"Nested Hierarchies: Money, Markets, & Murder on an African Frontier"

In Madagascar in 1889, the murder of a U.S. Consular Agent by another U.S. citizen shocked the Indian Ocean island and its impacts reverberated across the Atlantic to France and the United States as well. What does this murder tell us about the broader arenas of commerce and colonialism in the late 19th century? On the surface, the murderer, Louis de Rathier du Vergé, existed as a true citizen of the world during imperialism’s golden age. At once French, American, African, and Other, the shifting loyalties he exhibited throughout his life – as well as the persona he created for himself – are representative of the complexities of identity and allegiance at the height of global imperialism. In the United States, Du Vergé’s self-cultivated mythology found a type of material success that would have eluded him completely in Europe. He masterfully manipulated global networks, earning fame and fortune that he successfully parlayed into various maritime commercial ventures across southern Africa. But though his networks gave him access to the financial resources of the rich and famous, it did not protect him from the realities of global colonial hierarchies, which ultimately proved his downfall. This paper seeks to untangle the economic, political, and social hierarchies at play in Du Vergé’s rise and fall. Although Du Vergé achieved personal success through good fortune and international adventurism, neither he nor his powerful partisans could withstand the retributive justice of an American government scorned.