author
Thomas T. Matthews
Drawn from three decades of missionary life on the island, these pages offer a vivid firsthand look at Madagascar during a time of deep political, social, and religious change. The writing is practical and observant, mixing travel, history, and personal experience in a way that still feels immediate.
1 Audiobook
Thirty years in Madagascar
by Thomas T. Matthews
About the author
Born in Aberdeen, Scotland, in 1842, Thomas Trotter Matthews became a missionary with the London Missionary Society after being influenced by the revival movement of 1859. He studied theology in Manchester and Highgate, along with some medical training, before being appointed to Madagascar in 1870.
Matthews spent many years working in Madagascar, where he was involved in preaching, education, and wider mission work during a period of major upheaval and change on the island. His best-known book, Thirty Years in Madagascar, grows out of that long experience and combines personal recollection with historical background and close observation of Malagasy life.
He died in 1928. Today, his work is remembered mainly for its detailed eyewitness account of missionary life in Madagascar and for the window it gives modern readers into the island's history at the turn of the twentieth century.