1. History’s Deadliest Queen
Between massacres, mistreatment, forced labor, and widespread famines resulting from Ranavalona’s scorched earth policies and heavy-handed repression, Madagascar’s population crashed. During just a six-year stretch from 1833 to 1839, the island’s population is estimated to have declined from 5 million to 2.5 million inhabitants. In Ranavalona’s own home district, the population took a nose dive from about 750,000 in 1829 to a mere 130,000 by 1842.
Those were genocide-level figures, comparable to the toll inflicted by Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge upon the people of Cambodia a century later. Unlike Pol Pot, however, Ranavalona was not chased out of power. After a 33-year reign, she died in her sleep of natural causes, at age 83.
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Where Did We Find This Stuff? Some Sources and Further Reading
Badass of the Week – Ranavalona the Cruel
Clements, Barbara Evans – Bolshevik Women (1997)
CNN Travel – Blood Countess in Slovakia: Tourists on the Trail of Elizabeth Bathory
Encyclopedia Britannica – Elizabeth Bathory
Encyclopedia Britannica – Gilles de Rais
Encyclopedia Britannica – Marcel Petiot, French Serial Killer
Executed Today – 1581: Peter Niers
Futurist Dolmen – Rozalia Zemlyachka: An Incomplete Biography
Laidler, Keith – Female Caligula: Ranavalona, the Mad Queen of Madagascar (2005)
Listverse – 10 Historic Serial Killers You Don’t Know
Medical Bag – Pure Evil: Wartime Japanese Doctor Had No Regard For Human Suffering
PBS American Experience – Shiro Ishii
Ranker – The Untold Story of Peter Niers, the Cannibal Magician Who Killed 500 People
Sima, Qian – Records of the Grand Historian
War History Online – Japan’s Dr. Mengele: Medical Experiments on POWs at Unit 731