Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Hastie, James
HASTIE, JAMES (1786–1826), civil agent of the British government in Madagascar, was born at Cork in 1786, his parents being members of the Society of Friends. The religious restraint of the sect in which he was trained proved distasteful to him, and he enlisted in the 56th foot. Proceeding to India, he served there during the Mahratta war. In 1815 Hastie, now a sergeant, was quartered with his regiment at Port Louis, Mauritius, and attracted the notice of Governor Farquhar by his conduct during a fire. He was recommended for a commission, and meantime appointed preceptor to two Malagasy princes, with whom he returned to Madagascar. There he became assistant agent to Mr. Pye, the civil agent of the British government at Tamatave. Hastie reached the court of King Radama I, at the capital of Imerina, 6 Aug. 1817, and succeeded in completely winning the friendship of the Hova monarch, with whom he was enabled to negotiate an important treaty for the prevention of the export slave trade. For nine years Hastie acted as civil agent in Madagascar (including two years per interim at Mauritius), and he accompanied King Radama throughout the campaigns in which the subjugation of the eastern, northern, and western tribes of the great island was effected. His journals, now in the Public Record Office, London, afforded the only geographical information available respecting the interior of Imerina, Antaukay, and Iboina, during the first portion of the nineteenth century, and his observations on the manners and character of the inland Malagasy tribes are still most valuable. He died at Antananarivo on 18 Oct. 1826, where he was buried in a vault expressly prepared for his body by the friendly king, who, mainly by Hastie's exertions, had now become recognised as the sole ruler of Madagascar.
[Manuscript Journals of James Hastie, Colonial State Papers, Record Office; Ellis's Hist. of Madagascar; Oliver's Madagascar, vol. i.; Henry d'Escamps's Histoire et Géographie de Madagascar.]