This article sketches an interpretative framework for Madagascar’s long-term history by mapping key junctures in its political economy. Concurrent periods of economic expansion and political crisis imply that the country’s inability to reach a stable political consensus about wealth accumulation and distribution remains a fundamental source of its hardships. This theory holds that understanding Madagascar’s trajectory requires a rereading of its distant past, from precolonial times to the present. The authors identify the central actors, the sources of power and wealth, the economic and social modes of control, and the contradictions of the system. We can see six main periods; a clean break separates each without resolving Madagascar’s main contradictions.