French Comoros

The history of the Comoros goes back some 1,500 years. It has been inhabited by various groups throughout this time. France colonised the islands in the 19th century. The Comoros finally became independent in 1975.

According to myth, the Comoros islands were first visited by Phoenician sailors. The earliest inhabitants of the islands were probably Bantu-speaking Africans; the earliest evidence of settlement of the islands dates from the sixth century. Traces of this original culture have blended with successive waves of African, Arab and Malagasy. Shirazi immigrants appear to have arrived some time after the tenth century A.D.

In the 16th century, social changes on the East African coast probably linked to the arrival of the Portuguese saw the arrival of a number of Arabs of Hadrami who established alliances with the Shirazis and founded several royal clans.

Over the centuries, the Comoro Islands have been settled by a succession of diverse groups from the coast of Africa, the Persian Gulf, Southeast Asia and Madagascar. Portuguese explorers first visited the archipelago in 1505.

Apart from a visit by the French Parmentier brothers in 1529, for much of the 16th century the only Europeans to visit the islands were Portuguese; British and Dutch ships began arriving around the start of the 17th century and the island of Ndzwani soon became a major supply point on the route to the East. Ndzwani was generally ruled by a single sultan, who occasionally attempted to extend his authority to Mayotte and Mwali; Ngazidja was more fragmented, on occasion being divided into as many as 12 small kingdoms.

Both the British and the French turned their attention to the Comoros islands in the middle of the 19th century. The French finally acquired the islands through a cunning mixture of strategies, including the policy of 'divide and conquer', chequebook politics and a serendipitous affair between a sultana and a French trader that was put to good use by the French, who kept control of the islands, quelling unrest and the occasional uprising.

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Wikipedia