Étienne de Flacourt was a French

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 governor of Madagascar

Madagascar

The Republic of Madagascar is an island country located in the Indian Ocean off the southeastern coast of Africa...

, born at Orléans

Orléans

-Prehistory and Roman:Cenabum was a Gallic stronghold, one of the principal towns of the Carnutes tribe where the Druids held their annual assembly. It was conquered and destroyed by Julius Caesar in 52 BC, then rebuilt under the Roman Empire...

 in 1607. He was named governor of Madagascar by the French East India Company

French East India Company

The French East India Company was a commercial enterprise, founded in 1664 to compete with the British and Dutch East India companies in colonial India....

 in 1648.

Flacourt restored order among the French soldiers, who had mutinied

Mutiny

Mutiny is a conspiracy among members of a group of similarly situated individuals to openly oppose, change or overthrow an authority to which they are subject...

, but in his dealings with the natives he was less successful, and their intrigues and attacks kept him in continual harassment during his entire term of office.

In 1655 he returned to France. Not long after he was appointed director general of the company; but having again returned to Madagascar, he was drowned on his voyage home on the 10th of June 1660. He is the author of a Histoire de la grande isle de Madagascar (1st edition 1658, 2nd edition 1661).

Flacourt was one of the few, if not the only, Western person to have recorded knowledge of the elephant bird

Elephant bird

Elephant birds are an extinct family of flightless birds found only on the island of Madagascar and comprising the genera Aepyornis and Mullerornis.-Description:...

s of Madagascar when they were possibly still extant.
Flacourtia

Flacourtia

Flacourtia is a genus of flowering plants in the in the willow family, Salicaceae. It was previously placed in the now defunct family Flacourtiaceae. The generic name honors Étienne de Flacourt , a governor of Madagascar. It contains 15 species of shrubs and small trees that are native to the...

, a genus of flowering plant

Flowering plant

The flowering plants , also known as Angiospermae or Magnoliophyta, are the most diverse group of land plants. Angiosperms are seed-producing plants like the gymnosperms and can be distinguished from the gymnosperms by a series of synapomorphies...

s in the willow

Willow

Willows, sallows, and osiers form the genus Salix, around 400 species of deciduous trees and shrubs, found primarily on moist soils in cold and temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere...

 family, Salicaceae

Salicaceae

Salicaceae are a family of flowering plants. Recent genetic studies summarized by the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group has greatly expanded the circumscription of the family to contain 55 genera....

, was named in honor of him.
See A. Malotet, Ét. de Flacourt, ou les origines de la colonisation française a Madagascar (1648-1661), (Paris, 1898).

External links

• Histoire de la Grande Isle Madagascar – online book (French)