readers opportunity to double-check on, and engage further with, translation and interpretation. In this respect, too, Larson's book is an excellent illustration of the multiple values and benefits to be gained from studies that are rooted in linguistic competence as well as historical knowledge.