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Lost People: Magic and the Legacy of Slavery in Madagascar

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This Wiki is part of an ongoing open-access initiative dedicated to making David Graeber’s early anthropological work more widely available. The text presented here is drawn from his manuscript Lost People: Magic and the Legacy of Slavery in Madagascar – the book he considered his most important. In collaboration with the David Graeber Institute, this project aims not only to share the text itself, but also to enrich it over time through annotations, archival materials, and multimedia content. As the project develops, we will be adding: 1) Photographs and field recordings from Graeber’s time in Madagascar 2) Scanned pages from his ethnographic notebooks (held in the DGI archives) 3) Contextual notes and references to related works For now, the table of contents follows the structure of the original manuscript. This is a work in progress, and contributions are welcome – whether through annotations, suggestions, or help curating related materials.

Table of Contents Preface and Acknowkedgements Notes on Malagasy Pronunciation Betafo, 1990 Royal Authority Negative Authority Character A Brief History of Betafo Anti-Heroic Politics The Trials of Miadana Lost People The Descendants of Rainitamaina It Must Have Gone Something Like This Catastrophe Epilogue Glossary of Malagasy Terms Personal Names in Text Important Places Named in Text